Let’s be blunt – the hiring process is hard, especially for tech companies. There are far too many factors to account for, and a suboptimal recruitment process means you end up with the wrong candidate more often than not.
The interview to offer conversion rate in tech is a strong indicator of your recruitment funnel’s success. As a recruiter, it’s important to understand the difference between having more applicants to choose from and attracting the right applicants.
According to Lever, the average number of interviews compared to each hire is the highest in tech, meaning that the conversion rate is the lowest.
So tech recruiters seem statistically worse off. But this doesn’t mean your tech company is doomed to have a suboptimal recruitment funnel. On the contrary, you can have an exceptional recruitment funnel if you optimize it the right way. There are some tried and tested, reliable methods to optimize the interview to offer process, and that’s what we’re going to cover.
What is an interview to offer conversion?
Interview to offer conversion is a popular recruitment metric that helps measure the success of the hiring process. Simply defined, this conversion metric measures how many candidates receive a job offer after an interview or how many are called back for a second interview. This conversion rate is independent of the offer acceptance, as that depends on the candidate.
So, if every candidate you interview is offered a job, then your interview to offer conversion is 100%, and the interview to offer ratio is 1:1. Why is this good, though? Doesn’t it just mean you’re handing out jobs? The short answer is no.
Optimizing your interview to offer conversion in the right way means the few candidates that you call in for an interview are ideal for the role. It doesn’t mean you call all fifty applicants in and hire them all. Instead, an optimized recruitment funnel indicates a reliable technical screening process that filters every candidate except the ideal one.
How do you calculate the interview to offer ratio?
The interview to offer conversion ratio is an important metric for your recruitment success. To understand this ratio, let’s take an example of a tech company conducting five interviews. From the five interviewed candidates, one receives a job offer. This means your interview to offer conversion ratio is 5:1.
Why do we concern ourselves with these metrics? Well, they let you know what percentage of interviews lead to offers and provide some valuable insights that we’ll discuss soon. But, first, let’s see how to calculate the interview to offer ratio.
We can use the simple formula:
Interview to offer ratio = number of unique offers extended/ total number of applicants interviewed
To calculate the interview to offer rate, rather than the ratio, multiply the above formula by 100.
This gives us the modified formula:
Interview to offer rate = (number of unique offers extended/ total number of applicants interviewed) x 100
How to interpret your conversion rates?
Calculating the recruitment conversion metric is simple enough, but what exactly does it tell you, and why is it important? Well, a major advantage of tracking your company’s conversion rates is that, in the long run, you obtain a clear picture of your company’s overall operations and progress.
Recruiters can use conversion rates to track the progress of the recruitment funnel over time and see how successful your hiring process is. For example, if your conversion ratio reveals that too many interviews are required to find suitable candidates, this may indicate a need to improve your screening process.
Conversion rates also help the hiring managers and recruiters identify hiccups – if the rates experience a low, then it’s time to investigate the possible cause. Some reasons could be that you are targeting too many candidates or targeting the wrong pool of candidates. Conversely, if your conversion rates are at an all-time high, this indicates your funnel’s success.
Another way to utilize the recruitment metrics is by benchmarking them against some other standard, for example, the average interview to offer conversion rate for tech companies. You can then use these benchmarks as the baseline to measure your own company’s success.
What is a good conversion rate for tech recruitments?
Conversion rates help you monitor the success of a recruitment funnel, but what exactly is a good interview to offer a conversion rate? According to Lever, the recruitment conversion rate in data, marketing, product management, and engineering roles is 33-35%. You can think of this as the benchmark for your conversion rate’s success.
A lower conversion rate for your tech company would mean that you need to optimize your recruitment funnel. Conversely, a higher conversion rate could mean that you’re doing very well or hiring the right technical talent quickly.
According to the same site, a lower conversion rate signifies the need for your company to improve its brand and employer website. Powerful tech skills assessment platforms such as WeCP (We Create Problems) help tech recruiters achieve as high as 80-100% interviews to offer conversion rates.
The importance of optimizing your interview to offer conversion
Let’s be honest, as much as you’d like to go through a wide pool of candidates to pick the perfect one, a wider selection invites higher costs and a lot of hassle. Moreover, conducting too many interviews isn’t just costly but may also wear your recruiters down. Thus, you can save valuable company time and resources by weeding out the wrong candidates right from the start.
