What is a Recruitment Report? Everything you Need to Know

Recruitment reports help agencies to improve performance and demonstrate value. Read on to learn what a recruitment report is and what it should include.

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Recruitment agencies are constantly under pressure to demonstrate the results of their work. 

Because if you’re not providing clear, measurable value, your clients aren’t going to stick around.

That’s where recruiting reports come in.

In this article, we’ll explain what a recruitment report is, discuss the different types of reports you can use and metrics you can track, and present some of the key benefits of recruitment reporting.

Let’s get into it.

Understanding recruitment reports

A recruiting report is a report that details the results of a recruitment campaign — and the context behind those results — by assessing candidate quality and digging into the specific activities performed by the recruiter. 

In the context of recruitment agencies, these reports are used by team managers and leaders to improve the productivity and performance of their recruitment reps, help their teams operate more efficiently, and (hopefully) beat their revenue targets.

Types of recruitment reports

A recruitment report isn’t a one-size-fits-all document. Instead, there are various types of reports that cater to different audiences and objectives. Here are some of the most common recruitment reporting types:

Recruitment reports for team management

If you’re a recruitment team leader, it’s your job to focus on the granular details of a recruitment campaign. So you need the following types of reports:

  • Daily activity tracking: Your daily recruitment report template should incorporate hyper-specific activity targets, such as the number of calls made and CVs sent by individual recruiters.
  • Weekly performance tracking: Rather than looking at activity levels, these reports focus on the results of those activities, such as whether your team are hitting their targets for number of interviews booked or candidates placed.
  • Monthly performance tracking: Similar to weekly performance tracking reports, but over a longer period.
  • Quarterly performance tracking: Again, these reports are similar to the previous two examples, but they typically take a more holistic view and also incorporate business-critical metrics like the amount of revenue generated by placing candidates.

Recruitment reports for senior leadership

Senior leaders are less in the weeds when it comes to the day-to-day business of running a recruitment campaign. Instead, they want to look at monthly, quarterly, and annual recruitment report documents focussing on bigger-picture metrics and trends like:

  • Client and candidate pipeline performance
  • Comparisons against historical or benchmark data
  • Performance against revenue goals
  • Percentage of strategic recruitment goals met
  • Key learnings to optimise future campaigns

Recruitment reports for recruitment agency clients

Recruitment agency clients want a clear view of how their recruitment project is progressing. These weekly or monthly status reports should incorporate a range of information and data points, such as:

  • The current stage of the recruitment project (e.g. sourcing candidates, making offers)
  • Actions and deliverables completed since the previous meeting
  • Interviews completed to date, plus their outcome
  • Break down of ad spending to date
  • Plans for spending any remaining ad budget
  • Shortlist of top-performing candidates
  • Suggestions for changes to the job specification or candidate requirements, if needed

Of course, the longer you spend compiling recruitment reports (internal and external), the less time you have to find their perfect candidate. (This is where a software solution that enables you to build quick and detailed recruitment dashboards could help, *wink*.)

So you should always balance the client’s desire for detail against your own resources and timelines when deciding how much information to include in these reports.

6 key metrics in recruitment reporting

Recruitment reporting is all about focussing on the most relevant recruitment metrics and adding valuable context to explain why you achieved a certain result (and why it matters). With that in mind, let’s take a look at the most important recruitment reporting metrics to cover:

  • Jobs added: The number of new jobs an agency wins to recruit for.
  • Candidates added: The number of new candidates an agency signs up.
  • CVs sent: The number of CVs sent for each job.
  • Interviews booked: The number of interviews successfully booked for each job.
  • Placements filled: The number of jobs successfully filled.
  • Revenue: The amount of revenue won by placing candidates.

If we exclude the “candidates added” metric, we’re left with the five elements of a fairly typical recruitment pipeline. Then the really key area of analysis for understanding performance and efficiency is the ratios between each of those specific metrics (e.g. the ratio of CVs sent to interviews booked).

In other words, while each metric is individually important for reps, and managers would likely set targets for each of these per rep, from a management perspective looking at ratios to try to analyse and improve performance is critical.

