From assessing time-to-hire, the cost to recruit a candidate, to evaluating the overall interview experience, there are several ways hiring managers can measure the effectiveness of their recruitment strategies. These metrics are essential, not only to hire top talent but also to save time and resources.

At Talvin AI, we understand firsthand how critical effective recruitment strategies are. Our AI Agent, Sally, was created to solve the problem of lengthy and resource-heavy recruitment strategies that wasted businesses’ time. Today, Sally cuts interview times by nearly 68%, screening and evaluating candidates at scale.

We often hear from businesses that their recruitment process isn’t as effective as it could be, so we put together key metrics every company could track and measure in this blog. In addition to this, we included additional pieces of high-value information that can help with your recruitment process. Keep reading.

 

How to Measure Recruitment Effectiveness in 2025

Here are our top 10 ways to measure your recruitment efforts:

 

• Time to Hire 

Time to hire is the number of days it takes to fill a job opening from the date the position was opened to when the offer is accepted. According to The Josh Bersin Company, the average time to hire was 44 days in 2023, which is quite lengthy.

The shorter the time to hire, the more effective the recruitment process – optimising for this metric helps teams to secure qualified talent before they accept offers from elsewhere. No surprise, then, that 68% of LinkedIn recruiters cited the time to hire as their most important performance metric, according to a report by The Global Hiring Trends.

How can your company reduce the time to hire? AI tools like Talvin can be a game-changer. Our AI voice agent, Sally, conducts virtual interviews, screens candidates, and provides a rating out of a 100 on their performance.

A case study by Code94 Labs found that with us, they were able to comb through an incredible 488 candidates in a week, reducing their hiring time by 68%.

 

• Cost Per Hire

Cost per hire represents the total amount spent to recruit a new employee. This includes internal time, technology costs, job ads, and any external recruitment agencies that were used.

This includes both internal and external costs:

• Internal costs might include recruiter time, salaries of hiring managers involved in the process, and internal tools like your ATS.
• External costs can include job board advertising, third-party platforms, recruitment agency fees, and external assessment tools.

Unlike Time to Hire, which is easier to track, calculating Cost Per Hire requires more structure and effort—especially in gathering accurate data across departments.

These costs can add up quickly. A simple formula to calculate cost per hire is:

(Total Internal Costs + Total External Costs) / Total Number of Hires

For example, if your internal costs are $50,000, external costs are $30,000, and you hire 20 candidates, your cost per hire would be $4,000.

Reducing this number is key. Talvin helps lower your cost per hire by significantly cutting time to hire and eliminating the need for expensive recruitment software or prolonged search processes.

The ultimate goal would be to reduce this number as much as possible. Luckily with Talvin, our reduction in the Time to Hire drastically cuts down costs for cost per hire for companies, as they don’t have to worry about expensive software, or spending weeks to find the right candidate.

 

• Quality of Hire

Quality of hire measures how well a new employee performs and contributes to your business. Hiring the wrong fit can result in additional training, lost productivity, and costly replacements.

Unlike time-based metrics, quality of hire is more subjective and requires both qualitative and quantitative inputs to measure effectively. Interviews alone often fail to predict on-the-job performance. That’s why it’s important to evaluate a candidate’s real-world capabilities alongside traditional methods.

An easy way to measure quality of hire is by sending standardised surveys to managers during the new hire’s first 90 days, asking about their satisfaction with the employee.

At Talvin AI, we prioritise quality hires. Our AI agent uses predefined role criteria to assess candidates, then provides intelligent insights based on how candidates answered questions and interacted with the system. Each candidate is rated out of 100 to help you quickly identify top performers (you also gain access to detailed reports and insights for analysis).

We’re also developing a scenario-based assessment tool called Job Tryout, designed to simulate real-world situations before a candidate is hired. For example, in a hospitality setting, a hotel receptionist candidate may be asked to handle an angry guest scenario. This allows hiring teams to observe how well a candidate responds to pressure, communicates, and solves problems—providing a deeper understanding of their job-readiness.

 

• Candidate Experience

Candidate experience is a crucial part of recruitment effectiveness. Even if you have a streamlined process, a poor experience may turn strong candidates away. In fact, 66% of candidates say a positive hiring experience influences their decision to accept a job offer.

To improve candidate experience – our biggest tips would be to: maintain regular, transparent communication, and avoid overly long and complex application or interview processes.

Talvin helps enhance candidate experience by shortening interview times and ensuring smooth, structured evaluations, making candidates feel respected and engaged

 

• Sourcing Channel Performance

One of the most important metrics is sourcing channel performance. This measures how effective each recruitment source, such as job boards, employee referrals, social media platforms, and recruitment agencies is at delivering not just applicants, but qualified, long-term hires.

By tracking how many candidates, interviews, and successful hires each source generates, and how those hires perform over time, you can determine which channels are providing the most value.

Advanced applicant tracking systems (ATS) can help analyse this data, allowing you to optimise your sourcing efforts and focus on channels that consistently produce quality hires.

 

• Retention Rate

Another critical measure is worker retention rate: it tracks how many new hires remain with the company after a specific time period, typically 90 days, six months, or one year.  According to a statistic from BambooHR, nearly 31% of new hires leave within the first six months.

