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Are you drowning in data? Too much of a good thing could have negative consequences for your recruiting efforts.

Tracking recruiting metrics has become standard practice — for good reason. By measuring and analyzing data, talent acquisition leaders gain a deeper understanding of the time and money spent by their teams on filling jobs and the ability of their recruiters to source the right candidates. 

These days, however, you could find yourself with countless metrics to choose from and that might be keeping you from more important tasks. Even worse, you might be reporting too many metrics to senior executives that aren’t relevant to their business objectives.

“We’re overloaded with data,” says John Vlastelica, founder of Recruiting Toolbox, a global recruitment management consulting firm. “TA leaders need to be able to draw the signal out from the noise.”

How can you curate the right metrics? One way to do that is by assessing whether a metric is still relevant given your organization’s shifting priorities. You also want to determine whether a metric is actionable — whether the insights you derive can lead to improvements in the hiring process. 

“Imagine you have 15 minutes or 30 minutes in front of an executive,” John says. “You want to make sure that whatever metrics or insights you’re providing are in service to what the executive cares about, and that may have changed. Last year, it might have been speed, speed, speed. This year, it might be quality and cost.”

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by data, we’ve got you covered. LinkedIn asked recruiting professionals which metrics they currently measure, and which will be most useful over the next five years. The following four will be significantly more important in the future than they are today, the survey results show:

1. Candidate satisfaction

What it is:

This is a measure of what candidates think about your hiring process. In other words, it’s an assessment of whether your company is providing positive candidate experiences. 

Employers generally measure candidate satisfaction by asking candidates to fill out surveys. Among the questions you want to ask: Did we do a good job describing the role you interviewed for? Did we communicate with you promptly and effectively? Did you face a big problem during the hiring process and, if so, what was it? 

Why its value is rising:

There’s little doubt that candidate experience is becoming an increasingly important priority for talent leaders. At Danish shipping company A.P. Moller–Maersk, for instance, recruiters are trained on how to best engage with candidates to deliver an experience that is transparent, authentic, and in line with the company’s values. U.K.-based department store chain Selfridges, meanwhile, is adding more human interactions with candidates to ensure they feel they’re getting the personal touch. “We want to make sure our candidate experience is extraordinary,” says Sharlene John, head of recruitment at Selfridges. 

The rise of employer review sites coupled with the rapid spread of information via social media means employers must guard their reputations more than ever before. Job seekers who have unhappy interactions with a prospective employer are not only apt to walk away, they’re also likely to share their negative experiences with others, research shows. By measuring candidate satisfaction, you can do a better job spotting problems and make the appropriate adjustments. 

2. Cost per hire

What it is:

This is the average dollars spent on new hires brought into your company. It’s calculated by adding up all the costs associated with hiring in a defined period and dividing that number by the number of hires made during that same period. Costs would include both internal expenses, such as a portion of the salaries of the recruiters on the team involved in the hires, as well as external expenses, such as fees paid to staffing firms, and advertising costs. 

Why its value is rising:

Cost per hire became less important in recent years amid a fierce battle for talent. “Honestly, many companies weren’t looking at cost over the last two years because the focus has been more on speed, quality, and diversity,” John says. The goal, he says, was to “keep up with, what felt like, an unlimited appetite for talent.”

But the current state of the economy is making cost per hire a must-have metric again. The average cost per hire is significant: as much as $4,700, according to SHRM. With employers tightening their belts, recruiting leaders must demonstrate that they’re doing everything they can to contain costs. 

The first step to lowering cost per hire is auditing your costs (here’s the American National Standards Institute [ANSI] standard for calculating cost per hire). You want to know where you’re spending your biggest dollars and look for ways to cut back without sacrificing results. At the same time, work on building your talent pipeline. If you’re facing a hiring slowdown, make good use of the available time to build relationships with candidates. The more people you have in your network, the fewer dollars you’ll spend sourcing candidates when hiring picks up.  

3. Candidate diversity

What it is: 

Candidate diversity metrics assess your ability to attract candidates from underrepresented groups and move them successfully through the hiring process. They focus on a variety of different measures including the diversity of your talent pool, the diversity of your candidate sources, and the diversity of the candidates hired.

Why its value is rising:

You might assume that employers would pull back on diversity hiring in a shaky economy. Fortunately, that’s not the case everywhere.

Employers increasingly acknowledge that diversity hiring isn’t just the right thing to do, it provides major advantages to their business. Companies with diverse workforces tend to outperform their peers, while job seekers look at the diversity of an employer’s workforce when considering job offers. 

Tracking diversity metrics, in turn, is critical to advancing diversity and inclusion. To be effective, write Joan C. Williams and Jamie Dolkas in the Harvard Business Review, employers need to take “a metrics-based approach that can identify problems, establish baselines, and measure progress.”

4. Hiring manager satisfaction

What it is:

The hiring manager satisfaction metric measures what hiring managers think of the services you provided sourcing and vetting candidates. Like candidate satisfaction, this metric is a subjective assessment based on surveys.

In your survey, you’ll be asking hiring managers to score you on such things as your familiarity with the requirements of the position, the quality of the candidates you delivered, and your general level of responsiveness.

Why its value is rising:

It’s hard to overstate the importance of forging positive ties with hiring managers. The relationship between recruiters and hiring managers is often described as the most influential factor in talent acquisition performance. The best recruiters, says Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and founder of The Josh Bersin Company, “create strong relationships with hiring managers and understand all aspects of the roles for which they are recruiting.” 

For recruiting leaders who want to be seen more as strategic advisors, collaborating effectively with hiring managers will become increasingly important. Rather than simply taking orders from hiring managers, you want to show that you have a clear understanding of their business objectives and to advise on hiring strategies.

Final thoughts

The good news: Recruiters are making major strides by taking a data-driven approach. Advancements in digital technology and artificial intelligence are helping talent teams gather and analyze data they can then use to improve the hiring process. 

The challenge: Corporate priorities are changing and the metrics that matter today may not be as important in the future. That means TA leaders must regularly pause and evaluate the metrics they’re gathering and sharing with the C-suite.

“Before we’re putting data in front of executives,” John says, “we need to ask ourselves, what’s the ‘so-what’ and what’s the ‘now-what’ with this data? If we don’t have a good ‘so-what,’ why are we sharing it?”

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