How exactly can you filter out wrong choices early on, though? Tech skill tests for recruitment are one of the most reliable methods to optimize your recruitment process. Online coding tests help recruiters screen out candidates that lack the required skills for a given role, saving you time and money in the long run. In addition, screening out ill-fit candidates leaves you with a promising selection to choose from, increasing your interview to offer rate significantly.
Using reliable screening methods is a great way to optimize the recruitment funnel and thus increase your interview to offer rate. However, there are some bad ways to increase your conversion rates that tech recruiters should avoid altogether. For example, offering a job to almost everyone who gives an interview will definitely increase your conversion rates, but you’ll end up with ill-fit candidates. This artificial inflation of the conversion rates might look good in the short term but is devastating for your company’s growth in the long run – so steer away from it.
5 ways to achieve 100% interview to offer conversion
Optimizing the recruitment funnel is easier said than done because you have to address each stage of the process. This includes the attraction stage, the application stage, the screening stage, the offer stage, and lastly, the offer acceptance stage. But, of course, perfecting the funnel is something all companies should aim for – it ultimately saves precious time and resources.
An optimal funnel means you won’t spend months hunting for candidates only to hire the wrong ones. This is why we are about to share 5 ways for you to perfect your hiring process.
#1 Spend your recruitment budget on optimal channels
To streamline the recruitment process, it is essential to devise a strategy from the very beginning. It might include creating a recruitment budget and planning the right way to spend it. If you don’t have a proper recruitment plan, you might need to invest in one. If you don’t have the appropriate skill testing tool, you might have to find one – whatever is required.
#2 Screen via technical skills assessment tests
The importance of getting things right from the start cannot be overstated, and that’s why we’re mentioning it again. Coding and tech skill assessment tests are a powerful tool for tech recruiters to optimize their recruitment funnels. These assessments provide a means for you to assess a candidate’s potential for problem-solving in the workplace, offering more reliable insight regarding their fit.
By screening out unworthy candidates pre-interview, recruiters can dramatically increase their interviews to offer conversion rates.
#3 Automate your outreach & resume screening
Automation is a real game-changer across the board, and the recruitment funnel has certainly benefited from it too. For example, recruiters can send bulk invites to the candidates to automate initial outreach, saving time and resources in the long run.
Sifting through hundreds or even thousands of resumes manually is a tedious task – and something of olden times. Nowadays, AI is readily available to help recruiters screen out candidates in mere minutes. With automated screening, you only have to set the criteria of what you’re looking for in a candidate, quite like a computer search. Then, the AI takes care of the rest.
#4 Rediscover old applicants for new roles
Sometimes, candidates have solid skill sets but are not the right fit for the role they’ve applied for. However, your company might have a new role open up that a previous applicant would be perfect for. This is where candidate rediscovery shines – it helps recruiters sift through previous resumes and discover old applicants that may be perfect fits.
#5 Conduct online technical interviews
While in-person interviews certainly have a charm of their own, online interviews have some commendable advantages. An online interview:
- Saves valuable time and resources, both for interviews and interviewees.
- Offers recording options – for you to analyze the interview later on.
- Allows real-time pair programming interviews.
- Flexibility – online interviews make it easier to assess candidates who live far away or screen applicants for remote positions.
The enhanced flexibility provides recruiters with a more diverse pool of applicants, increasing the likelihood of finding the ideal one.
To wrap up
Optimizing your recruitment funnel helps companies save time and cut back on costs, but more importantly, it guarantees you an ideal candidate. Measuring recruitment metrics such as the interview to offer conversion rate can give recruiters meaningful insights into the performance of their hiring process.
With the right tools, recruiters can monitor the funnel and devise future strategies to improve problem areas. An interview to offer conversion ratio helps candidates keep track of their success – the goal is to reach a 1:1 ratio. A 1:1 ratio indicates an optimized recruitment funnel and a streamlined process, so long as you follow the best practices and implement the right screening strategies.
WeCP | We Create Problems is a technical skill testing and video interview software that helps recruiters and hiring managers to assess developer skills using 12+ performance metrics for over 2000 technical skills with automated grading and evaluation for faster and bias-free hiring.
SCHEDULE A DEMO now to let us help you achieve a 100% interview to hire ratio.
