10 Healthcare Recruiting Metrics to Measure Success

As you’re planning your recruitment strategy, are you gathering and evaluating the healthcare recruiting metrics you need to make informed decisions and ensure you’re making the most of your resources?

For optimal hiring results, it might be time to start diving into data to get a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not in your current strategy. The result? You can focus on making changes that will improve your hiring success.

Here’s everything you need to know about healthcare recruitment metrics.

Why Tracking Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Is Crucial for Success

Tracking recruitment metrics is crucial for two key reasons: it allows you to measure the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies and make data-driven decisions to improve your hiring process. You can use metrics to evaluate the success of your strategies and identify any changes you need to make to:

• Enable you to attract top talent
• Identify where your hiring processes can be improved
• Promote a diverse and inclusive workforce
• Reduce turnover
• Plan for future workforce needs

The 10 Healthcare Recruiting Metrics You Need to Be Tracking

If you aren’t already, start tracking and evaluating these 10 key healthcare hiring metrics to evaluate performance, optimize your hiring process, and stay ahead of the competition.

#1: Number of Engaged Healthcare Professionals

What’s the first step to success in healthcare recruitment? Engaging with a lot of active and passive candidates can help you source top clinical talent effectively and build your talent pool, improving all of your other healthcare recruiting KPIs. Your organization should be tracking the number of job applications received from active candidates, the number of passive candidates who express interest in your organization, the number of passive candidates who become active candidates, and the conversion rate of passive candidates who accept job offers.

If you need help reaching a larger pool of both active and passive healthcare professionals, Adfire Health can help you engage with millions of potential candidates across 660+ medical specialties and 100+ license types from nearly any geo across the country.

#2: Time to Fill

Time to fill measures the number of calendar days between when your organization starts the hiring process and when an offer is accepted by a candidate. In the US, the average time to fill a position is 36 days, but in healthcare, that number jumps to 49 days.

Understanding how your time to fill metrics stack up can help you measure the efficiency of your hiring process and alert you if your recruitment process is taking too long and needs to be adjusted.

#3: Time to Hire

ime to hire refers to the time between a candidate applying for a job and them accepting a job offer. The longer it takes to hire for an open spot, the more it costs your healthcare organization (some estimates suggest organizations pay anywhere from $418 to $591 each day for every RN position that’s vacant) and strains your existing staff.

A lengthy time to hire can be an indicator that there are inefficiencies or bottlenecks in your healthcare hiring process — maybe it takes a long time to process applications or schedule interviews — that need to be fixed. 

#4: Number of Applicants & Hires

Your applicant-to-hire rate is a crucial metric that can help you assess how well your recruitment efforts are working to attract qualified candidates. According to CareerPlug’s Recruiting Metrics Report, the average applicant to hire ratio in the healthcare industry is 54:1.

A high applicant-to-hire ratio means you’re reaching a lot of candidates — but could also indicate you’re getting a lot of candidates who are not qualified — while a low applicant-to-hire ratio may indicate that your recruitment process is ineffective at reaching the right candidates.

#5: Offer Acceptance Rate

Given the high cost of recruiting in healthcare, the higher your offer acceptance rate (OAR) is, the better. Tracking OAR can help determine if your healthcare organization stands out in a competitive job market and measures the quality and attractiveness of your job offers. The current average OAR across industries is 69.3%.

If a review of your data shows your OAR is low, it may be time to rethink the salaries and benefits packages you are offering to make sure they’re competitive.

#6: Sourcing Channel Cost

You likely have a number of different sources that you tap for your recruitment efforts: healthcare-specific job boards, social media, SEO, referrals, professional associations, and sourcing experts like Adfire Health. Do you know which of these sources offer the best ROI? A simple formula to determine your sourcing channel cost divides your advertising cost by the number of successful hires per platform.

While costs vary by industry and position you’re trying to fill, Ideal.com provides the following benchmarks for cost per hire across various sourcing channels:

• $1,248: Major job board  
• $803: Niche job site 
• $513: Job aggregator  
• $616: Social network
• $285: Glassdoor

#7: Cost Per Hire

A 2022 report from the Society for Human Resource Management found that the average cost per hire is nearly $4,700. Knowing your cost per hire — the total cost of filling an open role, including travel, advertising, and other fees — can help you determine your annual recruitment budget and make sure you’re on track with your competitors.

But it pays to look beyond cost per hire as a standalone metric. For example, a high cost per hire is a good investment if other healthcare recruiting KPIs show that you’re attracting, hiring, and retaining highly qualified talent.

#8: Quality of Hire

Once you’ve filled open roles, it’s important to evaluate if your hire is a good match. While every organization in every industry wants to make sure they’re hiring quality candidates, it’s literally a matter of life and death in healthcare: Studies show that an engaged nursing staff is key to reducing medical errors and correlates to better patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, and lower turnover rates.

Quality of hire is a post-hire metric that measures the value your new hire brings to your organization and if their value outweighs the cost of recruiting them. While there is no standard formula for measuring quality of hire, factors to consider can include how long a new employee stays, and how effective and competent they are in their role.

#9: Candidate Diversity

A report from McKinsey & Company found that a diverse work environment helps companies recruit top talent and improves employee satisfaction. For healthcare, it’s particularly important to evaluate candidate diversity data to ensure that your staff reflects the community your hospital or medical center is serving. It can also help you identify — and eliminate — biases in your recruitment strategy and evaluate the effectiveness of your DEI program.

#10: Candidate Net Promoter Score

The final metric that’s key to your recruitment success is your candidate net promoter score: how candidates rate their experience with your hiring process and ultimately, how likely they are to recommend your organization to other candidates.

Because the quality of your clinical talent directly impacts the quality of care your patients receive, a high candidate net promoter score will help build your employer brand and attract the best talent.

Wrapping Up: Using Recruiting Metrics for Healthcare to Drive Your Recruiting

If you want better hiring results, start with gathering and understanding the above 10 key metrics about your recruitment process. Used effectively, this data can mean the difference between a workforce that’s overworked and short-staffed and one that’s fully staffed and satisfied in their work.

Need help developing a strategic sourcing and recruitment plan? We can help. Get in touch here.