The Science of the Recruiting Funnel
Candidate conversion rates are the primary KPI for measuring hiring volume and throughput, giving recruiting leaders actionable information to diagnose and fix blockages in the interviewing process. Let’s take a look at 6 key hiring funnel conversion rates, their benchmarks, and the key actions you can take to improve your team’s performance.
Sourcing to Application Rate
Target: 15-30% conversion rate
What it is: How many of the applicants that reply to an inmail or outbound reachout convert to an application.
What it Measures: , InMail/Sequence Strategy, Quality of the Recruiting Pitch Sourcer Effectiveness
How to Improve:
Message Effectiveness: There are two schools of thought on outbound messaging. If you’re not getting the results you want, this is one of the controllable aspects you can change to improve results. We’ll publish a messaging strategy blog post in the future, which will be linked here for future reference.
Broad & Generic: The first— is let the company do the selling for you, leveraging generic messaging to pitch a broad audience and engage with those who respond.
Personalized Messaging: Targeted messaging, personalized to the recipient using research & bespoke messages to drive engagement.
The Recruiting Pitch (Download Unicorn Talent’s Recruiting Pitch here): Candidates take your sourcing call, the interview and the job because you’ve convinced them the opportunity is better for them. A strong recruiting pitch considers both ways you can improve a potential employees situation.
Sourcer Effectiveness: Message volume, research quality, time to & quality of response can all be the difference of a candidate engaging.
Inbound Applicant to Recruiting Screen Ratio
Target: 3-6% conversion rate
What it is: How many applications receive a 30 min recruiter phone screen
What it Measures: Quality of applications
How to Improve:
Job Descriptions (Download our free job description template here): Presentation matters. A tight presentation of the reasons a candidate should apply, increase application volume, as well as the quality of those applications.
Recruiter Training: Recruiters should prioritize resumes with the highest probability of conversion. The recruiters may not be extracting the right information from hiring teams to be able to identify them, or conversely, may have too wide a criteria for interview opportunities. Recruiting training can help standardize your team's approach to understanding what makes a resume a good conversion candidate for each role.
Recruitment Branding Spend: Recruiting leaders can increase recruiting advertising spend on job boards, improve the brand, or run referral programs to help increase applicant volume.
Recruiter Screen to Hiring Manager Screen Ratio
Target: 70-90% conversion rate
What it is: How many of the applicants screened by the recruiter, are presented to the hiring manager for a first round interview
What it Measures: Resume review quality, Referral quality
How to Improve:
Recruiter Training: If recruiters are having a hard time converting their own selected resumes into hiring manager screens, then consider additional training on how to identify high quality resumes or sourced candidates beyond simple keyword matching.
Referral incentive: Employees respond to incentives, and referral quality if very much “get what you pay for” if your culture is in a good spot. If you have good employee NPS scores, retention and promotion rates, but aren’t seeing referral volume in your recruiting funnel this is a good time to test referral incentives to drive volume.
Hiring Manager Screen to Onsite Ratio
Target: 70-80% conversion rate
What it is: How many applicants screened by the hiring manager make it to the onsite interview
What it Measures: Recruiter and Hiring Manager alignment
How to Improve:
Intake Session Training (Download our intake session & Interview Rubrics template here): Before recruiting begins, hiring managers and recruiters should align on the specific competencies needed to make a hire. These competencies should be reviewed in the recruiter screen and qualified in the hiring manager screen. Low conversion rates typically point to a misalignment that can often be solved by pausing the search and re-intaking the role.
Interview Rubric Accuracy: If a recruiter scorecard matches the interview rubric, but the hiring manager does not agree, there’s an opportunity to recalibrate with that manager.
Onsite to Offer Ratio
Target: 30-40% conversion rate
What it is: How many onsite interview results in an offfer
What it Measures: Hiring Manager and Interview Team alignment
How to Improve:
Interview Rubrics(Download our interview rubrics here): Recruiters and hiring managers should partner to define what Yes and No is and codify this in the interview rubric. Leveraging interview rubrics that predefine Yes and No leads to higher conversion rates, reduced bias, and reduces time to make a Yes/No decision. For an example of the interview rubric our team uses, you can download a free copy here.
Offer to Accept Ratio
Target: 70-80% conversion rate
What it is: How many offers result in an employee starting at the company
What it Measures: Closing Ability
How to Improve:
Decline Reason Investigation: Recruiting leaders should categorize and segment offer decline reasons to help identify key trends in why candidates are declining offers. This segmentation allows recruiting leaders to understand trends and differentiate nuanced market feedback, allowing you to understand where you can invest to improve your offering.
Compensation & Leveling Framework (Download our Compensation & Leveling Framework here): Closing the candidate throughout the process should always be top of mind for your recruiters. Transparent compensation and titling should always be addressed on the first call, leaving closing candidates to simply be a confirmation of alignment on the information already agreed upon and never a surprise.
Optimizing your recruiting funnel saves hours of wasted interview time for both recruiters and hiring managers. Unicorn Talent’s talent playbook is designed to optimize funnel conversion rates so that your team can meet hiring demand in the most efficient way. If you’re unsure where to start, use our Recruiting Department Assessment Tool to help diagnose areas where you can make immediate impact