The most common question that recruiting managers raise during business reviews is around benchmark hiring data. Are their numbers good? Are they doing better than their competitors?
Similarly, managers seek to understand their data and benchmarks when they are trying to make a business case for new technology. For example, my team has received multiple requests from employers to help them make a case to add a recruitment chatbot to their tech stack. One the proof points was to verify an employers’ current visitor-to-applicant ratio and applicant-to-interview ratio to determine if a chatbot could increase those conversions. Let’s review some high-level benchmarks and how to meet or exceed them.
Tweet: #Recruitment Metrics That You MUST Measure https://ctt.ec/do9K4+ via @Recruitics
It’s important to use benchmarks from your industry or at least similarly sized companies to increase validity (trust factor). For three years, Jobvite has been compiling comprehensive recruiting benchmarks. This year’s data is based on 55 million Jobvite job seekers and 17 million job applications. Jobvite measured conversion rates for career site visitor to application, application to interview, interview to offer, and offer to hire. They also tracked the sources of applications and hires. Did you know that job board sources accounted for 51% of applications but only 20% of the hires?
Okay, so you have a big mass of data — how do you make sense of it all? Jobvite organized the benchmarks into a funnel, much like consumer marketing. Start with your career website traffic. How many unique visitors do you receive last month? Next, pull information from your ATS. How many applications did you receive during the timeframe. What channels or sources did those applications come from? How many interviews were conducted last month? How many offers were extended and finally, how many hires were made. These are the required data points to develop a recruiting hiring funnel and assess your conversion rates versus the benchmarks.
VISITORS TO APPLICATIONS
Being a recruitment advertising agency, we spend a majority of the time focused on the top of the funnel. How much traffic is being driven to the career site? What percentage of the visitors are completing applications? The visitors-to-application benchmark increased to 12% in 2017. If your visitor-to-application conversion rate is less than 12%, focus on making your application easier to complete and improve your employer brand.
APPLICATIONS TO INTERVIEWS
The next and more important benchmark to us: how many of the completed applications were qualified and converted to an interview. In 2017, the Jobvite benchmark percentage of applicants who moved forward to the interview stage decreased to 12%. If your application to interview rate is less than 12%, that means you need more applications to get one interview. As mentioned, many employers are turning to A.I. to automate the task of reviewing, assessing and scheduling applicants.
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Data-driven decisions are the only ones you should be making. Data doesn’t have to be intimidating; let us help!
