1. IN A DATA DAZE?
Harness Your Data to
Drive Cost Savings

2. 1
Pop quiz: How much money does your company
spend on agency hires every year? What are your
most valuable recruiting KPIs? What’s your budget
for hiring emergencies?
Struggling to find the answers? Here’s a hint: You need hard
data to respond correctly—and 72% of recruiters know
that. You know the business world is increasingly driven by
metrics, and recruiting is no exception. You know that being
competitive in the fight for talent means leveraging every piece
of information available to you.
Unfortunately—despite knowing that data is crucial to their
success in hiring—almost 75 percent of recruiters still aren’t
using data to inform their decisions. Why? Because data can
be intimidating and there’s often too much of it. So, don’t get
distracted by the data that doesn’t count.
The most important data that you have is how your recruiting
budget dollars are working for you—or not as the case may be.
Marketers do this all the time. They measure the effectiveness
of every investment into each marketing channel—such as
digital advertising, webinars, events, or even downloaded
eBooks like this one—and are constantly optimizing budgets
based on business results. The same portfolio approach and
analysis can be applied to recruiting budgets as well.
In this eBook, we’ll isolate the most important business metrics
to track to hire the best talent at the lowest cost.
Let’s get started.
Become a Data-Driven Recruiter
of recruiters say data
is important in their
hiring process. *
72%
75%of recruiters aren’t
using data. †
but
† LINKEDIN TALENT BLOG, MARCH 2015
* 2015 JOBVITE RECRUITER NATION STUDY

3. 2
To understand costs, you need to analyze how much
money you’re spending and where. Seems obvious, right?
But here’s the thing: You’re not just looking at expenses.
You want to know what those expenses mean when it
comes to your hiring efforts. Cost numbers actually paint a
clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t.
Add Up Your Total Costs
Total costs are exactly what they sound like: the sum of
all of the different sources your company uses to find
candidates, including agencies, social media sites, job
boards, advertising, technologies (such as a candidate
relationship management tool or applicant tracking
system), and more. Having an up-to-date record of your
total expenses is essential to understanding your recruiting
successes and failures.
Step 1: Understand Your Costs
Pro Tip
Remember to include the budgets
for your technologies, like your
CRM (Candidate Relationship
Management) and ATS (Applicant
Tracking System).
Here’s a sample of the costs that
might feed into your total:
Q4 2016 Budget Tracker
Description Budgeted
Agency $53,000
Tech Agency $10,000
Non-Tech Agency $10,000
Execs Agency $33,000
Social $9,000
Facebook $1,000
LinkedIn $5,000
Glassdoor $3,000
Advertising $20,000
Job Board 1 $5,000
Job Board 2 $2,000
TV $5,000
Radio $5,000
Digital $2,000
Other Media $1,000
Recruiting Technology $32,000
Referral Technology $24,000
CRM Technology $7,000
Social Technology $1,000

4. 3
Calculate Your Cost per
Candidate and Cost per Hire
Tracking these figures helps you see how much bang
you’re getting for your buck. Over time, you can determine
trends and benchmarks to aim for in a particular quarter or
time period, so you’re always setting goals and measuring
against them.
Determine your Cost per Candidate:
Determining the cost to find one qualified candidate,
however your organization defines “qualified” is an
important metric to measure.
Cost per Candidate can help you determine if your allotted
budget is enough to fill your pipeline. If you drill down
further into new segments, like geographic location,
this metric can help you uncover new areas to source
candidates.
Here’s the Math:
Cost per
Candidate
Total Cost to Generate
Candidates
Total # of Candidates
In Your Pipeline
Total Cost to Generate
Candidates
Total # of New Hires
To Find Your Cost per Hire:
This important metric helps you understand the total
resources needed to find and hire new employees.
While Cost per Hire doesn’t tell the whole story, it is a simple,
but powerful metric to show how effectively your team uses
its resources. Looking at specific departments or roles’ cost
per hire can guide your budget allocation and forecasting.
Here’s the Math
Here’s How it Works
Source
Total
Spend
Number of
Candidates
Cost per
Candidate
Number
of Hires
Cost per
Hire
Total $120,000 1148 $105 20 $6,000
Cost
per Hire
Click to review Q4 budget