While retention is influenced by multiple factors beyond hiring, it still reflects how well your recruitment process is matching the right people to the right roles and culture. A high retention rate usually indicates that your hiring process is accurately matching candidates to the role and the company culture. On the other hand, low retention may suggest poor fit, misaligned expectations, or inadequate onboarding.

To calculate retention rate, divide the number of new hires still employed after the chosen time period by the total number of hires in that timeframe, and multiply by 100.

Example: If 45 out of 60 new hires are still employed after 6 months, your retention rate is 75%.

Analysing retention data by team or department can help pinpoint problem areas and guide improvements in recruitment and onboarding practices.

While often compared to churn rate, retention focuses on who stays—offering a more constructive lens to evaluate hiring effectiveness.

 

• Offer Acceptance Rate

Offer acceptance rate is another important metric for assessing recruitment effectiveness. It tells you how attractive your offers are for top candidates by measuring the percentage of extended offers that are accepted.

A high acceptance rate signals that your compensation, benefits, and employer brand align well with candidate expectations. While a low rate, on the other hand, suggest issues such as uncompetitive packages, slow decision-making, or poor candidate experience.

This metric can be calculated by dividing the number of accepted offers by the total number of offers made, then multiplying by 100.

For example, if your company made 40 job offers in the last quarter, and out of them, 30 candidates accepted, this means that your offer acceptance rate would be 75%.

Here’s a pro-tip:

Always follow up with candidates who decline. This will provide valuable insights to improve your approach, boosting the chances of a higher acceptance rate in the future.

 

• Assessment Completion Rate

Assessment completion rate measures how many candidates start and complete key stages of your hiring process—such as pre-interview assessments, skill tests, or structured interviews. It’s a practical indicator of how engaging, accessible, and well-structured your evaluation process is.

A low completion rate often suggests that your assessment is too long, confusing, or poorly designed—leading candidates to drop off before finishing. This could be due to unclear instructions, technical issues, or simply a lack of perceived value.

This metric can be calculated by dividing the number of completed assessments by the number of assessments started, then multiplying by 100.

For example, if 500 candidates receive an assessment and only 350 complete it, your assessment completion rate would be 70%.

Tracking this metric helps you identify friction points and improve your hiring experience, ensuring more qualified candidates make it through to the next stage.

 

• Candidate Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Candidate Net Promoter Score (NPS) is how likely candidates are to recommend your company to others based on their recruitment experience. It’s a strong indicator of your employer brand and the quality of your candidate experience.

How do you go about collecting how candidates feel? Easy – survey them and ask how likely they are to recommend your company on a scale of 1 to 10.

 

• Diversity Metrics

Tracking the diversity of your candidate pool is a useful indicator of how inclusive and far-reaching your recruitment process is. But diversity goes beyond just race, culture, or religion—it also includes diversity of thought, personality, experience, and problem-solving styles.

An effective recruitment strategy should bring in candidates from a range of backgrounds, not only in demographics but also in perspectives and approaches to work. This broader definition of diversity contributes to stronger, more adaptable teams and more balanced decision-making.

While this type of diversity is harder to quantify compared to traditional metrics, it can still be assessed through hiring data, team composition audits, and qualitative observation over time.

Ultimately, tracking diversity helps ensure your recruitment channels are inclusive and your screening methods are fair—building a workforce that is both varied and high-performing.

 

Why Measure Recruitment Effectiveness? 

Measuring recruitment effectiveness is crucial for understanding how well your hiring process is working – it uncovers areas for improvement and helps you to attract top talent.  By tracking key metrics like cost per hire, time to hire, and quality of hire, businesses can reduce hiring costs while improving the overall candidate experience. 

 

How Do You Set Effective Recruitment KPIs? 

Our biggest suggestion would be to understand your business’ goals. For example, if one of your company’s goals is to reduce costs, monitoring metrics such as cost per hire would be important. Likewise, if your business aims to onboard talent faster, you need to focus on a reduced time to hire.

Before implementation, always establish baseline values to serve as a benchmark for improvement.

 

FAQ

What is an indicator that recruiting is effective?

A sign of effective recruitment is high-quality hires who perform well and stay long-term in the company. Key indicators of this include a high offer acceptance rate, strong new hire retention, and positive feedback from hiring managers.

What is the most underutilised metric in recruiting?

Candidate experience is often overlooked but can be incredibly valuable – it not only helps to increase the chances of candidates accepting the offer, but poor experiences can damage your employer brand.

 

Are You Ready For the Future of Hiring?

Talvin AI is at the forefront of recruiting – not only does it make recruiting more efficient, faster, and cost-free, it also empowers you to screen through hundreds more candidates to find the right fit, without the usual drain. 

What truly sets Talvin AI apart from other AI tools? Sally – our virtual voice agent. She doesn’t just ask questions, she analyses and listens, evaluating candidates against your pre-set criteria using smart conversational AI. She then generates a detailed report, and assigns candidates tailored ratings. 

And it gets even better – Sally can handle phone reference checks herself, saving you even more time and energy. 

Ready to see us in action? Get in touch with us for a FREE demo!