Hiring today is no longer just about filling roles. It's about making smart, data-informed decisions that reduce costs, speed up hiring, and improve workforce quality. For UK-based SMEs competing for skilled, flexible talent, tracking recruitment KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is the clearest way to build an efficient and scalable hiring strategy. But which KPIs truly matter, and how can you use them to transform your hiring process? This guide answers exactly that by providing you with a list of the recruitment KPIs to track for better hiring decisions. Let’s get started.
Recruitment KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are quantifiable metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of your hiring process. They help employers and HR teams track:
How long it takes to hire new employees
How much it costs to recruit them
The quality of hires
Candidate experience and satisfaction
These insights give room for data-driven hiring decisions, continuous improvement, and alignment with broader business goals.
Recruitment KPIs are measurable values that help you evaluate how effective your hiring process is. These indicators allow HR teams and employers to:
Identify inefficiencies in the hiring pipeline
Benchmark performance over time
Improve candidate quality and satisfaction
Justify recruitment investments with data
Align hiring efforts with business goals
Without KPIs, you’re simply guessing. With KPIs, you’re building a strategy. Hence, they are a crucial part of any hiring process.
Before diving into specific metrics, here’s how to set meaningful recruitment KPIs:
Align with Business Goals: Determine what matters most to the business, whether speed, cost, quality, diversity, or retention.
Be Specific: Define clear, measurable targets for the hiring process (e.g., reduce time-to-hire to under 25 days).
Use Reliable Tools: Use a reliable Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that offers built-in tracking and reporting.
Benchmark: Compare your data with industry standards or your past performance.
Review & Iterate: KPIs are not static, hence, you need to adjust them as your hiring needs evolve.
Below, we’ve provided an extensive list of the top recruitment KPIs to track for better hiring, along with real-world examples. To make their application easy, we have also highlighted real-world examples of how you can use each of them to measure performance:
Time to hire is a measurement of the number of days between when a job requisition is opened and when the candidate accepts the offer. Generally, a shorter time-to-hire reduces the risk of losing top candidates and improves team productivity. Delays can signify inefficiencies in sourcing for candidates, interviewing candidates, or decision-making after the last stage of the interview.
Example: A company notices its average time to hire is 40 days, but the industry average is 25. By analysing each stage of the hiring process, they find delays in interview scheduling. To resolve this problem, they can implement an automated scheduler that reduces their time to hire by at least 10 days.
Cost Per Hire measures the total cost involved in recruiting a new employee, including advertising, recruiter time, tools, assessments, and even onboarding. High costs can hurt your hiring budget. Hence, tracking this KPI helps identify which recruitment methods provide the best return on investment for your organisation.
Example: An SME calculates that it spends £5,000 per hire. By shifting from agency hires to AI-driven sourcing tools, it reduces the cost per hire to £3,200, saving £32,400 annually for 18 hires.
This KPI identifies the channel (e.g., job board, referral, LinkedIn) that led to a successful hire. Essentially, it helps optimise your recruitment strategy by focusing on sources that yield the highest-quality hires.
Example: A company finds that referrals result in hires who stay 20% longer and perform better. They decide to increase referral bonuses and reduce spending on underperforming job boards.
Quality of hire is a measurement of a new hire's performance, engagement, and retention after joining. This metric shows how well your hiring standards align with actual job performance. It is commonly tracked through manager surveys or early performance reviews.
Example: A logistics company implements a 90-day probation period. New hires scoring above 80% in assessments given during this period tend to outperform peers after confirmation. They then revise their shortlisting process to include these assessments.
The percentage of job offers that candidates accept is the offer acceptance rate. A low rate could indicate issues with salary, benefits, timing, or candidate experience. It also reveals how attractive your offer is in a competitive job market.
Example: A company sees a 50% acceptance rate. After surveying rejected candidates, it increases salary bands and adds remote work flexibility, boosting the rate to 75%.
Note: A low offer acceptance rate indicates that your offers may be too slow or uncompetitive.
This score is calculated based on candidates’ feedback regarding the recruitment process. A high satisfaction score helps build a positive employer brand and can lead to more referrals and talent attraction. You can track this metric via post-interview surveys or reviews.
Example: Post-interview surveys done by a startup reveal that candidates dislike long application forms. After shortening them, satisfaction scores increase from 3.2 to 4.5 out of 5.
The number of interviews conducted for each successful hire is the interview-to-hire ratio. This KPI helps identify inefficiencies in screening. A very high ratio may mean your sourcing is too broad or your interview process needs improvement. The ideal range for this metric is 3-5 interviews per hire.
Example: A startup realises it interviews 10 candidates to hire one. After refining their screening test, the ratio improves to 5:1, saving time and resources.
