From artificial intelligence chatbots to ATS, there are many recruitment tools that help recruiters make more effective and strategic decisions.

One of the best tools you can use is a recruitment metrics dashboard. A good dashboard can feel like a superpower for talent attraction teams: you can use it to thoroughly explore the available information and learn how to attract more qualified candidates in larger numbers while making life easier for your team.

Let's explore how you can use a recruitment dashboard to gain a competitive advantage.

What is a recruitment metrics dashboard?

A recruitment metrics dashboard is a place where you can see all the KPIs you're measuring. This information is intended to help you evaluate your talent pool and understand how well your recruitment strategy is working.

What does a recruitment metrics dashboard look like?

A good dashboard contains visually represented data that adjusts as you change the variables, allowing you to go deeper into each of the KPIs it measures.

What roles benefit most from a recruitment metrics dashboard?

Practically everyone involved in the recruitment process will benefit from the recruitment dashboard:

• Recruiting managers can see the results of their strategies and use that information to polish and adjust their teams' campaigns.
• Recruiters can use KPIs (such as candidates and hiring by source) to find the best candidate sources.
• Attracting talent you can use a dashboard to monitor the volume of the candidate pool and adjust your recruitment strategies as needed.
• HR leaders can keep track of budgets, time spent hiring and more using information such as the cost and time of hiring and the time spent on coverage.

How can the recruitment dashboard inform your recruitment strategy?

Recruiting dashboards provide a lot of real-time analytical tools and, therefore, support the recruitment strategy in a variety of ways. For example, using a recruitment dashboard can make your team switch from reactive to proactive.

Here are some ways your dashboard can inform your recruitment strategy:

Measure KPIs and identify trends

The main advantage of a recruitment dashboard is that it allows you to see all your recruitment information at a glance and share it with other stakeholders. A dashboard will help you measure the success of various marketing campaigns, the number of candidates coming from each source, the costs involved per candidate and per source, and the quality of hiring. All of this information will be useful for you to adjust and improve your recruitment process.

A recruitment dashboard will give you a graphical overview of your KPIs and will help you identify trends. Are there specific sources that have become less productive over time? A downward graph will point this out to you so you can investigate why. Similarly, your KPIs will provide you with information about which sources attract the best talent.

Analyze the recruitment funnel

To determine the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts, it's important to see how candidates are progressing (or not) through the recruitment funnel. A recruitment metrics dashboard can help you analyze every aspect of the funnel. By comparing numbers and reviewing information, you can quickly identify problems and fine-tune your recruitment strategy as needed.

For example, if your job postings aren't getting a lot of clicks, candidates never enter the first step of the funnel: awareness. On the other hand, if the number of clicks on your post is high but the number of applications is too low, you're losing them in the attraction and interest stages. This means that you should check your job advertisement to make sure it's attractive (but honest).

10 KPIs to measure in a recruitment metrics dashboard

Now that you know why it's important to measure KPI, and how to get actionable information through the dashboard, let's take a look at the metrics you need to analyze.

1. Recruitment time

Hiring time measures the time between when a candidate applies for a job and when they accept the offer. This is one way to evaluate the effectiveness of the hiring process.

Hiring processes that are faster and more effective tend to attract more qualified candidates, leading to a better result, both for the company and for the candidates.

2. Coverage time

Coverage time is different from hiring time, as it measures how long a vacancy remains open. If your coverage time is consistently above average, there may be a gap in the recruitment process. Long coverage times often indicate problems with the recruitment strategy, such as bottlenecks or inefficient manual processes. These issues cause human resources and recruitment teams to waste valuable time and slow down the hiring process. This results in fewer hires and longer coverage times.

Automation tools are one way to mitigate these problems, as they can reduce the tedious manual tasks that recruitment teams must perform. For example, these technologies can help teams filter candidates more effectively, send selection evaluations to qualified candidates, and use chatbots to schedule interviews more quickly.

3. Measure candidates according to what stage of the funnel they are in

Measuring candidates according to what stage of the funnel they are in tells you which parts of the funnel need to be refined. The typical recruitment funnel consists of seven steps: awareness, attraction, interest, application, pre-filter, interview and hiring.

While a decrease in some available candidates is normal between one stage of the process and another, losing many candidates may indicate a problem. Each company is different and, therefore, it is important to monitor the funnel and constantly measure the desertion of candidates. This will provide you with a reference point for your company and will help your recruitment team identify and address conversion problems.

