ATS Metrics Explained: How to Hire Faster and Smarter

The strength of any organization is its talent, and recruiters are under more pressure than ever to find the best of the best, at speed. SHRM finds that nearly seven in 10 organizations struggle to fill their full-time roles, despite considerable investment in hiring technology and processes. The difference between organizations that hire well and those that don't often boils down to the quality of their decisions. ATS metrics give recruiters the intelligence to make better ones.

What are application tracking system (ATS) metrics?

ATS metrics are the data points your applicant tracking system collects and measures throughout your hiring process. This information shows you how well recruitment is working, from the moment a candidate applies until they accept a job offer.

Instead of running your hiring process on gut instinct, ATS metrics take an evidence-backed approach. You might already know that a role “took a while” to fill, or that a recent hire applied via social media. But ATS metrics go deeper, revealing it took exactly 47 days to fill the role, and that LinkedIn produced 30% of your applicants, but only 8% of your hires. Using these metrics, you can plot out your next steps to refine your approach.

Why hiring teams should track ATS metrics

Tracking vital ATS metrics as part of your recruiting strategy bolsters your efforts and lets you make smarter hiring decisions faster.

Reduce time to hire

Every day a vacancy goes unfilled costs your business in lost productivity and extra pressure on the rest of your team. SHRM's 2025 research into recruiting benchmarking puts the average time to fill a role at six weeks. But ATS data can break down that time and reveal how long candidates spend at each specific stage to identify any pipeline bottlenecks.

Reduce the cost of hire

Hiring is a significant financial investment. SHRM's 2025 benchmarking data puts the average cost per hire for non-executive roles at $1,200 and executive roles at $10,625, which is a 113% increase since 2017. Tracking the right ATS metrics helps you protect your investment. When you know which sourcing channels convert, you can direct your budget toward what works and eliminate spend on what doesn't.

Forecast future hiring needs

Reactive hiring is costly. When a role opens unexpectedly, the pressure to fill it quickly can lead to inflated offers and hiring candidates who aren’t quite the right fit. The more historical data your ATS holds, the better positioned you are to anticipate upcoming demand and start taking action, like posting the ad or tapping your candidate pool, before it becomes urgent.

Over time, ATS data reveals patterns, such as certain roles taking consistently longer to fill than others. This intelligence allows you to increase your lead time to source thoughtfully rather than feeling the pressure to make snap decisions.

Improve the candidate experience and offer acceptance

A strong hiring process directly influences whether your best candidates say yes. Gallup finds that two in three employees hired in the last year rated their candidate experience as "exceptional" (27%) or "very good" (39%).

Your ATS data makes that experience possible at scale. When you can see where candidates drop out or how long they wait between stages, you have everything you need to close the gaps before you lose a great hire.

14 essential ATS metrics to track

Most ATS platforms measure dozens of different recruitment metrics, which can result in data fatigue. Remember that tracking everything isn’t the goal. Instead, start with your main question, then work backwards to the metrics that answer it. The following ATS metrics are each integral to a high-performing recruitment function.

1. Overall funnel data and candidates per stage

Your overall funnel gives you a bird's-eye view of how many candidates exist at each stage of your hiring process at any point between their application and your offer.

Example: You notice a sharp drop between the screening stage and the first interview. Candidates aren't making it through, but you're not sure why.

Take action: Map your drop-off points by stage, then dig into the "why" for your biggest one first. Do you have too many applicants to screen efficiently? Are candidates accepting other offers because your process is too slow and they disengage? If candidates actively withdraw rather than you rejecting them, look at your communication cadence and time between stages.

2. Candidate sources and total candidates applied per month by source

This metric tracks the monthly volume of candidates entering your pipeline from each sourcing channel, including job boards, LinkedIn, employee referrals, your careers page, campus recruiting, and any other active channels.

Example: Your careers page generates modest application volumes compared to your job board spend.

Take action: Review source data alongside pass-through rates. Audit any underperforming channels to decide whether they're worth optimizing or cutting entirely.

3. Pass-through rates by source type

The pass-through rate measures the percentage of candidates from a particular source who advance from one hiring stage to the next. This metric reframes how you evaluate sourcing channels, focusing on quality over quantity.

