10 Recruitment KPIs Every Agency Should Track
In this guide, we'll cover the KPIs that matter most for recruitment agencies, how to calculate them, and what they actually tell you about your business.
Maxime De Roeck
Product Lead
You can't improve what you don't measure. It's a cliché because it's true, and nowhere is it more relevant than in recruitment.
Many agencies operate on gut feeling. They know when things feel busy or slow, when clients seem happy or frustrated, and when placements are coming in or drying up. But without concrete data, you're guessing at what's working and what needs to change.
Recruitment KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) turn that guesswork into insight. They tell you where your process is strong, where candidates are dropping off, which sources deliver results, and whether your team is operating efficiently.
In this guide, we'll cover the KPIs that matter most for recruitment agencies, how to calculate them, and what they actually tell you about your business.
Why KPIs Matter for Recruitment Agencies
Making Better Decisions
When a client asks why a role is taking so long to fill, you need more than "it's a tough market." KPIs let you pinpoint exactly where the process is stalling. Maybe you're generating plenty of candidates but they're not making it past the shortlist stage. Maybe interviews are happening but proposals aren't being accepted. Data tells you where to focus.
Identifying Problems Early
A drop in your conversion rates or an increase in time-to-hire often signals problems before they become crises. Tracking KPIs consistently means you can spot negative trends early and address them before they impact revenue.
Proving Your Value
Clients want to know what they're paying for. Concrete metrics showing your submission-to-interview ratio, time-to-shortlist, or candidate quality scores demonstrate value far better than vague assurances.
Improving Over Time
Without benchmarks, you can't know if you're getting better. KPIs create a baseline against which you measure improvement. Last quarter's numbers become the target to beat this quarter.
Team Accountability
KPIs make performance visible and objective. They help you identify top performers, spot team members who need support, and allocate resources where they'll have the most impact.
The KPIs That Matter Most
Time to Fill
What it measures: The number of days from when a job is opened to when a candidate accepts an offer.
How to calculate: End date (offer accepted) minus start date (job opened).
Why it matters: Time to fill is the most fundamental measure of recruitment efficiency. Clients care about this number because unfilled roles cost them money. You care because faster fills mean more placements per year.
What to watch for: Increasing time to fill can signal sourcing problems, slow client feedback, or inefficient processes. Compare this metric across different role types and clients to identify patterns.
Benchmark: This varies significantly by industry and role seniority. Track your own historical average and work to improve it rather than chasing generic benchmarks.
Time to Shortlist
What it measures: The number of days from job opening to presenting a shortlist of qualified candidates to the client.
How to calculate: Date shortlist submitted minus date job opened.
Why it matters: This metric is entirely within your control (unlike time to fill, which depends partly on client decision speed). A fast time to shortlist demonstrates your efficiency and keeps clients engaged in the process.
What to watch for: If your time to shortlist is consistently fast but time to fill is slow, the bottleneck is on the client side. If time to shortlist is slow, you need to examine your sourcing and screening processes.
Candidate Pipeline Velocity
What it measures: How quickly candidates move through each stage of your recruitment funnel.
How to calculate: Average time spent in each stage (possible match, longlisted, shortlisted, interview planned, proposal sent).
Why it matters: This breaks down time to fill into actionable segments. You might discover candidates move quickly from possible match to longlisted, but spend weeks waiting for interviews to be scheduled. That tells you exactly where to focus improvement efforts.
What to watch for: Any stage where candidates consistently stall. Long waits often mean lost candidates, as good people don't stay available forever.
Submission to Interview Ratio
What it measures: The percentage of candidates you submit who get invited to interview.
How to calculate: (Number of candidates interviewed ÷ Number of candidates submitted) × 100.
Why it matters: This is a direct measure of candidate quality and how well you understand client requirements. A low ratio means you're submitting candidates who don't fit. A high ratio means you're reading briefs accurately and presenting relevant talent.
What to watch for: Significant variation between clients or role types. If one client interviews almost everyone you submit and another interviews almost no one, you need to recalibrate your understanding of the second client's needs.
Benchmark: Aim for at least 50%. Below that, you're wasting effort on candidates who won't progress.
Interview to Offer Ratio
What it measures: The percentage of interviewed candidates who receive offers.
How to calculate: (Number of offers made ÷ Number of candidates interviewed) × 100.
Why it matters: This measures candidate quality at the later stages and the effectiveness of your client's interview process. It can also reveal whether candidates are withdrawing due to poor experience.
What to watch for: A very low ratio might indicate misalignment between what clients say they want and what they actually hire. It could also suggest issues with how candidates are being prepared for interviews.
Offer Acceptance Rate
What it measures: The percentage of offers that candidates accept.
How to calculate: (Number of offers accepted ÷ Number of offers made) × 100.
Why it matters: Declined offers represent significant wasted effort. By the time you reach the offer stage, you've invested substantial time in sourcing, screening, and interviewing. A low acceptance rate means something is going wrong at the final hurdle.
What to watch for: Common reasons for declined offers include compensation misalignment, slow offer processes (candidates accept other offers while waiting), poor candidate experience, and counteroffers from current employers.