5. 4
Calculate the Cost per Candidate by Source
This metric helps you dig a bit deeper to determine
which sources prove most rewarding in your search for
quality candidates.
Once you’ve figured these numbers out, you can see how
they stack up to your industry’s benchmark numbers and
judge yourself against them. To make the most of your
budget, invest more heavily in the sources with a lower
cost per hire, and decrease your spend in the ones that
aren’t proving to be as fruitful.
Here’s the Math
Here’s How it Works
Source Total Spend Number of Candidates Cost per Candidate Number of Hires Cost per Hire
Agency $53,000 50 $1,060 2 $26,500
Facebook $1,000 27 $37 1 $1,000
LinkedIn $5,000 38 $132 2 $2,500
Job Board 1 $5,000 290 $17 0 $0
Job Board 2 $2,000 128 $16 1 $2,000
Referral
Technology
$28,000 126 $222 7 $4,000
CRM Technology $28,000 489 $57 7 $4,000
Total $120,000 1148 $104.53 20 $6,000
Cost per
Candidate
by Source
Cost per
Hire by
Source
Total Cost by Source
Total # of Candidates
Generated by that Source
Total Cost by Source
Total # of New Hires
Click to review Q4 budget

6. 5
Benchmarks are typically available by industry—but the reality
is that so many factors can affect your cost per candidate or
your cost per hire that it’s difficult to make apples-to-apples
comparisons.
Find Out if You’re Leading or Trailing the Industry
50%
46%
41%
38%
27%
26%
23%
13%
10%
Social Media
Employee referrals
SEO
Outside agencies/
recruiters
Job boards
Mobile career site
Campus recruiting
Employment
branding
Passive talent
pipeline
Companies are adjusting to new areas of focus and
reprioritizing their budgets.
Recruiters plan to increase investment in the following areas:
Source: Jobvite’s Recruiter Nation Survey, 2015
The Bersin by Deloitte Talent
Acquisition Factbook 2015 reports that
companies spent an average of $5,000
per hire in 2014.
But without understanding which positions were being filled,
what size each company was, and so on, you can’t really use
that number to determine whether you’re spending too much
or too little. Some experts encourage looking at cost per hire
only as it fits into a larger discussion on how each hire provides
a return on the investment—in other words, are you better off
spending more per hire if you get a higher quality employee
as a result? So keep these things in mind as you start isolating
your numbers. The more comfortable you get with your data,
the more you can do with it down the road.

7. 6
Key performance indicators—or KPIs—aren’t just for
marketing anymore. Setting and monitoring metrics like
net new candidates, total offers accepted, and time-to-
hire by source can help your recruiting department better
manage goals and gauge progress. But which indicators
matter most? And what do you do with them?
Prioritize Your KPIs
Obviously, the KPIs you want to track will provide data
around your business’s most pressing priorities. Perhaps
you’ve exhausted your pipeline and you need to refill it—
so you’ll want to track net new candidates. Or maybe time
is of the essence, and you need to accelerate your hiring
process. In that case, you’ll want to look at time-to-hire.
Choose KPIs that Fit These Criteria:
• Business-Driven - Important enough that you and
your leadership prioritize their measurement and
improvement
• Quantifiable - Make sure that you can impartially
track your progress and trends
• Reasonable - Don’t try to boil the ocean. Focus on
3-5 metrics
Step 2: Determine and
Optimize your KPIs
Applications to hires ratio by source
12.00%
10.00%
8.00%
6.00%
4.00%
2.00%
0.00%
Agency
Facebook
LinkedInJob
Board
1Job
Board
2Technology
1Technology
2
6.00%
10.53%
0.80%
0.43%
2.63%
4.50%
0.00%
Assess What’s Working and What Isn’t
Once you’ve determined your KPIs, put them to the test.
After all, for any tool, technology, or strategy you use, you
should be able to measure its ROI—and if you can’t, it’s
time to nix it. If your company has access to historical data,
even better. Study it and make decisions (and predictions)
based on what’s already happened. Don’t have this data?
Outline a process to start tracking and storing it right away.
Here’s How it Works
The red line represents the benchmark of the applications-to-
hire ratio, which is around 2%. Generally speaking, you should
invest more in sources that have a ratio of 2% or above;
however, for maximum efficiency, you should also look at
these figures in conjunction with your cost per hire by source.

