Drop-off rate

Drop-off rate is the other side of conversion. Instead of asking how many people made it to the next step, you ask how many you lost there. You can measure it at every step: from seeing the ad to clicking, from clicking to starting the application, from starting to finishing, from applying to the first call, all the way to the offer.

Looking at the whole hiring funnel this way is super useful, because it shows you where it actually goes wrong. Most teams only look at the total, "we got too few applicants", and then they reach for more budget. But if you see that a big part of the people who start your form never finish it, more budget just means paying for more people to drop off in the same spot.

One thing to keep in mind: some drop-off is healthy. If people leave after reading the salary or the shifts because it's not for them, that's your ad doing its job. Drop-off is a problem when the right people leave.

How to calculate it

Take the number of people who reached a step but didn't move on to the next one, divide it by the number of people who reached that step, and multiply by 100.

Example

A recruitment team maps their funnel for one vacancy. Clicks look fine, applications look fine, but a lot of applicants drop off between applying and the first interview. Turns out it takes days before anyone calls them. Nothing wrong with the ad, the leak is in the follow-up.