What metrics should recruiters track to measure success in sales hiring?

Ah, sales hiring—where the stakes are high, the quotas are higher, and somewhere, a recruiter is trying to figure out if “great people skills” on a résumé means “actually good at sales” or just “can hold a conversation about the weather.” Sales hiring isn’t just about finding someone who can talk fast and shake hands aggressively; it’s about bringing in people who will actually drive revenue instead of just driving their managers insane. And how do we separate the closers from the posers? Metrics, my friend. Cold, hard, beautiful data. Here’s what you need to track if you don’t want your sales hiring process to feel like a game of darts in the dark.

1. Time-to-Fill

2. Cost-Per-Hire

3. Quality of Hire

4. Retention Rate

5. Offer Acceptance Rate

Read more on Revamp Your Recruitment Process for Your Sales Force: Strategies for Success

• Basically Yelp reviews for your sales hiring process.
• Happy candidates = good reputation. Annoyed candidates = internet rants and burned bridges.
• How to track: Use surveys to ask candidates how the process went. Brace yourself for the feedback.

• How many candidates you need to interview before you find The One.
• If you’re interviewing 20 people for every hire, either your screening process is broken, or you just really like meeting new people.
• How to track: Divide the number of interviews by the number of offers made. If the number is ridiculous, rethink your screening game.

• Which magical portal (job board, referral, LinkedIn stalking) actually brings in the best candidates?
• Helps you stop throwing money at places that only bring you applicants who describe themselves as “visionaries.”
• How to track: Log the source of each candidate and check which sources actually lead to hires. Simple, yet powerful.

• Measures how long it takes a new hire to go from “learning the ropes” to “hitting quota like a boss.”
• If this number is too high, either your training is weak, or you’ve accidentally hired someone who thinks “ABC” means “Always Be Confused.”
• How to track: Track new hire sales performance over the first few months. If they’re still “learning” at month six, you might have a problem.

• Tracks how diverse your sales hires actually are (beyond just nodding and saying “we value diversity” in meetings).
• More diversity = better ideas, stronger teams, and fewer awkward company photos where everyone looks the same.
• How to track: Collect demographic data on hires while respecting privacy laws. Then, do something useful with it.

Conclusion