8. 7
Rejigger Your Spending Portfolio
Once you’ve gathered data that encompasses your relevant
strategies, it’s time to focus on improving your efficiency
around these KPIs.
First things first: Get rid of anything that can’t be
measured. Why? Because you can’t aim to improve
something if you have no idea what to shoot for. Your goal
should be to only retain the technologies and techniques
that actually perform, based on the KPIs you set earlier. In
the chart below, for example, the lack of measurable data
for Job Board 1 suggests we should drop it altogether.
As you embark on
your mission to become a
metrics-driven recruiter,
you’re ultimately studying
trends and patterns in your
numbers over a period of
weeks or months or years. A
single snapshot of your costs
for one month, for example,
is nowhere near as useful.
Rachel Bitte, Chief People Officer, Jobvite
$25,000
$20,000
$15,000
$10,000
$5,000
$0
Agency
Facebook
LinkedInJob
Board
1Job
Board
2Technology
1Technology
2
$21,333
$1,250
$5,000 $5,000
$0
$3,000 $3,111
Cost per hire
Double Down on What Works
Once you’ve narrowed down your strategies to
the ones that legitimately work, consider investing
the money previously directed at failed sources or
technologies into new channels that map back to
your goals. And here’s some good news: The process
of getting executive buy-in on these additional
investments will be much easier now that you’ve been
measuring data that justifies your decisions.

9. 8
Step 3: Own Your Budget
percent of your budget for experimentation. Maybe
you’ve got your eye on a new sourcing tool or a billboard
ad somewhere. Build in some budget to test new
strategies and you might find, over time, that these
investments in innovation deliver serious returns.
Measure and Measure Again
These three simple steps prove there’s no reason to
be daunted by data. Metrics-driven recruiting is just a
method for understanding how the money you spend
translates to measurable results. If you know what you’re
spending, where it’s going, and what you’re getting for
your money, then you’ll be better prepared to improve
your recruiting efficiency. And over time, as you amass
more data and optimize your processes, you’ll be able
to make smarter decisions for your organization, stretch
your budget to cover some new tactics, and ultimately
position your company to become more competitive in
the search for top talent.
When you’re strapped for cash, no matter your industry
or company, it’s tough to feel like you can invest in new
strategies. Recruiters often know this pain better than anyone.
Fortunately, there are ways to maximize your spend and—if
you’re lucky—dig up some extra dollars.
Map Out Your Budget
Take a look at your total budget and ensure that you’ve
allocated every dollar. (There is no excuse for not having this
information, so if you don’t know your budget, ask someone!)
You want to know exactly where your money is going—every
source, every technology, every technique. If you have access
to historical budget data from previous quarters or years,
then build that into your current plan. Make some ballpark
assumptions, and compare to your industry standards to
see how you’re tracking. Your goal is to establish a very clear
picture of what it will take budget-wise to reach your goals.
Plan for the Unexpected and the Innovative
We know that things come up and surprises happen, so make
sure you’ve got a safety net. A good rule of thumb is to allot
five percent of your total budget to an emergency line item—in
case your recruiting tools suddenly increase in price, or your
chief executive wants to test a new recruiting campaign. You
will never regret having this cushion in place.
Of course, planning only for emergencies won’t ultimately
deliver any increases in efficiency—so also retain five to ten
Pro Tip
Always tuck away 5-10% of your
budget for emergencies or if you
want to experiment with new
technologies are tactics. You’ll
never regret having a little rainy
day recruiting fund.

10. Jobvite is the industry leader in recruiting software that helps
emerging, mid-market, and enterprise companies hire top
talent easily, efficiently, and effectively. Our comprehensive and
analytics-drivenrecruiting platform accelerates recruiting with
an easy-to-use Applicant Tracking System (ATS), social recruiting
capabilities, mobile-optimized branded career sites, a recruiting
branding solution, on-demand video screening, advanced
analytics, onboarding, and seamless integration with other HR
systems. Focused exclusively on recruiting software since 2006,
with offices in San Mateo and London, Jobvite has thousands of
customers including LinkedIn, Schneider Electric, Amway, Zappos,
and GoDaddy. To learn more & request a free demo, visit www.
jobvite.com or follow us @Jobvite.
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