The dashboard shows open jobs. Your manager clicks through and finds a role with candidates shortlisted but no CVs sent. The useful question is what happens next.
Recruitment KPIs are measures your agency chooses to track progress against its goals. Start with the decisions your managers need to make, then agree how each number is calculated. A focused view should help someone investigate a record, ask a useful question or assign an action.
Start with the decision
Choose a question for each part of the desk. Which jobs need attention? Where are candidates waiting? Which client commitments are due? How is the team progressing against its agreed target?
Separate activity from outcomes. CV submissions describe work completed. Interviews, accepted offers and starts describe different stages of progress. Review them together, with the job and candidate context available underneath.
Agree what each measure means
Write a short definition before building the chart: what you count, which date you use, who owns the record and what you exclude. Add the reporting period and when the data was last refreshed.
For open jobs, decide which statuses qualify and how you handle paused or cancelled requirements. For placements, choose whether the report counts acceptance, a confirmed placement record or an actual start. Name the measure to match that choice.
For a time measure, specify both endpoints. You might measure days from an agreed job brief to an accepted offer, or from a candidate's application to their start. Keep those definitions distinct and make missing dates visible.
Use a small set of views
Open jobs and age: inspect the oldest active requirements, their owner and the latest activity. Ask whether the brief is current and what is needed to progress it.
Submissions and interviews: follow candidate-job submissions through to an interview. Check how repeat submissions and multiple interview rounds are counted.
Starts against plan: compare actual starts in the selected period with the target agreed for that team. Keep permanent starts, contract starts and temporary bookings in views that reflect how those desks work.
Client activity: look at job and placement history alongside recent contact and the next commitment. A high placement count and a recent conversation answer different questions.
Treat these as suggested starting points. Choose the measures your team can define, maintain and use.
Keep the denominator consistent
Here is an illustrative calculation, using invented data rather than a customer result or benchmark.
Take ten distinct candidate-job submissions made during one week. By the review date, two of those submissions have led to an interview. The cohort's submission-to-interview conversion is 2 ÷ 10 × 100 = 20%.
If three other interviews that week came from older submissions, report those separately when measuring the new cohort. Dividing every interview that happened this week by this week's submissions answers a different question.
Show the review date beside the percentage. Some submissions may still be awaiting a response. When the denominator is zero, show that the rate is unavailable and explain why.
Check the records behind the number
Before sharing a dashboard, open a sample of the underlying records. Check dates, duplicates, ownership and stage changes. Compare the same definition across the consultant, team and company views.
In Talisman, Dashman supports dashboards, date and team filters, targets and reports you can reuse. It can help draft a KPI or report from a plain-language request. The people with access check and refine it before saving the view for others.
Confirm the available fields and your chosen calculation during setup. A convincing chart still needs a definition your agency trusts.
Finish the review with an action
Pick the records that need attention. Agree who will check the brief, contact the client or update the next step, then record when it will happen.
Keep the dashboard focused on decisions. The number starts the conversation; the work on the record is what follows.