Recruitment & Hiring Metrics Glossary
Recruitment metrics are the numbers that tell you whether hiring is actually working — how fast roles are filled, what each hire costs, how good the hires turn out to be, and where candidates fall out of the funnel. This topic gathers the hiring metrics and analytics terms that senior talent teams use to measure and improve recruitment, each defined on its own page.
The value of these metrics is that they turn a vague sense of “hiring is hard right now” into something specific and fixable. A rising time-to-fill, a falling offer-acceptance rate, or a weak yield ratio each points to a different problem — sourcing, process, or competitiveness — and the terms here draw those distinctions precisely. Read together, they describe a single connected funnel from first contact to a productive hire, which is why quality of hire and time-to-productivity matter as much as the speed and cost measures that get quoted more often.
For GCCs and scale-up hiring in particular, where many roles are filled in parallel against tight timelines, disciplined measurement is what keeps volume from eroding quality. The definitions below give hiring managers, recruiters, and leaders a shared, unambiguous vocabulary for the metrics they report on.
19 terms in this topic · see all 277 in the A–Z glossary →
Terms 19
Attrition Attrition is the rate at which employees leave an organisation over a period, expressed as departures divided by average headcount. It covers both voluntary exits, such as resignations, and involuntary ones, and is a leading indicator of talent-market heat and retention risk in GCCs. Read Backfill A backfill is a hire made to replace an employee who has left or moved internally, as distinct from a newly created role that adds to overall headcount. Backfilling keeps headcount level by filling an existing seat, whereas a net-new hire grows the workforce. Read Bench Strength Bench strength is the depth of ready-now and ready-soon talent an organisation can promote or redeploy into its key roles. A deep bench means critical positions can be filled quickly from within; a thin bench is a succession and continuity risk. Read Candidate Net Promoter Score cNPS Candidate Net Promoter Score (cNPS) is a metric that measures how likely candidates are to recommend an employer’s hiring process to others, calculated from a single survey question after they experience it. It turns candidate experience into a trackable number for both hired and rejected applicants. Read Cost-per-Hire Cost-per-hire is the total recruiting spend over a period divided by the number of hires made in that period. It captures both internal costs — recruiter time, tools, referral payouts — and external costs such as agency fees and advertising, and is a core measure of recruiting efficiency. Read Drop-off & Ghosting Drop-off is when candidates leave the hiring process before it concludes; ghosting is when they go silent without any notice, stopping replies to messages or failing to appear. Both rise in candidate-short markets where talent has multiple options and little cost to walking away. Read Headcount Headcount is the number of people an organisation or team employs, usually counted as individuals rather than as full-time-equivalents. In GCCs it is the primary measure of scale and a board-level growth target, since a centre’s maturity is often described by the size of its workforce. Read Joining Ratio The joining ratio is the share of candidates who accept an offer and actually join, calculated as joiners divided by accepted offers. It captures the leakage between acceptance and start date — a gap that widens in high-demand markets where notice periods and counteroffers pull candidates away after they say yes. Read Offer Acceptance Rate Offer acceptance rate is the share of formal offers that candidates accept, calculated as offers accepted divided by offers extended. A low rate points to misaligned compensation, a slow or poor process, or a weak employer proposition against competing offers. Read Quality of Hire Quality of hire is a measure of the value a new employee adds to the organisation, assessed through their performance, retention, and speed to full productivity. It is widely regarded as the most important hiring metric and the hardest to measure well, because true value only becomes visible over time. Read Recruitment Funnel The recruitment funnel is the staged path candidates travel from sourced to hired — typically sourced, applied, screened, interviewed, offered, and joined — with conversion and drop-off measured at each step. Mapping it shows exactly where candidates are lost and where a process needs to improve. Read Retention Retention is the share of employees an organisation keeps over a period — the inverse of attrition. It is a core measure of workforce stability and, because a hire who stays and performs is by definition a good one, one of the truest tests of whether a hiring decision was right. Read Retention Window The retention window is the early period of employment — commonly the first ninety days — when a new hire is most likely to leave, making it the highest-risk stage for early attrition. How well an organisation onboards and supports a joiner in this window strongly shapes whether they stay. Read Selection Ratio Selection ratio is the proportion of candidates hired out of the total number who applied or were assessed for a role, expressed as hires divided by applicants. A low ratio means the organisation is highly selective; a high ratio means most candidates are being hired. Read Source of Hire Source of hire identifies which channel produced a hire — employee referral, search firm, job board, direct application, or internal move — so that recruiting investment can flow to where quality talent actually comes from. It is a core input into channel strategy and cost-per-hire analysis. Read Time-to-Fill Time-to-fill is the number of days from a role opening to an offer being accepted. It measures overall hiring speed and the health of the pipeline feeding a role, capturing everything from approval to acceptance. Read Time-to-Hire Time-to-hire is the number of days from the moment a candidate enters the hiring process — usually first contact or application — to the moment they accept an offer. It measures how efficiently a team moves a live candidate through screening, interviews, and closing, and is narrower than time-to-fill. Read Time-to-Productivity Time-to-productivity is the length of time a new hire takes to become fully effective in their role, reaching the performance level expected of an established employee. It measures how quickly onboarding and ramp-up convert a hire into a contributing team member. Read Yield Ratio A yield ratio is a recruitment metric that measures the percentage of candidates who move from one stage of the hiring process to the next. It shows how many people pass from application to screen, screen to interview, interview to offer, and offer to hire, exposing where a funnel is strong and where it leaks. ReadFrequently asked questions
What are the most important recruitment metrics?
The core set is time-to-fill and time-to-hire (speed), cost-per-hire (efficiency), quality of hire and time-to-productivity (outcome), and offer-acceptance and yield ratios (competitiveness and funnel health). Together they show whether hiring is fast, affordable, and producing good hires.
What is the difference between time-to-fill and time-to-hire?
Time-to-fill measures from when a role opens to when an offer is accepted, reflecting overall hiring speed. Time-to-hire measures from when a candidate enters the process to their offer, reflecting how quickly you move a given candidate. One is a process metric, the other a candidate-experience metric.
What is a good quality-of-hire score?
Quality of hire measures how well a hire performs and stays, often combining performance ratings, ramp-to-productivity, and retention at 6–12 months. There is no universal number — it is best tracked as a trend against your own baseline rather than an absolute target.
Why do recruitment metrics matter for GCCs?
GCCs hire at volume against tight timelines, so metrics turn a vague sense of difficulty into specific, fixable signals: a falling offer-acceptance rate points to competitiveness, a weak yield ratio to sourcing, and a long time-to-fill to process. Measurement is what keeps volume from eroding quality.