Top 10 Metrics for Evaluating Your International Recruitment Efforts

Hiring internationally opens the door to a world of incredible talent, but how do you know if your international recruitment strategy actually works? 

Whether you want to diversify your global team or are just starting to build a distributed workforce, tracking the right metrics is key to measuring return on investment (ROI), spotting inefficiencies, and continuously improving your talent acquisition and hiring process.

In this post, we'll break down the top 10 key metrics to help you evaluate and improve your international recruitment process.

Key takeaways: 

• Tracking recruitment metrics helps hiring teams identify inefficiencies, make informed decisions, and allocate resources to attract and hire qualified candidates more effectively.
• Measuring the effectiveness of different sourcing channels enables you to identify where top talent comes from and focus your time and budget on those platforms.
• Retention and quality of hire are excellent indicators of long-term recruitment success because they help evaluate how well the recruitment process aligns with actual hiring outcomes.

The Importance of Tracking Recruitment Metrics

Tracking recruitment metrics enables companies to determine how effective and efficient their hiring practices are, and it arms them with the data they need to improve their recruitment efforts.

Hiring managers can collect data at all stages of the hiring process, from sourcing and applications to interviewing and onboarding. Analyzing hard metrics like application completion rate and time to hire allows recruiters to identify inefficiencies in their process and allocate resources to the areas that need them most.

For example, by closely tracking recruitment metrics, your human resources team may discover that many engineering candidates abandon job applications at the halfway point, which signals to the recruitment team that it needs to simplify and optimize the application process. 

Or, they may find that the highest-quality candidates come from a specific job board and decide to invest more time and resources in hiring via that platform.

Now that you understand why tracking recruitment metrics is so important, let's look at the 10 most important ones to watch when evaluating your international hiring efforts.

Learn more about data-driven recruiting.

1. Application Completion Rate

This metric, sometimes called "applicant drop-off rate," tracks how many candidates begin your application process versus how many actually complete it. It's important to track application completion rate — the average rate is 10.6% — because it can alert you to potential issues with your recruitment process.

For example, a high drop-off rate in the number of applicants could indicate that your application is too complicated, unclear, not mobile-friendly, or simply too long. In fact, application completion rates drop by 365% if an application takes more than 15 minutes to finish.

A smooth, straightforward application experience increases your chances of attracting strong international candidates.

2. Sourcing Channel Effectiveness

Sourcing channel effectiveness means evaluating the platforms or sources that bring in candidates. It looks at how many applicants you get from job postings on one channel compared to the average across all your recruiting channels. That way, you can double down on what's working and stop wasting time on what's not.

Once you know where your candidates are coming from — job boards, social media, referrals, or agency partners — you can start measuring which sources deliver. 

By tracking performance based on hires, cost, and applicant quality, you can zero in on the channels that consistently bring in the best talent.

An easy way to measure sourcing channel effectiveness is using Google Analytics to see which platforms drive traffic to your job listings, such as LinkedIn, a job board, or another referral source.

3. Diversity of Talent Pool

A diverse team drives innovation and performance, strengthening your employer brand globally, making hiring and retaining diverse international talent easier.

Companies can track the diversity of their talent pool by collecting voluntary demographic data during the application process, such as gender, ethnicity, age, and disability status. Analyzing this information can help identify gaps or biases in sourcing, outreach, and hiring practices.

However, handling this data carefully is essential to ensure anonymity and compliance with country-specific privacy laws.

4. Time to Hire (TTH)

This metric is the time between when a candidate applies for a job, or enters the recruiting funnel, and when they accept an offer. It's sometimes also called "days to offer" or "time to fill," and it helps identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in your hiring process.

For example, this data might reveal that reviewing a resume and setting up an interview takes several days or weeks — an issue that could be overcome by implementing scheduling automation.

A long TTH could prevent you from hiring top candidates since desirable candidates are often off the market quickly.

Understanding your company's TTH can also inform hiring decisions for specific timelines since you know the average time it takes to hire a new salesperson or engineer, for example.

Take a look at some of the average times to hire by industry.

5. Cost Per Hire (CPH)

This important recruiting metric tells you how much it costs the company to fill an open position. It's calculated by taking the total cost invested in hiring divided by the number of hires.

To calculate your total cost, you must consider numerous expenses, including recruiter fees, job board costs, interview expenses, onboarding costs, HR salaries, and tech tools.

