10 Remote Hiring Metrics: Measuring Success and ROI

It’s never been easier to keep an eye on your company’s remote hiring metrics.

The best applicant tracking systems (ATS) for remote companies collect all the data and analytics you need. They make it a breeze to benchmark and measure your team’s success and ROI.

Leveraging these real-time stats allows your crew to streamline your recruiting processes, optimize hiring for diversity, and scale your company with top talent faster. It can even reduce sourcing and recruiting costs while skyrocketing employee retention.

We’re exploring the most important metrics to focus on today. And we’ll start our journey by answering:

Are Recruiting Metrics and Hiring Metrics the Same?

While some may use recruiting metrics and hiring metrics interchangeably, they’re actually two distinct yet related categories of measurements that focus on different stages of your remote hiring strategy.

Recruiting metrics primarily focus on the pre-hiring stages; hiring metrics concentrate on post-hiring data. But these two sets should be integrated and aligned.

The data you collect from your recruiting metrics should feed into your hiring metrics and vice versa. That’s how you score a comprehensive overview of your entire talent acquisition process.

Regularly reviewing and analyzing these metrics can help your team:

Identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in your process
Drive continuous improvement
Align organizational growth with business goals
Generate real-time insights and predict future talent demands
Make more informed, data-driven decisions

10 Recruiting Metrics You Should Be Leveraging

Our guide on Recruiting Metrics You Should Know (+ How To Leverage Them) covers how to measure and utilize:

Time to fill (TTF)
Time to hire (TTH)
Source of hire (SOH)
Cost per hire (CPH)
Application completion rate
Qualified candidate per hire
Diversity in hiring
Offer acceptance rate
First-year attrition rate

Check out that comprehensive guide for a full rundown of those key recruiting metrics.

We’d also like to add one more metric that’s becoming increasingly important for hiring teams to the mix:

10 Candidate Experience / Candidate Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

The candidate experience metric measures how applicants feel about your organization’s recruiting and hiring process. It also conveys how likely they are to recommend applying to your company.

Your goal is to give every candidate a stellar experience. Doing so helps your company:

Keep more qualified professionals in your candidate pipeline. Even if applicants don’t receive job offers this time, a positive experience all but guarantees they’ll apply for another role later.
Boost candidate referrals and positive online reviews. Applicants with high NPS leave positive reviews on career sites and refer others to apply for roles at your organization.
Start the virtual onboarding process on the right foot. Positive candidate experiences pave the way for excited, eager candidates to quickly get up to speed and contribute to your team’s success.

Stats tell us that 50% of job seekers have declined a job offer due to a poor candidate experience [*]. And nearly 80% of candidates believe a company’s candidate experience indicates how it values its people [*].

To measure candidate experience scores: Send out surveys or assessments to applicants after each stage of the hiring process. Tailor questions to that particular stage (i.e., the job listing, application process, interview stage, etc.).

You’ll score invaluable candidate feedback about how your team meets the expectations of qualified applicants and where it can improve.

10 Remote Hiring Metrics To Measure Success & ROI

Remote hiring metrics primarily focus on interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and promoting. To gauge the effectiveness of your remote hiring practices, keep your eye on:

1. Percentage of Open Positions or Vacancy Rate

Over 70% of candidates research companies before applying [*]. So will they find a plethora of open roles at your organization or just a handful of new opportunities?

A higher number of vacancies may give off red-flag vibes. It can imply high turnover rates due to poor work-life balance, inept management, lackluster company culture, etc.

Startups often have tons of open positions when building remote teams. But if your company is going through a mass hiring event due to another reason, explaining why may encourage candidates to apply rather than run.

How to measure vacancy rate: Take the number of open jobs divided by the total number of positions, then multiply that number by 100. A vacancy rate below 10% is considered healthy; less than 5% is deemed excellent.

2. Applicants Per Hire or Applicants Per Job Opening

It’s pretty routine for remote jobs on We Work Remotely to amass thousands of applicants. Remote jobs typically cast a wide geographical net — so with little to no restrictions on hiring overseas employees, you may receive applicants from all over the globe.

But more isn’t always better.

While a high number of applicants indicates your job is desirable, it can also overwhelm your hiring team. They’ll need to learn how to track job applications effectively and use screening assessments to ensure the cream of the crop rises to the top.

What if you hear nothing but crickets after posting your job ad? Your team may need to:

Post jobs on channels where your target candidates are more likely to see them
Learn how to write remote job listings that sell
Follow these tips to get applicants to apply for a job

How to measure applicants per hire: Tally up the number of applicants you receive per sourcing channel. Upgrade: perform an ROI analysis to determine which source of hire (SOH) returns the most qualified applicants. Learn more about this process here.

3. Interview-To-Hire

Your interview-to-hire rate showcases how many interviewed candidates become new hires.

A high rate indicates an efficient, successful remote interview process. A lower rate may suggest room for improvement in candidate selection or alignment between the interview process and the job requirements.

How to measure interview-to-hire: Compare the total number of interviews conducted with your team’s total number of hires. You can measure this per role, department, quarter, year, etc. Experts say a solid interview-to-hire ratio is 3:1.

