Source of Hire

What is source of hire (SoH)?

Source of hire (SoH) is a recruitment metric that identifies where successful job candidates originally found out about the job openings or were sourced from. Common recruiting sources include but are not limited to:

• Job boards
• Employee referrals
• Social media
• Professional networks
• Company career pages and,
• Passive candidate recruitment.

By better understanding the effectiveness of their hiring sources, HR professionals can use the source of hire metric to optimize their recruitment strategies.

Benefits and challenges of tracking source of hire

Keeping track of source of hire offers valuable insights into your talent acquisition strategies. However, there are also some challenges to consider:

Benefits

• Justification of budget allocation: By understanding the most effective recruitment channels, you can better allocate time and resources to productive sourcing methods and less on those that do not yield significant results.
• Improved candidate experience: The insights gained from tracking the source of hire enable continuous improvement of the recruitment process and the experience of potential candidates. 
• Greater diversity of talent: You can use SoH metrics to identify which recruitment sources attract more diverse candidates, which is especially useful when you want to attract a broader range of skills and experiences.

Challenges

• Multiple hiring sources: Candidates often use multiple channels during their job search, making it difficult to accurately attribute the hire to a single source.
• Technology and integration: Implementing the technology to track sources and integrating it with existing HR systems can be challenging, requiring substantial investment in software and efforts to gather data across multiple channels.
• Interpretation of the data: After collecting data, organizations must analyze it to identify trends and translate these insights into actionable recruitment strategies, necessitating advanced analytical capabilities.

How to calculate source of hire in 5 steps

To determine source of hire, follow this step-by-step process:

• Step 1: Gather the data: Ensure each candidate’s application includes a question about how they found the job. This could be through various channels such as job boards, social media, employee referrals, or directly on your company’s careers page.
• Step 2: Categorize the sources: Organize the data by categorizing each hire according to their source. Common categories include online job boards, social media, employee referrals, company websites, etc.
• Step 3: Count the number of hires by source: For a specific time period (e.g., monthly, quarterly, annually), count how many hires came from each source category.
• Step 4: Calculate the source of hire for each source: For each hiring source (e.g., job boards), divide the number of hires who used that source by the total number of hires. Multiply the result by 100 to get the overall percentage. You can use the following formula: 

Source of hire (SoH) = (Total number of hires / Number of hires from source) x 100

• Step 5: Analyze the data: Analyze the percentages of each source to determine which recruitment sources are the most effective. HR can further use this data to better allocate time and resources to these specific channels and identify areas for improvement.

Source of hire calculation example

Imagine you hired 20 software developers last year. Here is an overview of SoH:

• Job boards: 8 hires
• Career page: 6 hires
• Social media: 4 hires
• Employee referrals: 2 hires

Here is how to calculate the source of hire using the above example:

• Job boards: (8 hires / 20 hires) x 100 = 40%
• Career page: (6 hires / 20 hires) x 100 = 30%
• Social media: (4 hires / 20 hires) x 100 = 20%
• Employee referrals: (2 hires/ 20 hires) x 100 = 10%

This means that 40% of your hires came from job boards, 30% from the career page, etc. 

HR tip

While calculating source of hire is useful, it’s important to remember that you should not use it as your only method. Combine it with other recruiting metrics, such as time to hire and quality of hire, to gain a more comprehensive overview of your recruitment strategies.

How can HR measure source of hire

Tracking your SoH is essential for optimizing your recruitment strategies. Here are several ways HR professionals can effectively measure this metric:

1. Application Tracking Systems (ATS)

Use the built-in functionalities of your ATS to track and categorize applicants based on the source of hire (e.g., job board, employee referrals). Most ATS can generate reports showing the number of hires from each recruitment source and key performance metrics like hire date, department, or role.

Not all ATS will have these built-in features. Therefore, HR professionals must ensure their ATS has the capability to monitor SoH, or they may need to consider customizing the system to meet their specific SoH measurement requirements.

2. Recruitment analytics tools

For advanced capabilities and insights into SoH data, dedicated recruitment analytics tools can go beyond tracking sources. These tools can provide detailed metrics on candidate engagement, application stage, final outcome for each candidate, and costs per channel. Some other benefits include data visualization tools to make it easier to compare different recruitment channels.

3. UTM parameters

By adding shortcodes (UTM parameters) to URLs and job posting links, you can track the source of website traffic for your online recruitment campaigns. This method helps assess the number of candidates per source (e.g., targeted ads, social media campaigns), and it’s particularly effective for measuring the effectiveness of specific online recruiting campaigns.

4. Candidate surveys

A simple approach to capturing SoH data is asking candidates how they learned about the position. You can include a question in the application form. Candidate surveys may help capture sources that are not easily tracked (e.g., job fairs, networking events, word-of-mouth).

5. Recruitment team

Recruiters and hiring managers can also provide valuable insights into recruiting sources, as they tend to track how they source candidates. For example, many recruiters use LinkedIn data to measure candidate engagement, conversions, and new hires.

Key takeaway for HR

Regardless of which methods you use, regularly review and update source information to ensure data consistency and accurate SoH reporting. For a more detailed understanding of the metric, experiment with combining multiple approaches to avoid the limitations of individual methods. For example, combine data from your ATS with candidate surveys to capture sources that are not easily tracked in the system.