Automating weekly recruiting KPIs

TL;DR

Ryan Taft, Recruiting Lead at Serval, built an automated workflow that delivers leadership a detailed progress report ahead of weekly engineering hiring meetings. It reads a live headcount plan from Google Sheets, pulls hiring statuses and real-time pass-through rates from Ashby, compiles the top candidates in the pipeline, and delivers a summary directly through Slack and email.

The problem

Serval is hiring many engineers on a very short timeline. Each week, leadership needs to know if the funnel is on pace, and if not, which stage is behind and how many more interviews or referrals it takes to catch up. "[At past companies], I’d pull this data essentially every week from a bunch of different sources and have to manually stitch it all together," Taft says. 

The build

Ryan worked with Catalyst to build a single scheduled workflow that generates the report.  Because the workflow connects to live applications instead of reading static data, the report updates in real time as hires are made or plan changes.

1. Connected Google Workspace so the workflow can read the finance-approved headcount sheet in real-time.

2. Connected Ashby to pull, per function and role, the last three months of pass-through rates at each stage, hires made, and every candidate currently in the pipeline with their stage and source.

3. Defined the key inputs and data sources, working with Catalyst to figure out the right places to pull data from each system, only looking at the info that matters most (like headcount targets, candidate counts by funnel stage, and priority roles)

4. Defined the KPIs from these inputs. Each metric is computed in code with a fixed definition, so funnel conversion is calculated the same way every time. Catalyst also suggested new metrics along the way (like number of recruiting screens or referrals needed per week to hit the goal).

5. Test the output against live data to confirm the report shows that leadership needs.

6. Deliver an executive summary in Slack and detailed findings directly to each attendee’s inbox, exactly 90 minutes before the weekly meeting.

Results

• Remove manual work. Completed automated reporting every week.
• Make staffing plans concrete. Assign limited talent resources based on  screens and interviewers for each role to stay on plan.
• Surface hiring problems quickly. See weekly stages for every role to see where candidates are getting stuck and fix it. 
• Flag promising candidates early. Report marks candidates with referrals and strong-yes scores, so recruiters and hiring managers know who to prioritize.