What can pass-through rates tell me?
Overall Pass-through Rates
The overall pass-through rate is a very nuanced metric that is tied to individual company goals. It is influenced by so many factors, there is no ideal pass-through rate. Here is a great article that discusses how optimizing your recruiting processes to match your recruiting goals can affect your pass-through rate, and conversely how you can use your pass-through rate to track progress on your recruiting goals.
Stage-by-Stage Pass-through Rates
Stage pass-through rates a bit easier to interpret. Every company is unique in which stages they choose to be selective and how selective they are. This can depend, for one, on where they choose to spend recruiting or hiring team time (e.g. more phone screens vs. more interviews):
- Some companies choose to have low pass-through rates at the start of the hiring process so they don't have to do as many interviews later on in the process.
- Others open the pool earlier and then have an interview stage which is very selective.
Ideal pass-through rates by stage are specific to a company's processes and goals, however there are certain things to keep an eye out for.
High Stage Pass-Through Rates
When a stage's pass-through rate is very high, it may suggest that that stage is not efficient in identifying qualified candidates and filtering out unqualified candidates. If you interview as many candidates as you screen, then the Screening stage is not an effective step in narrowing the candidate pool.
NOTE: Pass-through rates are expected to increase at each stage, since the number of candidates at each stage is ideally decreasing as you get closer to a decision. While a very high pass-through rate at the beginning stages may flag inefficiency, a high pass-through rate between the Offer and Hires stages is deal, as this is the equivalent to your Offer Acceptance Rate, which ideally would be close to 100%.
Low Stage Pass-Through Rates
When a stage's pass-through rate is very low, possible reasons may be:
- the stage is too stringent, possibly restricting the amount of qualified candidates to select from later in the process
- an issue is occurring that is causing candidates to remove themselves from the process at that stage (ex. length of time between communications, assessment types, number of interviews required)
- there is misalignment between different reviewers (ex. a recruiter sees certain candidates as qualified, advancing them to the Assessment stage, but a hiring manager does not see any of them as qualified and they are not advanced any further.)
- there is some type of bias present at that stage