Recruitment analytics give employers a clearer understanding of what is happening across their recruitment activity.
Rather than relying on assumptions, separate spreadsheets or updates from individual agencies, employers should use recruitment data to understand how quickly vacancies are being filled, which agencies are delivering, how much recruitment is costing and where improvements need to be made.
This is particularly valuable for organisations that work with several recruitment agencies, operate across multiple sites or manage a large temporary workforce.
According to the CIPD’s Resourcing and Talent Planning Report, more than half of organisations use recruitment agencies, outsourced recruitment or a combination of internal and external recruitment. However, only 24% measure the return on investment of their recruitment processes.
Analysing your recruitment analytics effectively can help close that gap by bringing agency performance, recruitment spend and workforce activity together in one place. This gives employers the evidence they need to make better-informed recruitment decisions.
What are recruitment analytics?
Recruitment analytics involve collecting and reviewing data from across the recruitment process to understand what is working and where action may be required.
For an employer managing recruitment agencies, this could mean answering questions such as:
- How long does it usually take to fill a vacancy?
- Which agencies fill the highest percentage of the vacancies they receive?
- How much are we spending with each agency?
- How many workers are currently assigned to each site?
- Are timesheets, invoices and worker certificates up to date?
The purpose is not to collect data simply to produce another report. Good recruitment analytics should help employers make practical decisions about their agencies, recruitment spend, workers and projects.
As demand changes between regions, projects and trades, employers need a reliable view of where workers are required and how effectively their recruitment agencies are responding.
Why should employers track recruitment analytics?
Recruitment problems are rarely caused by one issue.
A vacancy may remain open because the pay rate is not competitive, it has been sent to agencies without the right specialism or agencies are repeatedly declining the requirement.
A project may appear to be overspending because of agency fees, when the underlying issue is an inconsistent charge rate or a rise in the number of hours being worked.
Without clear recruitment analytics, these issues can remain hidden until they begin to affect project costs, workforce availability or delivery timescales.
The CIPD found that 64% of organisations that had attempted to recruit had experienced difficulties attracting candidates. It also found that 31% of organisations did not collect data in any of the areas covered by the survey to inform their resourcing decisions.
Tracking the right information helps employers move away from reacting to individual problems and start identifying wider patterns.
Which recruitment analytics should employers track?
There is little value in filling a dashboard with figures that nobody uses.
Employers should focus on recruitment metrics that support a clear operational, commercial or workforce decision. The following areas provide a practical overview of agency performance, recruitment spend and workforce activity.
Average time to fill
Average time to fill measures how long it takes to fill a vacancy after it has been released to recruitment agencies.
Looking at the overall average can be useful, but the real value comes from comparing it by agency, site, project or type of worker.
This could reveal that an agency performs well in one region or trade but regularly takes longer to fill vacancies elsewhere.
A rising average time to fill may indicate:
- limited worker availability
- an uncompetitive pay rate
- slow agency response times
- repeated vacancy declines
- a mismatch between the agencies selected and the workers required
Employers can then investigate the cause rather than simply asking every agency for more candidates.
Practical tip: Review average time to fill alongside fill rate and declined vacancies. A slow result has more meaning when you can see whether agencies attempted to fill the vacancy or declined it immediately.
“They’ve helped streamline the recruitment process, saving us valuable time, which is truly appreciated.”
Fill rate and declined vacancies
Fill rate shows the percentage of vacancies successfully filled by an agency.
It is one of the clearest ways to distinguish between agencies that appear active and agencies that consistently deliver workers.
An agency may provide regular updates and appear engaged, but a low fill rate can show that this activity is not converting into successful placements.
Declined vacancies provide additional context. Employers can see whether an agency regularly declines certain trades, regions, sites or project requirements.
This can help answer important questions:
- Are vacancies being sent to agencies without the right specialism?
- Is one site proving harder to resource than others?
- Are agencies declining roles because the rates are not competitive?
- Does the current agency list provide enough regional and trade coverage?
Rather than treating every declined vacancy as an isolated response, employers can use the data to improve their agency list and distribute vacancies more effectively.
Practical tip: You can create preferred supplier lists in our Agency Management Suite and allocate chosen agencies to preferred regions or job-specific roles they perform best in.
Top-performing agencies and workers supplied
Agency performance should be based on measurable results rather than the strength of an existing relationship.
