Every hiring report is built on a funnel underneath. Getting the funnel right is most of the work. The numbers on top are mostly arithmetic once your stages mean something.
Your numbers depend on your setup
Module 8 said stages must be positions, not activities. This is where that pays off.
A stage called "waiting on hiring manager" makes every percentage meaningless, because a rate between two stages now includes something that is not a step.
If your numbers look odd, check the stage design before you check the data.
The basic funnel
| Stage | Getting to the next one tells you |
|---|---|
| Reached — applied or contacted | Whether your targeting and your advert are working |
| Got through screening | Whether your rules match the people you are attracting |
| First interview | Whether screening predicts anything, and whether booking is slow |
| Final stage | Whether your interviews are set at the right level |
| Offer | Whether your bar and your pool fit each other |
| Accepted | Whether your pay, process and pitch are competitive |
| Started | Whether anything goes wrong between accepting and day one |
Most teams skip that last row, and it catches a real problem: people who accept and then do not start, usually because a counter-offer arrived during a long notice period.
Two funnels, not one
People who applied and people you approached behave completely differently. Applications give you a huge top and a low pass rate. Approaching people gives you a small top and a high pass rate, because you checked them before contacting them.
Combining them gives you an average that describes neither, and hides what is actually happening. Report them separately and compare each against itself over time.
Numbers that look good and tell you nothing
| Not useful | Useful instead |
|---|---|
| Applications received | What share got through screening — volume without quality is a cost |
| Interviews held | Interviews per offer |
| "Candidates in the pipeline" | Candidates by stage, with how long they have been there |
| Messages sent | Reply rate per message in the sequence |
| Jobs worked on | Jobs filled, and how long they stayed open |
The pattern: counting activity describes effort. Percentages describe whether the effort worked.
Reading the shape
| What you see | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| Lots of applications, few getting through | The advert attracts the wrong people, or your rules are too narrow |
| Good screening, poor interview results | Your screening rules do not predict what interviewers look for |
| Plenty reach the final stage, few offers | Your bar is above your pool, or the panel cannot agree |
| Offers turned down | Money, speed, or the process itself |
| A big drop between any two stages | Check how long booking took before deciding anything about quality |
That last row is the most common wrong diagnosis in hiring. A drop between screening and interview is usually delay, not quality — people left because it took eleven days to book a call.
Small numbers
Most teams do not hire enough for percentages to be stable. With twelve hires a year, one unusual search moves every number you report.
Two rules keep you honest. Always show the count next to the percentage. And never explain a change based on a handful of people. "40% offer acceptance" means something very different when it is 2 out of 5 versus 80 out of 200.
How often to report
- Weekly: only things you can act on — who is stuck, what needs doing, who is going cold.
- Monthly: funnel percentages, where people came from, hires against plan.
- Quarterly: time to hire, cost per hire, quality measures, capacity.
Reporting a quarterly number every week produces noise that people then try to explain, which is worse than not reporting it.
Start here
Before adding any number, make sure every candidate is in the right stage and every rejection has a reason. Clean data with three numbers beats messy data with twenty.