536.
That’s the number of people it takes to get from the top of a corporate recruiting funnel to a hire.
After 10 million applications from 50 million job seeking visitors over the last decade, recruiting technology provider Jobvite has drawn some broad conclusions about the numbers it takes for employers to recruit talent. Chief among them is that only 11% of the visitors to a company career site will apply. As of 2014, those 11% will yield an average of 59 applications per job.
The percentages get smaller as the funnel narrows, until there’s a hire. From top to bottom, the average is 0.2%. In other words, to get someone in the door, a company needs 536 visitors for every job posting.
Keep in mind these are averages compiled from Jobvite customers. Calling them industry benchmarks, as Jobvite does, might be overstating the case. However, they do offer insights into job marketing and provide at least some yardstick against which to measure a company can measure its own recruiting efforts. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
There are no numbers specifically for staffing firms. But if you do any sizable temp placement, take a look at the numbers which Jobvite has conveniently broken down by company size.
Small employers (up to 250 employees) need an average of 62 apps per req to make a hire. They generally interview more candidates and make fewer offers.
At the largest companies (over 5,000 employees) they get fewer applications, and interview fewer candidates, but make more offers; about one-in-five candidates interviewed get an offer.
It’s a good guess that larger companies make more offers because when you have 2,500 or more employees, you have more openings. The offer may not necessarily be for the same job for which the candidate interviewed.
This can be useful information when making a client presentation. The time and expense of collecting and sifting through the 62 applications of a small employer or the 42 of a business with 2,500 workers is significant. Add to that what it takes an in-house recruiter to pre-screen the 10 or 15 semi-finalists, schedule the interview finalists and then get them to a hiring manager, and the Jobvite data can help sway a client. Jobvite also calculated the average time to fill by size.
The accompanying chart has the details.