Example: A job board sends you 400 applicants, but only 5% make it past screening. Meanwhile, your employee referral program sends 40 candidates, and 40% advance. On paper, the job board looks more active, but a closer look reveals that your referral program delivers eight times the value per candidate.

Take action: Rank your sourcing channels by pass-through rate rather than application volume. Reduce your spend on low-converting channels and redirect your budget toward the sources consistently producing quality candidates who progress. As a best practice, revisit this quarterly as your hiring mix changes.

4. Candidate-to-offer ratio

Your candidate-to-offer ratio refers to the number of candidates who enter your process compared to every offer you make. A high ratio often signals a problem at the top of your funnel.

Example: Your ratio is 150:1. Your team is reviewing enormous volumes of applications, but very few candidates reach the offer stage. Your recruiters are under significant strain, and your time to hire has ground to a halt.

Take action: Audit your job descriptions for clarity and accuracy; any vague or over-specified job ads will likely attract high volumes of poor-fit applicants. Consider adding a short pre-screening questionnaire to filter applicants before they enter the full process. Even two or three targeted questions can significantly reduce the volume your team needs to manually review.

5. Candidate-to-hire ratio

Your candidate-to-hire ratio measures the total number of candidates needed to make one successful hire, factoring in both rejections throughout the process and any offers that candidates decline.

Example: Your candidate-to-offer ratio looks healthy at 60:1, but your candidate-to-hire ratio is 120:1. The gap tells you that a significant number of candidates are declining their offers, which should be a red flag for recruiters.

Take action: If your ratio is rising, identify whether the issue is early or late in the process. A high drop-off early on points to sourcing and screening problems. A gap between offer and hire points to compensation, process speed, or candidate experience issues. Each requires a different response.

6. Opening status and openings by team

This metric gives you a real-time view of every open role across your organization, including how long it’s been open and where it sits.

Example: A real-time view of your open roles reveals that three of your five longest-running vacancies all sit within the same department. The hiring manager hasn't flagged it as a problem, but the data shows two of those roles have been open for over 90 days, which is well beyond your average time to fill.

Take action: Early intervention is almost always easier and cheaper than an urgent hire made under pressure. Use opening status data to identify any at-risk roles before they become a business problem. Set a threshold, for example, any role open beyond 150% of your average time to fill could automatically trigger a review conversation with the relevant hiring manager.

7. Time to hire

Time to hire measures the number of days between a candidate entering your pipeline and accepting an offer. It reflects the efficiency of your recruitment process, showing how quickly your team moves candidates through once they've applied.

Example: Your average time to hire is 38 days, but when you break it down by department, engineering roles average 58 days while commercial roles close in 24.

Take action: Use time to hire by department or role type to identify where your process is slowest, then dig into the stage-level data to find out why. A consistently slow time to hire in one area often points to a specific bottleneck, such as a hiring manager who's hard to schedule or a clunky approval process that adds unnecessary days.

8. Time to fill

Time to fill measures the number of days from when a job requisition opens to when the role is filled, including time spent gaining approvals and posting the job. SHRM's 2025 recruiting benchmarking research finds that extra-large organizations report 61 days for non-executive roles and 60 days for executive positions. But be careful how heavily you weigh this metric. Zhenya Rozinskiy, CEO and founder of Mirigos, explains: "If HR is measured on time to fill, they'll fill fast, not right." Speed is only valuable if the hire works out, so always read time to fill alongside quality indicators.

Example: A role in your finance team has been open for 72 days. Time to fill flags the problem, but doesn't explain that the role is proving genuinely hard to fill due to a limited compensation package.

Take action: If a role consistently takes longer than your average, investigate whether the issue is internal process speed or external market conditions.

9. Time in each stage

Time in each stage breaks your overall hiring timeline down into the time candidates spend at each individual step, for example, application review, screening call, interview, assessment, and offer.

Example: Your overall time to hire looks reasonable at 35 days. But stage-level data reveals that candidates wait an average of 12 days for a hiring manager review.

Take action: Set internal goals for each stage and share them with hiring managers. If a stage consistently exceeds its target, make it visible. A simple weekly report can be enough to shift behavior.

