8 Recruitment KPIs Every Head of HR Should Track

Time to fill measures the days from the moment a requisition is approved to the moment a candidate accepts the offer. Formula: offer acceptance date minus requisition approval date, averaged across roles in the same family.

It is the KPI your managers feel most, because it equals the time a seat stays empty. Long time to fill usually traces back to a vague brief, slow approvals, too few sourcing channels or interview loops that wait on one busy person. A clear job description shortens it more than almost anything else, which is why we wrote a separate guide on how to write a job description.

Pitfall: do not start the clock when the advert goes live. Delays between approval and posting are part of the problem you want to see.

Time to hire is narrower. It counts the days from when a candidate first enters your pipeline, by applying or being sourced, to when they accept. Formula: acceptance date minus the date the candidate entered the pipeline.

Where time to fill shows the whole process, time to hire shows candidate experience. If good candidates sit for weeks between stages, competitors hire them first. Look for the stage with the longest wait, often scheduling interviews or collecting feedback, and set a simple internal service level for it.

For international hiring, separate the steps you control from authority processing. Work permits and visas are decided by the competent authorities, so measure sourcing, screening and file preparation on their own and track permit time as a separate line rather than letting it distort your recruiting numbers.

Conversion rate shows what share of candidates move from one stage to the next: applied to screened, screened to interviewed, interviewed to offered, offered to accepted. Formula: candidates entering the next stage divided by candidates in the current stage, times 100.

This is the most diagnostic KPI on the list. A very low screened-to-interview rate suggests the advert attracts the wrong people. A low interview-to-offer rate can mean managers and HR disagree about what good looks like. Fix the stage with the sharpest drop first.

Keep the stages identical across roles so you can compare like with like. ISHC's seven-step process uses the same named stages for every placement for exactly this reason.

Source of hire records where each successful hire came from: referrals, job boards, your careers page, direct sourcing, an agency or an overseas partner. Formula: hires from a source divided by total hires, times 100.

On its own it shows volume. Paired with quality of hire and early attrition, it shows value: a channel that produces many hires who leave in two months is more expensive than it looks. Use it to decide where next quarter's sourcing budget and recruiter time go.

Pitfall: record the source consistently at the moment a candidate enters the pipeline. Asking new starters months later produces guesses.

Offer acceptance rate is the share of formal offers that candidates accept. Formula: offers accepted divided by offers made, times 100.

A falling rate is an early warning. Common causes are pay out of line with the market, slow processes that let rival offers land first, unclear contracts or a weak picture of the role and team. Ask every candidate who declines for the main reason and log it in a few fixed categories so patterns show up.

For overseas hires, a declined offer is often about clarity rather than money. Workers want to see the contract, accommodation terms and what support exists after arrival before they commit.

Cost per hire adds up what you spend to fill roles and divides it by the number of hires in the period. Formula: external costs (advertising, agency fees, assessments, travel, relocation) plus internal costs (recruiter and manager time, tools) divided by hires.

Use it to compare channels and role families, not to push the number as low as possible. The cheapest hire who leaves in a month costs more than a well-matched one. Our guide on international recruitment agency cost explains which factors drive the external side when you hire across borders.

Pitfall: be consistent about what you include. If agency fees count one quarter and internal time is added the next, the trend means nothing.

Quality of hire asks whether the people you recruit perform. There is no single formula, so pick two or three signals you already collect: hiring manager rating at 90 days, performance review scores at six or twelve months, and whether the person passed probation. Average them into one score per hire.

It is the KPI that connects recruitment to business results, and the one most companies skip because it takes effort. Start simple. A short, structured manager survey at day 90 with the same four questions for every hire is enough to show which roles, sources and interviewers produce strong people.

Treat it as feedback for the brief and the interview, not a verdict on the new starter.

Early attrition tracks how many new hires leave within a set window, commonly the first 90 days or first year. Formula: new hires who left within the window divided by total new hires in the period, times 100. New-hire retention is the mirror image.

High early attrition usually means the role was oversold, the brief was wrong or onboarding failed. It is expensive because you pay for the hire twice. A structured first 90 days, covered in our employee onboarding checklist, is one of the most reliable fixes.

For international workers, early exits often trace back to accommodation, pay accuracy or isolation in the first month. Support after arrival protects both the person and your numbers.