5 benefits of effective recruitment reporting

Broadly speaking, a robust recruitment reporting system helps you gauge the effectiveness of specific recruitment activities, which in turn empowers you to make smarter decisions about future strategy. But let’s zoom in on more specific benefits of effective recruitment reporting:

Benefit 1: Identify your top recruiters

When you know which recruiters are your top performers in terms of productivity and revenue, it’s easier to hire more people like them — thereby boosting your overall performance.

Benefit 2: Find recruitment process efficiencies

There’s always room for efficiency savings in any recruitment agency. Reporting helps you find bottlenecks in your current process and smooth them out, allowing your team to be more productive.

Benefit 3: Drive better results

When you understand what your best (and worst) campaigns look like, you can optimise your systems and processes to do more of what works. That means better results for your clients and more revenue for your recruitment agency.

Benefit 4: Know where your best candidates come from

Chances are, one or two sources generate more — or higher-quality — candidates than others. Recruitment reporting helps you identify those channels so you can focus on them more in future campaigns.

Benefit 5: Motivate your recruiters

By giving reps access to transparent performance metrics, you empower them to be accountable for their targets. And by showing them what the best performers in your agency are doing, you motivate them to level up themselves.

How OneUp can help

Creating effective recruitment reporting is all about numbers. If you can’t get the data you need, fast, your reports will never contain the necessary insights or context.

OneUp can help.

Our recruiting analytics software gives you real-time visibility into your performance via customisable dashboards tailored to the metrics that matter to you. And with our workflow automation, reporting no longer requires hours of leg work: you get the reports you need, when you need them.

oneup-recruiting-analytics-software-screenshot

It’s the perfect tool to streamline your recruitment reporting process.

Closing thoughts

Different recruitment businesses have different reporting needs.

That’s why the biggest battle to effective recruitment reporting lies in getting your hands on the data and being able to visualise it in a way that you can get meaningful insights.

Because while different recruitment businesses have different needs, they all have one common challenge: a lack of visibility into their performance.

OneUp makes the reporting process quicker, easier, and more valuable. Learn how by requesting your OneUp demo today.

FAQs

Why Is reporting important in recruitment?

Recruitment reporting helps recruitment managers find efficiencies in their recruitment processes, identify their top-performing reps, and understand where their best candidates come from. All of which helps recruitment agencies deliver better outcomes for their clients.

What is an example of recruitment analytics?

Recruitment analytics platforms help recruitment managers and leaders discover data trends and understand the context behind them. For instance, if a recruitment campaign delivers lower-than-expected hire quality, it could indicate a misalignment between the job specification and the client’s real-world expectations.

How to create a recruitment report

Follow these steps to create a high-quality recruitment report for your agency:

  • Define your recruitment pipeline metrics
  • Set individual and team targets for each metric
  • Create dashboards so individuals and teams can view their targets in real-time
  • Track your team's progress to target on a daily and weekly basis
  • Identify which reps are falling behind target and why
  • Provide coaching to those reps who need help
  • Report on monthly performance against target to your senior leadership team
  • Look at the ratios of teams and individuals in your pipeline and identify areas for improvement next month

What are the main types of recruitment reports?

There are various types of recruitment reports, covering everything from hiring costs to employee turnover. Broadly speaking, the main types of reports are:

  • Internal reports for recruitment team managers
  • Internal reports for senior leadership
  • Recruitment agency reports for clients

What reports should hiring agencies share with clients?

Recruitment agency clients naturally want a clear picture of how their current recruitment project is progressing. As such, agencies should share reports such as:

  • Number of applicants per role
  • Size of candidate shortlist
  • Number of interviews confirmed
  • Ad spend to date vs. total ad budget
  • Number of job offers made
  • Offer acceptance rate
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Derry Holt
I'm Derry, the CEO & co-founder of OneUp Sales (by day) and a professional video games commentator (by night). I have a background in software development, but if the last 7 years have shown me anything, it's that my passion truly lies in creating, building, and growing software companies.
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