10. Number of hires and monthly hires by department

Number of hires tracks your total hiring output over a given period, while monthly hires by department breaks that down to show which teams are growing or backfilling, and at what pace.

Example: Your overall hire numbers look healthy, but the department-level view reveals that your product team has made six hires in three months while your operations team hasn't filled a single role in the same period despite having two open requisitions.

Take action: Use monthly hires by department to identify teams where hiring velocity falls behind headcount plans. Flag these early to leadership so you can make resourcing decisions, such as additional recruiter support or revised timelines, before the gap becomes a business risk.

11. Reasons for declining offers

When someone declines an offer, your ATS should capture if there are any issues with the candidate experience. Reasons for declining offers is one of the few qualitative data points in your recruitment stack, and it's one of the most valuable.

Example: Over a quarter, you notice a significant number of candidates declining their offers cite compensation as the primary reason.

Take action: Review declined offer reasons monthly and look for patterns. A single declined offer is anecdotal, but five in a row for the same reason is a signal that demands a response. Common themes, whether that's salary, competing offers, or role clarity, each point to a specific fix, and tracking them over time shows whether your interventions are working.

12. Offer acceptance rate

Your offer acceptance rate is the percentage of job offers that candidates accept. It's one of the clearest indicators of how competitive your offers are and how well your candidates engage (or don’t) with your hiring process.

Example: Your offer acceptance rate drops from 88% to 71% over two quarters. The trend is clear, but the rate alone won't tell you why. That's where your declined offer reasons data comes in.

Take action: Monitor your acceptance rate consistently so you catch downward trends early. If it starts to slip, investigate whether the issue is compensation, process speed, or a change in market conditions.

13. Demographic data for candidates

Your ATS can capture demographic information, such as gender, ethnicity, and age, at each stage of your hiring funnel. This data allows you to assess whether your process treats all candidates equitably.

Example: Your application pool is broadly diverse, but demographic data reveals that women over 40 are progressing past the screening stage at a significantly lower rate than other candidates.

Take action: If drop-off rates for a particular demographic group are pronounced at a specific point in your funnel, treat it as a process problem that needs investigating. Consider auditing your job descriptions for exclusionary language and using structured interview frameworks to reduce the impact of bias.

14. Pass-through rates by source (through a diversity lens)

You may already be tracking pass-through rates by source to measure channel quality. Applying a diversity lens to the same data reveals whether certain sourcing channels consistently underrepresent particular candidate groups, and how that affects the diversity of your eventual hires.

Example: Your employee referral program has excellent pass-through rates overall, but demographic data shows it's producing a homogeneous candidate pool.

Take action: Diversify your sourcing mix deliberately. If referrals are strong on quality but weak on diversity, supplement them with channels that reach underrepresented groups, such as specialist job boards or targeted outreach programs. Track the demographic profile of candidates by source alongside pass-through rates so you're optimizing for both quality and equity.

Track the ATS metrics that matter with Deel

78% of HR professionals currently use an ATS, making it the most widely adopted talent acquisition technology. This rises to 97.8% in Fortune 500 companies. Clearly, applicant tracking systems are integral to recruiting teams, but the value of the technology depends on the data it presents, and how it allows you to take action.

Deel’s ATS helps teams hire global talent faster by bringing the entire candidate-to-hire journey into a unified global HR system. Available as a module within Deel HR, it offers the following benefits for hiring teams.

• Faster sourcing and recruiting with AI: Generate job descriptions, source candidates, and screen applicants automatically, so your team spends less time on admin and more time nurturing the right hires.
• Seamless candidate to employee experience on a central platform: Hiring flows directly into onboarding, HR, and payroll.
• Smarter candidate insights with built-in data analytics: Track the metrics that matter, including time to hire and pass-through rates, offer acceptance and candidate sources, all from one configurable dashboard.
• Native integrations across LinkedIn, Google Workspace, and Microsoft: Post jobs, schedule interviews, and manage candidate communications without leaving the platform.
• Compliant, secure hiring to safeguard your business: Custom permissions, GDPR safeguards, and built-in local labor law compliance keep your hiring fast, consistent, and risk-free across 150+ countries.

Ready to deliver a complete candidate-to-hire experience? Book a Deel demo today.