The percentage of employees who remain with the company after a specific period (typically 6 or 12 months) is the new hire retention rate. It indicates the quality of your selection and onboarding process. Poor retention increases hiring costs and affects productivity.
Example: A care agency finds that only 60% of hires stay past 6 months. It introduces onboarding buddy systems and sees retention increase to 82%.
Note: A low new hire retention rate signals a problem with selection or onboarding.
This is a compilation of data on candidate and hire diversity by gender, ethnicity, age, disability status, etc. This KPI promotes inclusion, supports employer branding, and helps meet legal and ethical standards.
Example: An employer tracks diversity by department and realises women are underrepresented in operations. They partner with niche job boards to increase visibility and balance representation.
Using recruitment KPIs isn’t just about collecting numbers. Here’s how to make your data actionable:
Set Baselines: Establish initial KPI benchmarks using your existing data.
Track Over Time: Monitor changes monthly or quarterly to spot patterns and trends.
Use Dashboards: It’s always ideal to use visual dashboards to display the relevant metrics. Visual dashboards make KPI insights easier to digest and act on.
Identify Bottlenecks: Identify the bottlenecks in your current strategy. For example, a long time-to-hire may reveal issues in sourcing or offer approvals.
Refine Strategy: Use KPI insights to improve job ads, screening methods, or interview formats.
Report Outcomes: Share KPI trends with leadership to demonstrate recruitment value and improvements.
Always compare your KPI data against historical benchmarks and industry standards for deeper insight.
KPIs don't just report performance, they actively help you improve it. Here are some benefits of tracking KPIs during your recruitment process:
1. Data-Driven Decisions
Recruitment KPIs provide clear, objective data so you're not hiring based on gut feeling. You know which strategies work and which don’t.
2. Greater Hiring Efficiency
By identifying where delays or roadblocks occur (e.g., interview scheduling or offer approvals), you can streamline the entire process. This makes your hiring process more efficient.
3. Better Quality of Hires
Tracking post-hire performance allows you to refine your selection process and focus on what predicts long-term success.
4. Optimised Budget Use
Cost-per-hire and source-of-hire metrics help allocate resources where they produce the most ROI. This leads to a more optimised hiring budget.
5. Stronger Employer Branding
Monitoring candidate experience and satisfaction helps you build a reputation that attracts top talent over time
Here are some tools you can use to track recruitment KPIs effectively:
1. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): Platforms like Greenhouse, Workable, and Lever help track time to hire, source of hire, and interview ratios automatically.
2. HR Dashboards: You can use Looker Studio or Power BI to create visuals from raw data. This is perfect for presenting KPI insights to leadership.
3. Candidate Survey Tools: Use platforms like Typeform or SurveyMonkey to measure candidate satisfaction and gather process feedback.
4. Internal Scorecards: You can track post-hire performance by having hiring managers complete performance scorecards within the first 90 days.
Hiring doesn’t end at contract signing. Here are key metrics to track after onboarding:
1. New Hire Turnover Rate
How many hires leave within the first 3 to 6 months? A high rate indicates onboarding or job expectation mismatches.
2. Time to Productivity
Measure how long it takes a new hire to meet key performance goals. This can give you insights into training or onboarding issues.
3. Performance Ratings
Track average performance review scores for new hires over their first 6–12 months.
4. Employee Engagement Scores
Conduct surveys at 30, 60, and 90-day intervals to assess job satisfaction, alignment with company culture, and support.
5. Promotion or Internal Mobility Rate
A strong internal promotion rate shows you’re hiring people with long-term growth potential.
Highlighted below are some methods you can use to increase recruitment effectiveness:
1. Use Smart Automation
Use tools that automate sourcing, shortlisting, and scheduling. They will help save time and improve precision.
2. Build Clearer Job Descriptions
Well-written roles with must-haves vs. nice-to-haves reduce mismatches and improve applicant quality.
3. Shorten the Hiring Journey
Each additional interview can lead to a drop-off. Hence, you should use screening tools to reduce unnecessary rounds.
4. Train Hiring Managers
Better interviews lead to better hires. Offer interview training and evaluation guides.
5. Track and Iterate
Don’t just set KPIs, use them. Monthly reviews of your metrics will show what’s improving and what’s not.
Lastly, partner with a tech-driven recruitment platform like MyJobMag UK! We combine human vetting with smart automation to ensure your recruitment process is fast, seamless, and effective.
Recruitment KPIs are more than just numbers. They are powerful indicators of how your talent acquisition strategy is performing. By tracking the right metrics and continuously improving based on the insights they provide, organisations can make smarter hiring decisions, reduce costs, and build stronger, more resilient teams. Whether you’re just starting to formalise your hiring metrics or refining a mature process, leveraging the key recruitment KPIs listed above can drive meaningful impact across your workforce and business outcomes.
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