Do people leave the process before completing the application? This may mean that you need to simplify the steps to apply for your vacancies. Are you getting a lot of views on social networks, but not enough clicks to apply? Candidates may reject companies because of something related to their reputation or branding.

4. Candidate and hiring by source

The candidate source refers to places that attract candidates to apply for vacancies, such as job fairs, social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook, or even recommendations from other employees. Basically, any source that makes the candidate discover your employer brand and apply for employment.

It is recommended to measure the number of candidates per source to determine which are attracting the most (and least) candidates. It's also important to measure hires by source. You might find that a source attracts twice as many candidates, but generates very few hires, making it an inefficient source.

5. Candidate Satisfaction Score

The candidate satisfaction score (CSS), also called the “candidate experience score”, measures how candidates feel about their experience as a whole, from the moment they learn about a vacancy in your company to onboarding.

6. Reasons for rejection by category

When people leave the application or interview process, or when the recruitment team rejects candidates, it's important to ask why.

Candidates may decline offers for a number of reasons. The offer may not have met your salary expectations or the application may have been too difficult to fill out. Starting to identify trends in reasons for rejection will help you understand exactly what you need to change.

On the company side, recruitment managers may reject candidates for several reasons, including that they don't have the necessary skill set, that they had a bad interview, or that there are differences in salary or benefit expectations.

Regardless of the reason or which party rejects which, it's important to follow up on feedback to identify areas of opportunity. For example, if you're receiving a lot of people who don't have the necessary skills for the role, the problem could be that your job description isn't right.

7. Role and location

Pay attention to in which areas the same vacancies reopen more frequently and which teams are often understaffed. If an area or team stands out because it constantly requires hiring more people, it's time to investigate what factors could be leading to a higher turnover rate and these types of needs.

Measuring location allows you to geographically target your recruitment campaigns. Just as you can measure which sources are most effective, you can also measure which geographic areas attract the most candidates and reorganize your recruitment efforts to focus on those areas.

8. Cost per hire

When calculating the cost per hire, be sure to evaluate it by source, area and level. This makes it clear what is going well and where there are inefficiencies. For example, if you detect a recruitment channel that is expensive and attracts few candidates (or lower quality hires), it may be time to abandon it. Or you could find that the costs of Facebook and LinkedIn are increasing, which indicates that it's time to analyze the KPIs of each platform to figure out how to get the most out of your investment.

9. Recruitment conversion rate

The conversion rate measures the number of people who move from one step of the recruitment process to the next. Low conversion rates may indicate that you're investing too much (or too little), and that investment isn't translating into more candidates or hires.

For example, According to a survey prepared in 2021, the percentage of people who went from viewing the vacancy to applying was 3%, while from application to interview it was 20% and from interview to hiring, 11%. Keep in mind that this is an average across all industries, and the details vary from one industry to another.

10. Offer Acceptance Rate

Your offer acceptance rate (TAO) is a very important metric because it helps you identify problems in your talent funnel. What happens if you're doing all the work of interviewing and sending offers but then you get a lot of rejections?

You may need to do some research to understand why candidates reject your offers. Collect the most feedback from the candidates' experience and discover which part doesn't capture the interest of qualified candidates, such as:

• Communication skills
• Messages
• Interview processes

Benefits of using a recruitment metrics dashboard (effective)

An effective recruitment dashboard will help you make informed decisions and perform comparative analysis. Here are some of the best benefits.

Improve retention and reduce turnover

The use of suitable tools to measure hiring information will improve candidate retention and reduce candidate turnover. This happens for the following reasons:

First, it improves the candidate experience. As a result, candidates are more satisfied with your company in general and exist more chances of them staying in the long term.

The second reason is that having a recruitment process that fills vacant positions quickly reduces stress for other employees.

Sometimes, turnover is a consequence of positions remaining vacant for a long time, which stresses employees out and pushes them to look for work elsewhere.

Increase productivity and efficiency

A recruitment dashboard not only points out inefficiencies in the process, but also in the daily work of recruitment managers. You can use the information to understand where tasks that provide little value can be automated. Higher productivity and efficiency will save you time and money, since a refined strategy translates into better performance for the same investment.

Build your recruitment metrics dashboard with Emi

Are you looking for a platform that will help you build an excellent recruitment dashboard with all the metrics you need? Emi helps teams refine their recruitment strategy to continuously attract the best talent. If you want to know more about our platform and see how dashboards can help your company, request a demo here.

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