Glossary
Candidate funnel
A candidate funnel is the series of steps applicants go through in a hiring process, from first seeing a job to accepting an offer, counted by how many people reach each step.
It’s called a funnel because it’s wide at the top and narrow at the bottom: many people see a job, and only one or two are hired. Counting people at each step turns hiring into numbers you can act on. Every step loses people. Some of that loss is the process doing its job. Some of it is a problem you can fix.
A worked example
Say you have one job, with made-up numbers:
| Step | People | Share of the step before |
|---|---|---|
| Viewed the job post | 2,000 | — |
| Applied | 300 | 15% |
| Started the first interview | 180 | 60% |
| Finished it | 140 | 78% |
| Passed the first interview | 45 | 32% |
| Shortlisted | 10 | 22% |
| Offer accepted | 2 | 20% |
Reading it
- Applied to started (60%). Four in ten applicants never began the first interview. That’s a big drop worth looking into. Was the invite clear? Did it arrive quickly? Did it work on a phone?
- Started to finished (78%). People who begin mostly finish. If this were much lower, the interview might be too long or have technical problems.
- Finished to passed (32%). This is the first interview doing its job of filtering. If it’s very low, your job post may be attracting the wrong people, or your standard may be too high.
- Shortlisted to accepted (20%). Losing people late costs the most. Look at your speed, your pay and how applicants are treated in later interviews.
What to measure first
If you track nothing today, start with three numbers: how many applied, how many finished the first interview, and how many were shortlisted. That already shows whether your problem is attracting people, keeping them, or finding the right ones.
Mistakes
- Comparing different jobs. A warehouse job and a data analyst job will have very different numbers. Compare each job with itself over time.
- Improving the wrong number. Raising the pass rate by lowering your standard looks good on a chart and does nothing for the quality of the hire.
- Ignoring where people leave. Losing applicants between “applied” and “started” is usually a problem with your process. Losing them at “passed” usually means they weren’t a good fit.
For the first interview, a useful set of steps to count is: link opened, interview started, finished, passed, shortlisted. It focuses on the part of hiring you control most directly. See applicant drop-off for ways to lose fewer people along the way.