Cost per qualified applicant

Cost per qualified applicant is cost per applicant, but you only count the people who are actually worth talking to. It's the number that tells you what a campaign really brings in, because nobody needs applications, you need the right people.

The hard part is deciding what "qualified" means, and deciding it before the campaign runs. Write it down: the must-haves (ideally max three), and who decides. A recruiter's first screen works. Knockout questions can help, as long as they're about real must-haves. Then track it per channel, per ad and per job, because that's where it gets interesting. The channel with the cheapest applicants is often not the channel with the cheapest qualified ones.

It's a bit more work than reading cost per applicant off a dashboard, because the qualified part usually lives in your ATS, not in the ad platform. But it's what stops you from optimizing your campaigns toward volume, and drowning your recruiters in applications they can't use.

How to calculate it

Divide your total ad spend by the number of applicants who meet your qualification criteria.

Example

A company runs the same job on two channels with the same budget. Channel A brings in twice as many applicants, so it looks like the winner. After screening, channel B has more people who meet the must-haves. Per qualified applicant, channel B is cheaper, so that's where the budget goes next month.