Let's say over the past quarter, your company:

• Spent $15,000 on external costs (job ads, agency fees, background checks, etc.)
• Incurred $10,000 in internal costs (recruiter salaries, software, etc.) 
• Made five hires

Your cost per hire would be: ($15,000 + $10,000) ÷ 5 = $5,000 per hire

This number helps you evaluate the efficiency of your recruiting efforts and compare it across hiring channels, departments, or time periods.

The average cost per hire varies by industry, country of hire, position, and the current state of the labor market.

Global hiring can get expensive fast, so tracking CPH helps ensure that your budget aligns with your business goals and that you get good value for each international hire.

6. Quality of Hire

International recruitment isn't just about filling roles — it's also about bringing on the right people who will be with you long-term. That's why tracking the quality of hire is so essential.

Quality of hire can be measured in several ways, and companies may look at many different variables, including performance reviews, manager feedback, retention data, surveys, and how quickly new hires begin to make meaningful contributions, to assess it.

You can also combine quality-of-hire metrics with the source for each candidate to determine channel effectiveness.

7. Candidate Experience Score

A positive candidate experience strengthens your employer brand. It also increases the likelihood that an applicant will accept your offer — and speak positively about your company, even if they don't get an offer.

One way to measure this is by sending post-interview surveys to candidates to gather feedback on their experience throughout the hiring process.

These surveys can include questions about the clarity of the job description, the quality of communication, how well they felt aligned with your company's culture, and the overall ease of applying. 

A poor candidate experience — which could be due to a lack of communication, a confusing process, or clunky application tools — can create frustration and deter people from applying to open positions in the future.

However, regularly tracking your candidate experience score enables you to improve your hiring process.

8. Offer Acceptance Rate

This metric tracks how many candidates accept an offer divided by the number of job offers.

A high offer acceptance rate indicates that candidates found your company's offers attractive, while a low rate could point to noncompetitive compensation for the market, slow decision-making, or misalignment during the interview process.

To get the most value from this metric, it helps to segment your offer acceptance rate by role type, location, or recruiting channel. For example, if tech candidates in one region consistently decline offers, it could signal a mismatch between your compensation package and local expectations. 

On the other hand, if referrals have a higher acceptance rate than job boards, it might be worth investing more in your employee referral program. 

Digging into the "why" behind the numbers can uncover actionable insights to help refine your hiring strategy and boost offer conversion.

9. Retention Rate

Employee turnover lowers morale, decreases productivity, and can affect the bottom line. In fact, some studies predict that every time a company replaces a salaried employee, it costs six to nine months of their salary.

That's why it's so important to monitor retention rates, or how many employees remain with your company over a given period of time.

Retention rate is also helpful in evaluating the long-term success of your recruitment efforts since a high rate typically reflects a strong match between the hiring process and the actual role.

To calculate retention rate, divide the number of employees who remain employed at the end of a specific period by the number of employees there at the start, then multiply by 100. For example, if you started the year with 100 employees and 90 remained at the end of the year, your annual retention rate would be 90%.

Monitoring this metric, especially within the first year of employment, can help your HR team identify problems and take steps to improve employee satisfaction and engagement. It can also provide valuable insights on how well your company supports international employees across different regions and cultures, so that you can improve your global hiring efforts.

10. Compliance Accuracy

Compliance is an essential part of hiring internationally, and compliance accuracy measures how well your company adheres to local labor laws, tax regulations, and statutory benefit requirements in each country where it has an employee.

To measure compliance accuracy, a business must track the number of errors in employment contracts, missed tax deadlines, or any other noncompliance penalties.

Remaining compliant across multiple countries is complex. Even small mistakes can have significant legal and financial consequences. 

An effective way to ensure compliance is by partnering with an Employer of Record (EOR) to help you manage contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance with local employment laws.

RemoFirst: Your Global Hiring Partner

Tracking the right metrics is essential to international recruitment, but successfully hiring and managing global talent takes more than just solid data.

From navigating local labor laws to setting up compliant payroll and offering competitive benefits, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to building a global team. That's where RemoFirst comes in.

RemoFirst helps companies hire employees in 185+ countries. We handle all the logistics of employee contracts, onboarding, payroll, taxes, and more, so you can focus on growing your global team.

‍Schedule a demo to learn more.