Measuring Success
You've started your outreach, and are getting some interest. How do you know if you're being successful? While there is no one set of metrics that applies universally (location, type of job, and company can all affect the outcome) there are some things you can look at. To do so, let's first introduce the hiring funnel.
The hiring funnel
A successful candidate will move through a number of stages before joining your company:
Not everyone will make it through each stage, and looking at the percentage of folks that do, or your pass-through rate, can offer valuable insights.
Pass through rate
The pass-through rate is the number of people that make it to the next stage divided by the total number of people that made it into that stage. So if you have 50 phone screens, and 15 people make it through to the next stage, your pass through rate is 30%.
What does good look like?
There are many factors that affect any given company's pass-through rate, but the below are some guidelines. You're doing better? Great! You're not quite hitting the numbers? There might be room for improvement.
From > To | Pass-through rate |
Contacted > Replied | 20% |
Replied > Interested | 35% |
Interested > Phone screen | 90% |
Phone screen > Interview(s) | 30% |
Interview(s) > Offer | 10 to 30% |
Offer > Hire | 65% |
If you start to drop below these numbers it's likely you can improve them by:
- Tweaking your messaging (Contacted > Replied/Interested)
- Staying on top of your correspondence (Interested > Phone screen)
- Reassessing your pass/fail criteria (Screen > Interview(s) > Offer)
- Making sure your offers are competitive (Offer > Hire)
What does Fetcher care about?
We care about all of these! But mostly we care about the first couple of stages. Or to put it in simple terms: Do the people you contact show interest and pass your phone screen.
When should I stop?
Rule of thumb has it that it takes 15-20 interested candidates to make a hire. That said, we recommend that you hold a search once you've reached 10 or so interested candidates and see how they progress. This allows you to see where tweaks might need to be made, and more importantly, leads to a better candidate experience should one of the those first 10 be the one.