Evolving Time-to-Hire into New Recruiting Metrics

It’s safe to say that the way recruiters think about data has transformed in recent years. Recruiters have been applying data to operations in new ways, thinking more analytically about how their teams source and hire, evaluating conversion funnels, and developing new metrics that truly prove the value of their efforts.

Historically, the backbone metric of recruiting was time-to-hire. This metric gives executive teams, hiring managers and heads of recruiting the ability to forecast the total time it takes to identify and bring a desired candidate into the company fold. By expediting the amount of time recruiters spend on sourcing and establishing contact with the right candidates, the faster they can move them through the funnel.

Time-to-hire, however, only tells part of the story. It benefits recruiters to break this metric down into pieces, and evaluate the true cost savings of a reduced time-to-hire. These new metrics help recruiters quantify the cost of not filling a role quickly, and arming them with information to be more productive at sourcing, negotiating and closing — and building a case for more substantial recruiting budgets.

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