Glossary: HR & Recruiting Definitions
The candidate conversion rate is a percentage of how many potential applicants have submitted an application after viewing a company’s job advertisement—and have thus been converted into actual applicants, candidates, or later employees.
The conversion rate actually comes from online marketing and expresses how many of the visitors to a website (or an online shop) carry out a certain transaction (e.g., downloading or purchasing something). With this transaction, they are converted from interested parties into customers or buyers.
However, the conversion rate has also found its way into human resource management. Here, too, it is ultimately about selling something in a targeted way: A vacancy in a company to qualified talents.
In this context, the candidate conversion rate indicates how high the number of applications is in relation to the total number of potential applicants (job seekers) who have looked at a job advertisement on a job board or career site.
Conversion rates are enormously versatile. In fact, they can be tracked throughout the hiring process to determine how many candidates complete a particular step, such as:
or even the entire path through the hiring pipeline without dropping out or receiving a rejection.
The so-called job conversion rate can also be used to measure the success of an individual recruiter in filling different positions.
In this article, however, we will focus more on the candidate conversion rate and its use as a recruiting KPI.
The candidate conversion rate provides important insights into the quality and attractiveness of the job advertisement. Furthermore, it also allows conclusions to be drawn about the user-friendliness of the application process and the quality of the candidate journey—right from the start of the search process.
If the candidate conversion rate is poor, it’s possible to intervene quickly and make improvements.
In addition to other metrics, it can even be determined more precisely where exactly the sticking point was at which potential candidates abandoned the process.
If no or only very few applications are submitted (i.e., hardly any or no conversions), this could be an indication of the following possible causes:
For example, if it’s not possible to apply via smartphone or tablet, this may well discourage great candidates as it gives your company an outdated and backward impression.
An excellent career page is, therefore, an important prerequisite for a sufficient candidate conversion rate.
If you are looking for marketing specialists but publish the job ad on a platform for IT specialists, you will naturally receive a rather poor response—if any at all.
Job ads with clear job titles have a much better chance of generating the sought-after applications.
This is exactly what the job description is for, so it should be as descriptive as possible to encourage applicants to apply.
If the list is too big, they might question the work-life balance quickly arises, which is likely to be neglected if the list of tasks is too long.
All of the above can have a negative impact on a company’s talent acquisition, growth, and competitiveness in the long run—and therefore on employer image.
Fortunately, however, there are a few simple actions companies can take to increase candidate conversion rates and counteract this (more on this at the end of this article).
The formula for calculating the candidate conversion rate is quite simple. Just divide the number of applications received by the total number of views (impressions) of a job advertisement and multiply by 100:
Candidate conversion rate = number of applications / number of views x 100
And there you have it, the conversion rate percentage!
If a company has carried out talent sourcing instead, it is not the number of views but the number of contacts that is taken as a basis and put in relation to the number of applications received.
Would you like to see an example? Say a company has published its job advertisement online and 1,000 potential applicants have seen it. As a result, 50 applications were submitted.
Candidate conversion rate = 50 / 1,000 x 100 = 5%
In this example, the candidate conversion rate is 5%. In the end, however, the decisive factor for the success of a recruitment process is not so much the percentage as the actual number of applicants.
If enough applications are received, a good candidate conversion rate could be as low as 2%.
Wondering how to track the number of views? For the career site, this can be done with the help of Google Analytics. It can be a bit more difficult with job boards. However, many job platforms already offer their own analytics functions that let you calculate the candidate conversion rate.
If the job was published on several job boards at the same time in addition to the career page (multiposting), the views and applications per platform can, of course, also be added up and an overall conversion rate calculated.
Alternatively, these separate values can also be used to calculate the effectiveness of individual channels (channel effectiveness), which then enables companies to focus on the best-performing job boards.
What can companies do if not enough (or any) applications are submitted? Here are some possibilities:
The fewer clicks it takes to submit an application, the better. And, of course, mobile-friendliness (mobile recruiting) should not be neglected to increase the candidate conversion rate.
In our blog article on this topic, we show how companies can bring their career page to life and convey their employer branding.
We explain how to do this in our guide to writing job ads and offer useful job description templates for many in-demand professions.
What the “right” channels are depends on the target audience, but by choosing the appropriate platforms, such as niche job boards, companies can significantly increase their reach and visibility and convert even more potential applicants into candidates.
With JOIN, for example, companies receive a mobile-optimised career page, a simple application process, multi-posting, suggestions for suitable job platforms (also for niche job boards) and many other useful tools free of charge.
In short: All you need to receive more (qualified) applications.
Try JOIN now for free and attract better talent faster.
Simplify your hiring process and workflow
Understand how to create job ads that actually work. Leverage winning strategies to best promote ads. Find the ideal candidate faster.
Already have an account? Sign in
Similar terms
Related to “C”
Similar terms
Quality of hire
Quality of hire indicates how well a newly hired person matches the expectations and requirements of a company and how much they contribute to its success.
ViewCost per Hire
The cost per hire indicates the average cost of the measures a company takes to successfully fill a vacant position.
ViewTime to Hire
Time to hire is an important recruiting metric that measures the time from a candidate's entry into the application process to the signing of the employment contract.
View