Hiring metrics have come a long way.

For years, we obsessed over time-to-fill metrics. Those numbers still matter, but if you’re serious about building a competitive recruiting function, you must dig deeper. That means moving beyond surface-level metrics and tracking what we call advanced recruitment metrics.

In this post, I want to show you three advanced recruitment metrics that will help you think more strategically: pipeline velocity, lifetime value of a hire, and cost to hire. If you’re trying to prove recruitment’s business impact (and let’s, be honest, we all are), these three metrics are where to start.

If you haven’t already, check out my earlier breakdown of the Recruitment Metrics and Models that form the foundation of your hiring data strategy. That post gives you the essentials. This post will build on deeper strategic insights.  

Pipeline Velocity: How quickly is your recruitment funnel moving?

Let’s start with pipeline velocity. This one is all about how quickly candidates are moving through your hiring funnel.

It’s not just time-to-fill. Pipeline velocity gives you a breakdown of how long candidates spend in each stage of your process (sourcing, screening, interviewing, and offering).  These metrics can show you where things are getting stuck in your process and more importantly will pinpoint bottlenecks in your recruitment funnel.

Here’s how you calculate it:

Pipeline Velocity = Total Time from Application to Offer (in days) / Number of Stages

You can also break this down further per stage to really zoom in on bottlenecks. For example, if you notice candidates spend 10 days between the first and second interviews, that’s a red flag—and probably fixable.

According to CareerPlug (2024), contacting applicants within 48 hours makes them 36% more likely to accept your offer. That’s not a small number. Every day of delay is a day you are risking top talent walking.

Realistic ways to speed things up:

• Set designated interview slots before you post the job.
• Automate your screening using your ATS filters.
• Use structured interview scorecards to cut down deliberation.
• Try to follow up with candidates within 48 hours regardless if they are being moved forward in the process.

Pipeline velocity tells you how agile your TA process is. And agility is a competitive advantage. That’s why it belongs on every TA dashboard that prioritizes advanced recruitment metrics. It also aligns closely with your recruitment funnel strategy.

Lifetime Value of a Hire (ELTV): The Long-Term Payoff

Most TA teams talk about quality of hire. “Quality” is vague. We need something more concrete.

Employee Lifetime Value (ELTV) is that metric.

It estimates how much value a hire brings to the business over their tenure, minus what it costs to hire and retain them. It’s not perfect, but it’s a much better way to show hiring’s ROI. And it’s one of the more underused advanced recruitment metrics that should be getting more attention.

Basic formula:

ELTV = (Annual Contribution per Employee x Average Tenure) – (Total Hiring and Onboarding Costs)

You can estimate contribution using revenue-per-employee or performance benchmarks by role. If you’re in a sales organization, this gets really clean. In other departments, it might take a little modeling, but it’s doable.

According to PeopleIX (2023), companies that invest at least $1,500 per hire in onboarding see a 30% increase in ELTV over three years. That’s a huge return on a relatively small investment.

How to raise ELTV:

• Try to reduce the ramp up period for onboarding
• Make sure that all goals and expectations are set from the beginning with hiring managers.
• Develop career paths that keep top talent growing and engaged.

Think of ELTV as the business case for hiring well—and developing thoughtfully. If you’re using advanced recruitment metrics to drive your strategy, this one needs to be part of the conversation.

Also, if you’re serious about improving employee value over time, don’t miss my post on Talent Development Strategy. It lays out the training and internal mobility tools that boost ELTV long term.

Cost to Hire: Get Real About What You’re Spending

Most of us track cost-per-hire, but it’s usually just a raw number: ad spend + recruiter salaries divided by number of hires. It’s fine for benchmarking, but it doesn’t give you insight.

To do this right, you need to track true cost to hire, which includes both hard and soft costs. And it needs to be analyzed alongside other advanced recruitment metrics to truly understand what you’re getting for your investment.

Real formula:

Cost to Hire = (Internal Costs + External Costs + Productivity Costs) / Number of Hires

• Internal costs = TA team salaries, tech stack, internal referrals
• External costs = agency fees, job boards, ads, events
• Productivity costs = time spent by hiring managers and interviewers

Toggl Track (Prokopets, 2024) points out that the true cost of hiring can be 2–3x higher than what most HR teams report when you factor in productivity.

Ways to lower cost without lowering quality:

• Double down on high-performing sourcing channels like referrals.
• Re-engage silver medalist candidates instead of starting from scratch.
• Swap out sequential interviews for panel-style interviews to save hours.

Cost to hire isn’t about cutting corners, it’s about cutting waste. It’s one of the most actionable advanced recruitment metrics, especially in budget-conscious organizations. Also see my insights on Recruitment ROI Metrics for ways to connect your hiring spending to real business impact.

Bring It All Together

These three metrics together give you a more clear picture on the health of your hiring process:

• Pipeline velocity shows your speed.
• ELTV shows your long-term impact.
• Cost to hire shows your efficiency.

These three advanced recruitment metrics create a powerful trio that can help any TA team get strategic. I recommend creating a simple dashboard that tracks these monthly or quarterly. It doesn’t have to be fancy just needs to remain consistent. Use it in your one-on-ones with Finance and your check-ins with the Head of People. Metrics like these build trust and credibility.

And here’s the real kicker: once you track these regularly, they become levers you can actually pull.

Don’t Fall into the Trap

It’s easy to obsess over one number and lose the full picture.

• Optimizing pipeline velocity at the expense of ELTV means you’re hiring fast but losing people early.
• Focusing too hard on cost to hire can lead to cutting vital steps that raise ELTV.

This is why tracking all three together matters. They keep you balanced and grounded in what really drives success. Use advanced recruitment metrics to guide your strategy not just give reports on it. I recommend you read my full guide on talent acquisition strategies to learn more how where metrics fit into the overall talent strategy.

References

Aspect. (2024). Candidate pipeline velocity. Aspect-HQ.

Bryq. (2024, June 28). Recruitment metrics: A comprehensive guide for 2024. https://www.bryq.com

CareerPlug. (2024). 2024 recruiting metrics report. https://www.careerplug.com

Davis, J. (2025, January 7). Cost per hire metric: Definition, formula, and how to calculate it. OnPay. https://onpay.com/blog/cost-per-hire-metric

PeopleIX. (2023, December 15). HR metrics throughout the employee journey: Unlocking employee lifetime value. https://peopleix.com

Prokopets, E. (2024, July 19). The true cost of hiring an employee in 2024. Toggl Track. https://toggl.com/blog/cost-of-hiring

TriSearch. (2024, January 15). Talent pipeline management in RPO: Strategies for sustainable growth. Radancy Blog. https://radancy.com/blog/talent-pipeline-management-rpo