Research and evidence
What founders should measure in a hiring funnel
At startup volumes, track five things: how long the role has been open, conversion between each stage, where candidates drop out, offer acceptance, and how long new hires stay. Measure them against your own previous hires — not against an industry benchmark, because at ten or twenty candidates a role the numbers are too small for an external average to mean much.
In short
At startup volumes, track five things: how long the role has been open, conversion between each stage, where candidates drop out, offer acceptance, and how long new hires stay. Measure them against your own previous hires — not against an industry benchmark, because at ten or twenty candidates a role the numbers are too small for an external average to mean much.
Published 2026-08-15 · Last reviewed 2026-08-15 · Reviewed by Joseph Edney, Managing Director, Humand Talent Solutions
The five measures
Each row defines the measure precisely enough that two people in your team would calculate it the same way. The benchmark column is intentionally absent — see the evidence gaps below.
| Measure | How to calculate it | What a bad reading usually points at |
|---|---|---|
| Role age | Days from the brief being signed off to an accepted offer | An unclear brief, an unrealistic package, or nobody owning the search |
| Stage conversion | Candidates passing each stage divided by candidates entering it | A screen that is filtering on the wrong thing, or an assessment testing something the role does not need |
| Drop-out point | The stage at which candidates most often withdraw | Process length, scheduling delays, or a poor candidate experience at one specific step |
| Offer acceptance | Offers accepted divided by offers made | Package misalignment discovered too late, or a slow decision after the final stage |
| Early tenure | Proportion of hires still in role at six and twelve months | A definition problem at the brief stage rather than an assessment problem |
Compare against yourself
With a handful of hires a year, a single unusual candidate moves every percentage dramatically. The useful comparison is your last three roles versus this one, held over time, with the definitions above kept constant. That is a comparison you can actually source.
Early tenure is the measure that connects to cost
Tenure is where measurement meets the commercial question. A fee model that charges once at hire has already been paid whether the person stays four months or four years; a monthly model tracks the tenure directly. If you are measuring six and twelve month tenure anyway, you have the input the crossover calculation needs.
Evidence
Each statement below is linked to the source it came from, with the publisher and the date we last checked the link.
1.Under the SUS model, billing tracks tenure directly: monthly fees start at the start date and stop when the employment ends, which is what makes early tenure a commercially meaningful measure rather than only an HR one.
- How the SUS monthly recruitment fee works — Startup Staffing. Checked 2026-08-15.
- Startup Staffing website and service terms — Startup Staffing. Checked 2026-08-15.
2.Tenure assumptions can be modelled against a one-off fee in our calculator to produce the crossover point for your own numbers.
- Rate calculator and team planner — Startup Staffing. Checked 2026-08-15.
What this page does not say
These are the numbers a page like this is often expected to carry. We hold no evidence we would stand behind for any of them, so they are left blank rather than estimated.
- Benchmark values for any of the five measures — no industry average is published on this page. We hold no licensed dataset, and small startup samples would not be comparable to one anyway.
- Typical offer acceptance or candidate response rates by role or region — deliberately blank.
- Retention rates by seniority or sector — deliberately blank.
Questions this raises
- What is a good time-to-hire for a startup engineering role?
- We do not publish a number, because we hold no dataset that would make one honest. Track your own role age across hires with a consistent start point and compare like with like.
- Which single measure matters most?
- Early tenure, because it tests the quality of the original definition and it is the input that determines whether a monthly fee model or a one-off fee works out better for you.
Every source on this page is listed together on the research index.