4. Adverse Impact

Your company is likely hiring for diversity and monitoring its diversity metrics. The adverse impact metric adds another layer to your inclusive hiring practices.

It assesses whether there are any disproportionate differences in hiring outcomes, such as selection rates, performance appraisals, promotions, etc., between groups.

High adverse impact rates may indicate bias in the hiring process or discriminatory practices. By identifying potential disparities, you can then investigate the fairness and equity of your hiring and promotion strategies.

How to measure adverse impact: Use the “80% Rule.”

Start by tallying the selection rates of different demographic groups (such as by gender, race, or ethnicity). If your selection rate for any group is less than 80% of the rate for the group with the highest selection rate, it may indicate adverse impact and potential discrimination.

5. Employee Referral Rate

Don’t have an employee referral program?

Big mistake.

A high referral rate shows off your positive employee experience and strong remote company culture. It means your employees are super jazzed to refer others to join your organization.

Employee referral statistics reveal that [*]:

Referred hires stay 70% longer than other employees
Referral employees are 25% more profitable
88% of employers rate employee referrals as the best ROI for sourcing talent
The cost-per-hire of employee referrals is $1,000 less on average than other hiring sources

How to measure employee referrals: Track the percentage of new hires that come through employee referrals in your ATS. Boost your employee referral incentives to encourage more to apply.

6. Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement

A happy, engaged workforce is the hallmark of any high-performing hiring and HR team. It leads to greater productivity, revenue, and retention rates.

On the other hand, unengaged employees are less motivated, tank team morale, and actively look for opportunities elsewhere, adding to your turnover rates.

One of the biggest drivers of employee engagement is job satisfaction, which actually starts with your recruiting and job descriptions.

Employee job satisfaction measures how new hires feel in their roles and with their work duties.

Low job satisfaction scores may signal that your remote job listings don’t convey the true nature or scope of your roles. This could help explain high first-year attrition rates.

High job satisfaction rates mean your job descriptions accurately represent the role and meet your new hires’ expectations.

How to measure job satisfaction: Snag employee feedback via surveys, assessments, and regular one-to-one meetings. Ask about how employees feel about their responsibilities, coworker relationships, manager support, connection to company culture, and more.

7. Time-To-Productivity or Cost of Optimum Productivity

The time-to-productivity metric measures how long it takes for a new hire to be a contributing member of your team.

Stats show it can take three to eight months for a new hire to become fully productive at work and for a company to break even on its new hire investment [*].

How quickly candidates can work independently has to do with several factors, such as:

How qualified they were for the role
Their prior career experience
The quality of their onboarding and training

How to measure time-to-productivity: Have your managers track metrics such as tasks completed, projects delivered, or key performance indicators (KPIs) specific to your new hires’ role. Make sure they include milestone dates.

You can then assess the effectiveness of your training programs and look for ways to speed up time-to-competence.

8. Time To Promotion

Time to promotion reflects the effectiveness of your company’s remote talent development and succession planning strategies.

Most professionals strive for a promotion between one and three years after they’re hired. But according to one survey, Gen Z workers expect their first promotion within one year on the job [*].

How to measure time to promotion: Tally up your internal promotions in a given period. Look at the start date of these newly promoted employees to see how long it took them to climb the career ladder.

Then, check employee development metrics like participation in virtual training and career growth opportunities. See where you can improve these rates to help remote employees achieve career progression.

9. Manager Retention Rate

Thanks to increasing labor shortages, it’s never been more vital for companies to retain remote talent. Your retention rate assesses the percentage of hires who remain with your company.

You’re likely tracking your company’s overall retention rate. But is your team focusing on manager retention rates?

Managers contribute to long-term organizational success, employee engagement, and overall workforce stability. High manager retention rates indicate a healthy work environment and a commitment to support career growth.

How to measure manager retention: Take the number of managers your organization employs at the end of a specific period and divide it by the number of managers at the start of the period. Then multiply this by 100.

10. Hiring Manager Satisfaction

Hiring manager satisfaction measures how hiring managers feel about their organization’s overall hiring process, quality of candidates, and support from the HR team.

Prioritizing hiring manager satisfaction empowers organizations to enhance recruitment outcomes, streamline processes, and improve overall talent retention.

How to measure hiring manager satisfaction: Collect feedback from hiring managers through surveys and interviews about the recruitment process, sourcing channels, hiring and promotion strategies, ATS partners, budgets, and overall experience working with the HR or talent acquisition team.

All Your Remote Hiring Metrics Start Here 🚀

Your company’s recruiting and hiring metrics may vary according to your industry, goals, and challenges.

But regularly reviewing and analyzing the ones we shared today will provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of your talent acquisition and employee development strategies.

You’ll identify areas to improve, make smarter data-driven decisions, and achieve steadfast growth. You may even discover that one cost-effective sourcing channel delivers the best remote candidates than all the others combined (hint: it’s We Work Remotely!).

🙌 Check out the free WWR guide to hiring remote or download our free remote job posting template to attract top remote talent to your team now!

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