Tracking top-performing agencies helps employers understand which suppliers are filling vacancies, providing workers and supporting different areas of the business.
The number of workers supplied provides an additional measure of agency contribution. However, volume should be considered alongside fill rate, average time to fill and no-shows.
An agency supplying a large number of workers may not necessarily be the strongest performer if its vacancies take longer to fill or workers regularly fail to attend.
This information can support more productive agency performance reviews. Instead of relying on general feedback, employers can discuss actual results and agree where improvements are needed.
It can also help when reviewing an agency list. Agencies can be selected around the trades, regions and projects where they have demonstrated that they can deliver.
Practical tip: Avoid creating one overall agency league table. Compare agencies within the trades, regions and project types they are expected to support.
“Strategic Resourcing offers a streamlined recruitment process that enhances our control and allows quick and efficient role advertising with a broader reach than just one agency.”
Markhams Ltd
This combination of wider agency access and central control allows employers to increase their reach without losing oversight of supplier performance.
No-shows and replacement speed
A filled vacancy is not the end of the recruitment process.
Employers also need to know whether the worker attended and, when they did not, how quickly the agency provided a replacement.
No-shows can cause immediate disruption, particularly where work depends on minimum staffing levels, specific trades or planned shifts.
Recording no-shows by agency, site and project can help identify whether an issue is isolated or part of a repeated pattern.
The CIPD found that 1 out of 4 of recruiting organisations had experienced selected candidates failing to arrive for their first day.
Replacement speed should show how quickly an agency responds when a worker fails to attend or becomes unavailable.
Before tracking this information, employers should agree exactly how it will be measured. For example, replacement speed could be recorded from the time the agency is notified to the time a replacement worker is confirmed.
Agency fees, pay rates and charge rates
Recruitment analytics should provide clear visibility of recruitment spend.
Agency fees help employers understand what they are paying each supplier. Pay rates show what workers receive, while charge rates show the amount invoiced to the employer.
Reviewing these figures together can reveal differences between agencies, sites, trades and projects.
Employers may identify:
- changes in agency fees
- differences in pay rates for similar workers
- inconsistent charge rates
- projects where recruitment costs are increasing
- agencies offering different levels of value
This does not mean automatically selecting the agency with the lowest rate.
Cost should be reviewed alongside delivery. For example, choosing an agency based on rate alone is like hiring equipment based only on the daily price without checking whether it will arrive when needed.
This is just like a lower-cost agency that regularly declines vacancies, takes longer to provide workers or records more no-shows may not provide the strongest overall value.
Practical tip: Compare agency fees, pay rates and charge rates with fill rate, average time to fill and no-shows. Cost information becomes much more useful when viewed alongside performance.
Hours worked and workforce deployment
For temporary and contract recruitment, employers need to understand more than the total number of workers supplied.
Tracking hours worked, workers supplied and the number of workers by trade creates a clearer view of the workforce supporting each project and site.
Employers can see:
- how many workers are assigned to each location
- which trades are represented
- where working hours are increasing
- which projects rely most heavily on agency labour
- which agencies supply each part of the workforce
Filtering the information by site and project name can give operational teams a focused view, while senior teams retain oversight of recruitment activity across the wider organisation.
Practical tip: Compare worker numbers and hours worked over time. A sudden increase or decrease could highlight a new project requirement, a resourcing shortfall or an area that needs commercial review.
Certificate expiry dates
For roles requiring valid qualifications or certificates, recruitment analytics can also support workforce compliance.
Tracking certificate expiry dates gives employers advance warning that action may be required.
Teams can contact the worker or agency before a certificate expires, rather than discovering the issue when the worker is already scheduled to attend a site.
This can be particularly useful when managing a large workforce across several locations, where manual records can quickly become difficult to maintain.
Practical tip: Review certificates approaching expiry rather than only expired certificates. A 30-, 60- or 90-day view gives teams time to act.
Bring your recruitment analytics into one dashboard
Strategic Resourcing’s Performance Hub brings recruitment activity and agency performance together through one clear dashboard.
As part of our Agency Management Suite, it allows employers to monitor recruitment spend, review agency delivery, understand workforce activity and produce reports without relying on disconnected spreadsheets or separate updates from every supplier.
Employers can see which agencies are delivering value, where vacancies are taking longer to fill and how recruitment activity is affecting different sites and projects.
Discover the Performance Hub and see how recruitment analytics can give you greater control over your recruitment agencies, workforce and spend.
