The five KPIs most HR teams track are time to hire, cost per hire, turnover rate, absence rate, and employee engagement. They are good for an HR department. They are the wrong five for a staffing desk. A desk should track fill rate, time to fill, first submittal accepted, placements that stick past 30 days, and repeat orders. And one more that almost nobody counts: submittals sent back by the client.
HR's five, in one line each
- Time to hire. How long from a candidate entering the pipeline to an accepted offer.
- Cost per hire. Everything spent on recruiting, divided by hires made.
- Turnover rate. The share of people who leave in a period.
- Absence rate. Days missed, as a share of days scheduled.
- Engagement. Usually a survey score on how people feel about their work.
These answer an HR question: is the company a good place to work, and are we hiring well?
A staffing desk's five
A staffing desk answers a different question: do clients get the right people, on time, the first time? Swap the list.
- Fill rate. Positions filled divided by positions requested. Count only placements that held.
- Time to fill. From the written order to the confirmed start, by type of order.
- First submittal accepted. How often the first candidate a client sees is one they want to meet. This is the quality number.
- Placements that stick. Still there after 30 days, or after the first week for short temp work.
- Repeat orders. How many clients send the next order without calling anyone else.
The sixth one: submittals sent back
Most firms never count how many submittals a client rejects before an interview. It feels like noise. It is the most useful number on the desk, because it predicts the other five.
A submittal that comes back is a must-have the recruiter missed or did not prove. Each one adds days to time to fill, lowers fill rate, and spends a little client trust. Count them per recruiter and per client for a month. The pattern will show you exactly what to coach.
Activity KPIs, and why to be careful with them
Calls made, resumes sent, emails out. These go up when people work harder and tell you nothing about whether they worked right. Use them to spot a recruiter who has stopped working, not to judge one who is working well. The five above are outcome KPIs. They are harder to game and easier to be proud of.
Where M-Tracker fits
The sixth KPI is hard to count by hand. M-Tracker checks each submittal against its job order before it goes out, so the misses that would have been sent back get caught first, and a manager can see which orders got accepted work the first time. The desk's KPIs improve from the work itself, not from a dashboard.
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Questions people ask
Should a staffing firm track engagement at all?
For its own recruiters, yes. For KPIs about the service, use the desk's five.
How many KPIs is too many?
More than six and nobody looks at them. Five outcomes and one early warning is enough.
Which KPI should a new branch start with?
First submittal accepted. It is the fastest to move and it drags the others with it.
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