How to Analyse Your Hiring Success for 2024

How to Analyse Your Hiring Success for 2024

As we edge closer to 2025, now is the perfect time to be sitting back, reflecting on 2024, and refining your hiring strategy ready for the year ahead.

This year hasn’t been without its challenges, particularly in the realm of recruitment. With the repercussions of geopolitical tensions, economic pressures and evolving regulatory changes, the life sciences industry this year has been a tough place to hire; with mass layoffs, delayed projects, restricted budgets, and a growing skills shortage all adding to the challenge.

But as we look into 2025, a more positive outlook is on the horizon, and life science companies across the globe are already showing signs of not only recovery but also growth.

To help you prepare for the 2025 recruitment landscape, we’ve put together this short guide on how to analyse your hiring success for 2024, with tips on defining, measuring, analysing, and building on your success.

How Should You Define Success?

Your definition of success will undoubtedly depend on your organisation’s size, phase of growth, and short-term and long-term goals. Some overarching indicators to consider include:

1. Quality of Hire (QoH): Are your new hires meeting or exceeding performance expectations?
2. Time-to-Fill: How quickly are vacancies being filled without compromising quality?
3. Cost-per-Hire: Are your recruitment costs reasonable and optimised?
4. Diversity and Inclusion: Are you achieving diversity goals in your talent pipeline?
5. Retention: Are new hires staying beyond the critical 90-day and one-year marks?
6. Candidate Experience: Are candidates satisfied with the hiring process?
7. Hiring Manager Satisfaction: Are hiring managers happy with the quality of candidates and the overall recruitment process?

Only once you’re clear on your organisation’s goals and have a solid understanding of what success looks like for you, you can then move on to the next step: measuring.

How Do You Measure Success?

The recruitment metrics you actively track will again depend on your organisation’s goals and definitions of success. However, some of the most important metrics you should be tracking continuously include:

Source or Hire

Source of hire metrics reveal which channels – such as job boards, employee referrals, and social media – are most effective at attracting top talent. Knowing this will allow you to allocate resources effectively, focusing on high-performing channels. As you recruit, track the number of successful hires from each source and compare their performance, retention, and cost-per-hire metrics to help you identify the most valuable recruitment sources.

You can do this by asking candidates how they discovered your job in applications and even in interviews, using tracking links in your applications, and working with any account managers on external platforms to understand your traffic.

Time to Hire

This metric highlights the efficiency of your recruitment process, as it measures the duration between a job being posted and the acceptance of an offer. A prolonged time-to-hire can result in lost productivity and may deter high-quality candidates who are actively pursuing other opportunities.

Break down this metric by recruitment stages – such as sourcing, interviewing, and offer negotiations – to identify any bottlenecks, whilst also accounting for external factors such as demand for roles and current climate.

Application Drop-Off Rates

High application drop-off rates may indicate friction points in your hiring process, such as overly complex application forms, poor user experience, or lack of timely communication. To identify where candidates are dropping off, leverage your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or analytics tools to monitor activity at each stage of the application process. For example, you can track metrics like the percentage of candidates who start but do not complete applications, those who fail to respond to interview invitations, or those who withdraw after interviews. Heatmaps and click analytics can also provide additional insights into drop-off points within online forms.

Cost Metrics

Recruitment costs encompass both direct expenses, such as advertising and agency fees, and indirect costs, like internal staff time. To effectively keep track of costs, start by using an ATS or HR software to document every recruitment expense in real time. Categorise costs into advertising, external agency fees, recruitment software subscriptions, and staff time spent on hiring-related activities.

Regularly audit these expenses and create benchmarks to compare cost-efficiency across different roles, departments, or hiring channels. Leverage cost-per-hire metrics and trend analyses to identify inefficiencies and areas for cost-saving. Establishing quarterly reviews and dashboards for tracking can ensure your recruitment efforts remain transparent and financially sustainable while maintaining hiring quality.

Offer Acceptance Rate

Your offer acceptance rate measures the proportion of job offers accepted by candidates, with low rates suggesting issues with your compensation packages, company reputation, or candidate experience. Monitoring trends over time and gathering as much feedback as you can from candidates who have declined will provide clarity on these challenges.

New Hire Performance

New hire performance evaluates how effectively new employees meet their role’s expectations within the probationary period and beyond. Key indicators include time-to-productivity, achievement of initial KPIs, and feedback from supervisors. Regular performance reviews and tracking milestones such as onboarding completion provide measurable data on performance and can help you refine the hiring process in the future to select candidates who align with the organisational needs and culture.

Retention Rates

Retention rates measure the longevity of new hires within your organisation. Distinguishing between short-term retention (e.g., within six months) and long-term retention (e.g., beyond one year) can uncover patterns related to onboarding effectiveness, role alignment, and workplace satisfaction. Tools like engagement surveys and exit interviews can also provide valuable insights into why employees stay or leave, helping you improve your retention and reduce turnover costs.

Diversity Metrics

Diversity metrics assess the representation of different demographics at each stage of the hiring process. These insights will help you identify any potential biases and ensure your recruitment practices align with diversity and inclusion goals. However, it’s about more than numbers. Evaluate the success of all employees post-hire to ensure equitable opportunities for growth and satisfaction, and regularly review and adjust recruitment and retention strategies to foster an inclusive workplace for all, in the long term.

Candidate Satisfaction

Candidate satisfaction measures how applicants perceive your recruitment process. This directly impacts your employer brand and the likelihood of candidates recommending your company to others. Gather feedback through post-application surveys and monitor reviews on platforms like Glassdoor, addressing any pain points to improve satisfaction.

Pipeline Conversion Rates

Pipeline conversion rates track the percentage of candidates who advance through each recruitment stage, from initial application to offer acceptance. This metric reveals inefficiencies or gaps in your hiring funnel. For example, a low interview-to-offer conversion rate may indicate misaligned candidate expectations or inadequate screening. Regularly analyse conversion rates to refine your processes and ensure a steady flow of high-quality candidates.

How Do You Analyse Your Hiring Success?

Once you’ve consolidated data from the above metrics, you can use dashboards to visualise trends and identify any obvious patterns quickly. Combine both qualitative insights with quantitative data to give yourself a full picture and look out for any correlations such as certain roles taking longer to fill consistently. You should also compare your metrics with industry-specific reports and benchmarks for life sciences, although this information can be hard to get access to!

Creating a List of Actions for 2025

Once you’ve analysed your hiring success, use the insights gained to build a robust strategic plan for 2025. Your goals could include things such as:

• Increase QoH scores by 15%
• Reduce average time-to-hire by two weeks
• Simplify application processes by reducing unnecessary steps or automating tasks like initial screenings
• Implement structured interview techniques to minimise bias and improve candidate evaluation consistency
• Implement AI-driven tools for better candidate sourcing, screening, and matching
• Adopt real-time analytics platforms to track recruitment metrics continuously
• Launch targeted campaigns showcasing employee success stories and workplace culture
• Participate in industry events to position your organisation as a leader in life sciences
• Regularly survey candidates, employees, and hiring managers to refine processes
• Use annual reviews to recalibrate goals and actions based on the latest data
• Provide ongoing training for hiring teams on new technologies, diversity hiring practices, and soft skills evaluation
• Encourage collaboration across departments to foster innovation in hiring practices

Whichever goals you choose to focus on in 2025, make sure you’ve got a solid system in place for tracking your progress throughout the year, with both short and long-term goals to hold you accountable and help you track your success.

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