Benchmark: Aim for 85% or higher. Below 70% indicates a serious problem.
Fill rate
What it measures: The percentage of job orders you successfully fill.
How to calculate: (Number of placements ÷ Number of job orders) × 100.
Why it matters: Not every job gets filled. Roles get cancelled, clients hire internally, or requirements change. But your fill rate shows what percentage of opportunities you're actually converting into placements.
What to watch for: A declining fill rate over time, or significant variation between recruiters or clients. Some clients may simply be harder to work with or have unrealistic expectations.
Talent Pool Utilization
What it measures: What percentage of your placements come from candidates already in your database versus newly sourced candidates.
How to calculate: (Placements from existing talent pool ÷ Total placements) × 100.
Why it matters: Your talent pool is an asset you've built over time. High utilization means you're leveraging that investment. Low utilization might mean your database is poorly organized, your search capabilities are inadequate, or you're not maintaining candidate relationships.
What to watch for: If you're constantly sourcing new candidates while qualified ones sit unused in your database, you're working harder than necessary.
Revenue Per Placement
What it measures: The average fee earned per successful placement.
How to calculate: Total placement revenue ÷ Number of placements.
Why it matters: Not all placements are equal. This metric helps you understand the value of your work and identify whether you should be targeting different role types or salary bands.
What to watch for: Declining revenue per placement might mean you're shifting toward lower-value roles or facing fee pressure from clients.
10. Recruiter Productivity
What it measures: Output per recruiter, typically measured as placements, revenue, or candidates processed.
How to calculate: Choose your preferred output metric (placements, revenue, candidates submitted) and divide by number of recruiters or recruiter-hours.
Why it matters: This helps you understand team efficiency, identify training needs, and make informed decisions about hiring or resource allocation.
What to watch for: Significant variation between team members. Some variation is normal, but large gaps might indicate process problems, training needs, or workload imbalances.
Setting Up KPI Tracking
Choose the Right Tools
Tracking KPIs manually in spreadsheets is possible but painful. It requires disciplined data entry and regular calculation. A proper applicant tracking system automates most of this, tracking candidate movements through pipeline stages and generating reports automatically.
The key is ensuring your ATS captures the data you need. At minimum, you should be able to track when candidates enter each pipeline stage, where candidates were sourced, and outcomes (placed, rejected, withdrawn).
Establish Baselines
Before you can improve, you need to know where you stand. Spend a month or two tracking your chosen KPIs without trying to change anything. This gives you baseline numbers to measure against.
Set Realistic Targets
Once you have baselines, set improvement targets. Be realistic. Moving time to shortlist from 10 days to 8 days is achievable. Moving it from 10 days to 2 days probably isn't, at least not immediately.
Review Regularly
KPIs are useless if you only look at them once a quarter. Schedule weekly or biweekly reviews to spot trends early. Monthly deep-dives can examine longer-term patterns.
Act on What You Learn
Data without action is just trivia. When your KPIs reveal a problem, investigate the root cause and implement changes. Then track whether those changes move the numbers in the right direction.
Common KPI Mistakes to Avoid
Tracking Too Many Metrics
It's tempting to measure everything. Don't. Too many KPIs dilute focus and make it harder to identify what actually matters. Start with five to seven core metrics and add others only if they address specific questions.
Ignoring Context
A KPI never tells the whole story. If time to fill increases, that's not automatically bad. Maybe you took on more senior roles that naturally take longer. Maybe you prioritized quality over speed at a client's request. Always interpret metrics in context.
Comparing Apples to Oranges
Be careful when comparing KPIs across different role types, industries, or clients. Time to fill for an entry-level position is not comparable to time to fill for a C-suite executive. Segment your data appropriately.
Focusing Only on Outcomes
Outcome metrics (like placements and revenue) are important, but they're lagging indicators. By the time they decline, the problem has been developing for a while. Balance outcome metrics with leading indicators like pipeline velocity and submission-to-interview ratio.
Setting and Forgetting
KPIs require ongoing attention. Markets change, client expectations evolve, and your business grows. Review your KPI targets quarterly and adjust them based on current reality.
Using KPIs Punitively
If team members fear that KPIs will be used against them, they'll game the system or hide problems. Use KPIs as diagnostic tools for improvement, not weapons for blame.
Final Thoughts
Recruitment KPIs transform your agency from a business running on intuition to one running on insight. They help you identify what's working, fix what isn't, and demonstrate value to clients with concrete evidence.
The key is starting simple. Pick a handful of metrics that align with your business priorities, establish baselines, and commit to regular review. As you get comfortable with data-driven decision making, you can expand your KPI tracking to cover more aspects of your operation.
Remember that metrics are tools, not goals. The goal is placing great candidates in great roles while building a sustainable business. KPIs help you do that more effectively, but they're not the point in themselves.
The agencies that thrive long-term are the ones that combine recruitment expertise with operational discipline. KPIs are how you build that discipline.
Ready to track your recruitment KPIs effectively? Try Adeptiq free and get built-in pipeline tracking that makes measuring performance simple. No credit card required.
