Apply rate

Apply rate tells you what happens after someone lands on your vacancy: out of everyone who opened it, how many sent in an application. It's where the job itself gets judged. The ad got them curious, now the page has to convince them, and the apply flow has to let them do it without a fight.

The tricky part is that it mixes two things. A low apply rate can mean the job doesn't look good enough (unclear what it is, no salary, a wall of must-haves). Or it can mean the job is fine, but applying is a pain. To know which one it is, split it up: how many people started applying, and how many of those finished. The second part is your application completion rate.

Also make sure you count the same thing every time. Some tools count "clicked the apply button" as an application, some only count a submitted form. Use finished applications, otherwise your apply rate looks better than reality.

How to calculate it

Divide the number of finished applications by the number of people who viewed the vacancy, then multiply by 100.

Example

A vacancy gets lots of visitors but few applications. The team checks: barely anyone even clicks "apply". So the problem is the ad page, not the form. They move the salary and a short "what you'll actually do" paragraph to the top, and the apply rate goes up without touching the form at all.