What a Good Recruiting KPI Dashboard Looks Like

Three numbers.

That's all you need to know if your recruiting is working. Most operators either track nothing or build some elaborate spreadsheet they never look at. Both wrong. You need a simple dashboard you actually check once a month. Here's what goes in it.

The Three Numbers That Matter

**1. Time to Fill**

Days from posting to first day. For field positions in home service, 2-4 weeks is normal. If you're consistently past 30 days, your process has a leak.

Could be your posting isn't attracting people. Could be you're responding slow. Could be you're losing candidates between phone screen and offer. Remember → candidates apply to 5+ places at once. Start late → finish late → lose them.

If you're filling under 10 days every time, ask if you're being thorough enough. Speed matters, but not so much you're skipping the screening that keeps bad fits out.

**2. Cost Per Hire**

Add up everything. What you paid to post the job, recruiter fees, time spent on interviews, signing bonus if you gave one. Divide by number of hires.

For most home service businesses, reasonable cost per hire is $200-600. If you're running Indeed without managing it, you could easily be over $1,000 per hire without knowing it. Track this and you'll find out fast which channels are stealing your budget.

**3. 90-Day Retention Rate**

Did the person you hired still work for you after 90 days? That's the real test.

A hire who quits in week three cost you everything and gave you nothing. Tracking this tells you whether your hiring standards are right and whether your onboarding is working.

If your 90-day retention is below 70%, you have a problem on one of two sides. Either you're hiring people who were never going to stay, or you're losing people to a broken first-week experience. Either way, you need to know.

Track Where Candidates Come From

For each hire, write down the source. Facebook. Craigslist. Indeed. Employee referral. Previous applicant you kept warm. Google.

Do this for six months, then look at where your actual hires came from versus where you spent money.

Nine times out of ten, referrals and one or two job boards are responsible for most of your good hires. Everything else is noise.

Cut what's not producing. Put that budget into what is.

The Setup Takes 15 Minutes

Create a spreadsheet. Five columns:

| Name | Source | Hire Date | 90-Day Check | Cost |

That's it.

Update it when someone gets hired. Put a recurring calendar event for 90 days out so you remember to mark the retention column. Review it on the first of each month.

You don't need software. You don't need a dashboard with graphs. You need accurate data you actually look at.

If you want to go one level deeper, add a sixth-month and one-year column. That tells you whether retention issues are front-loaded (bad onboarding) or longer-term (bad culture or pay).

Start Right Now

Pull up a blank sheet. Go back to your last five hires. Write down where each one came from and whether they're still employed.

That exercise takes 20 minutes and will immediately tell you which channel deserves more of your time.

Most operators find that two of their five recent hires came from the same source. That's your answer. Double down there. Stop spreading budget thin across six platforms that each produce one application per quarter.

The spreadsheet will prove it.

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Want a recruiting system that runs without you babysitting it? [Qualified Hires](https://app.qualifiedhires.com/waitlist) is built for home service operators who are done winging it.

Keep Reading

• [How to Measure Time to Hire and Improve It](/guides/how-to-measure-time-to-hire-and-improve-it/)
• [Build Your Efficient Recruiting Funnel](/guides/build-your-efficient-recruiting-funnel/)
• [The Biggest Bottleneck in Your Recruiting Funnel](/guides/biggest-bottleneck-in-your-recruiting-funnel/)