Most founders track revenue, burn rate, and runway religiously. They can tell you their CAC, LTV, and MRR without looking at a dashboard. But ask them about their time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, or pipeline velocity, and you get a blank stare.
This is a problem. Recruiting is one of the most expensive and consequential functions in a growth-stage company. Every hire affects your runway, your culture, and your ability to execute. Yet most startups manage their hiring on instinct rather than data.
Here are the recruiting metrics that actually matter for founders, what they tell you, and how to use them to make better decisions.
Time-to-fill: the speed of your hiring engine
Time-to-fill measures the number of days from when a role opens to when a candidate accepts the offer. It is the most commonly tracked recruiting metric, and for good reason. The longer a role stays open, the more it costs your company in lost productivity, team burnout, and missed opportunities.
What good looks like: For startups, aim for 30 to 45 days for standard roles (engineering, sales, operations) and 45 to 75 days for senior or specialized positions. If you are consistently above these benchmarks, something in your process needs attention.
What it tells you: A long time-to-fill usually points to one of three issues: your sourcing strategy is not generating enough qualified candidates, your interview process has too many stages or bottlenecks, or your compensation is not competitive for the roles you are trying to fill.
Pipeline velocity: where candidates get stuck
Pipeline velocity tracks how quickly candidates move through each stage of your hiring process. It breaks your funnel into segments and shows you where the bottlenecks are.
A typical startup hiring funnel looks like this: sourced or applied, recruiter screen, hiring manager screen, technical or skills assessment, final round, and offer. Pipeline velocity measures the average time a candidate spends in each stage.
What good looks like: No single stage should take more than five business days. If candidates are sitting in a stage for longer than that, you are losing them to companies that move faster.
What it tells you: If candidates are stacking up between the recruiter screen and the hiring manager screen, your hiring managers are not making time for interviews. If candidates are stuck in the technical assessment phase, your assessment might be too long or too complex. The data tells you exactly where to focus your process improvements.
Source effectiveness: where your best hires come from
Source effectiveness tracks which recruiting channels produce the most hires and the highest quality candidates. Common sources include job boards, LinkedIn outbound, employee referrals, career page applications, and recruiting events.
| Source | Typical Volume | Conversion Rate | Quality Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employee referrals | Low | High (20 to 40%) | Often strongest culture fit |
| LinkedIn outbound | High | Low (3 to 8%) | Good for targeted roles |
| Job boards | High | Low (2 to 5%) | Varies widely by board |
| Career page (direct) | Medium | Medium (10 to 15%) | High intent candidates |
| Recruiting events | Low | Medium (8 to 15%) | Depends on event quality |
What it tells you: If referrals produce your best hires but only account for 10% of your pipeline, you are underinvesting in referral programs. If job boards produce lots of applicants but almost no hires, you might be wasting money on postings that attract the wrong candidates.
Interview-to-offer ratio: how efficient your process is
This metric tracks how many candidates you interview for every offer you extend. It is a direct measure of how well your screening and interview process is calibrated.
What good looks like: For most roles, a 3:1 to 5:1 interview-to-offer ratio is healthy. That means you interview three to five candidates for every offer. If you are interviewing ten or more candidates per offer, your screening process is not filtering effectively, or your ideal candidate profile is not clearly defined.
What it tells you: A high ratio means you are wasting everyone's time, including your candidates'. Every unnecessary interview costs your team hours and creates a poor candidate experience. A very low ratio (close to 1:1) might mean you are not being selective enough, which can lead to quality issues down the line.
Offer acceptance rate: your closing power
The offer acceptance rate measures what percentage of your offers are accepted. This is where everything comes together: your employer brand, your compensation strategy, your candidate experience, and the quality of your recruiting process.
What good looks like: Aim for 85% or higher. Top-performing companies with strong employer brands see acceptance rates above 90%. If you are below 75%, you have a significant problem that needs immediate attention.
What it tells you: Declined offers usually fall into three categories. Compensation was not competitive (the candidate got a better offer elsewhere). The candidate experience was poor (slow process, disorganized interviews, lack of communication). Or the candidate's priorities shifted during the process (a long timeline gives candidates time to change their mind).
Quality of hire: the metric that matters most
Quality of hire is the hardest recruiting metric to measure, but it is arguably the most important. It answers the question: "Are we hiring people who actually perform well and stay with the company?"
Most companies measure quality of hire through a combination of 90-day performance reviews, manager satisfaction surveys, and retention at the one-year mark. It is not a perfect system, but it gives you a signal.
What good looks like: Track the percentage of new hires who are rated "meets expectations" or above at 90 days. Aim for 85% or higher. Also track six-month and one-year retention for new hires. Early turnover (within the first year) is one of the clearest signs of a hiring quality problem.
What it tells you: If new hires are consistently underperforming, the issue is usually in your evaluation process. You are either not assessing for the right skills, not evaluating culture fit effectively, or making decisions based on gut feeling rather than structured criteria.
Cost per hire: what you are actually spending
Cost per hire includes everything you spend to fill a role: job posting fees, recruiter time, tools and software, interview time (valued at the interviewers' hourly rates), and any external recruiting fees. For a detailed breakdown of these costs, see our guide on the true cost of hiring at a startup.
What good looks like: The SHRM benchmark for cost per hire is around $4,700, but startups often spend significantly more, especially for technical roles. The key is not to minimize this number at all costs. It is to understand what you are spending and whether the return justifies the investment.
How to start tracking without overcomplicating it
You do not need a sophisticated analytics platform to start tracking recruiting metrics. A well-structured ATS with consistent data entry will give you most of these numbers out of the box. The key is consistency: make sure every candidate interaction is logged, every stage change is recorded, and every hiring decision is documented.
Start with three metrics: time-to-fill, offer acceptance rate, and source effectiveness. These three alone will give you enough insight to make better decisions. As your hiring function matures, layer in pipeline velocity, interview-to-offer ratio, and quality of hire.
The founders who treat recruiting like any other business function, with data, accountability, and continuous improvement, are the ones who build teams that consistently outperform. The data is there. You just need to start looking at it.