From Hiring to High Performance: Tracking the Impact of Skills-First Recruitment

August 18, 2025

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The real value of early careers recruitment isn’t how fast you hire, but how long great people stay.

When it comes to early careers recruitment, ROI is often talked about but not always fully understood. Many organisations still focus on measures like cost-per-hire and time-to-fill. Useful, yes -but these don’t capture the whole picture of what really makes early careers strategies valuable.

In our last blog, we looked at why employers are moving away from outdated degree requirements towards a skills-first approach. Now, the question becomes: how do you show that shift is truly paying off?

Why Traditional ROI Can Be Limiting

Cost and speed have long been the go-to recruitment metrics. But if that’s where the story ends, you risk missing the real impact your hires are having on the business.

• Short-term over long-term -quick hires aren’t always the ones who stay or thrive.

• Narrow focus -measuring only efficiency means overlooking areas like culture, retention, and brand strength.

Early careers recruitment is about building a pipeline of talent that delivers lasting value. That’s where a broader ROI lens is so important.

A Broader Framework for ROI

Skills-first hiring gives us the chance to measure success differently -and more meaningfully.

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1. Retention

• Skills-based hires stay around 9% longer than traditionally recruited peers (BCG, 2023).

• Harvard Business School found that non-degreed hires in skills-based firms have a 10 percentage point higher two-year retention rate and a 25% uplift in starting pay compared to degree-holders (Harvard Business School, 2023).

• Apprenticeships achieve 90%+ retention, with 71% staying with the same employer, and deliver a positive ROI within 1–2 years (UK Department for Education, 2022; US Dept of Labor).

2. Performance & Productivity

• Employers report clear productivity gains from skills-first hiring, though not always easily quantified.

• Skills-first organisations are twice as likely to retain top performers and more than twice as likely to innovate (TestGorilla, 2024).

3. Efficiency & Cost

• Companies have reported 70–80% reductions in cost-to-hire and 50–70% reductions in time-to-hire by adopting skills-first processes (LinkedIn Economic Graph, 2024).

• Avoiding mis-hires can save US$7,800 to $22,500 per role, particularly in graduate and early careers hiring (SelectSoftware Reviews).

4. Diversity & Access

• 90% of employers say skills-based hiring has improved workforce diversity (AssessCandidates, 2024).

• 91% of organisations using skills-first approaches reported improved retention, supporting both inclusion and stability (Fast Company, 2024).

5. Employer Brand & Reach

• 95% of employers expect skills-first hiring to define the future of recruitment, with 94% agreeing it better predicts job performance (AIHR, 2024).

• Companies with strong employer brands see a 50% reduction in cost-per-hire and 28% lower turnover (LinkedIn, 2024).

• Universum found brand improvements delivered a 3.3× ROI, saving €1.5m in turnover costs over three years (Universum, 2023).

Bringing ROI to Life with Stories

Data is powerful, but stories make it relatable. Here are a few examples that show what’s possible:

Signpost (Software Company): By introducing skills and aptitude assessments, Signpost reduced turnover by 70% while improving onboarding and productivity.

Schweiger Dermatology Group: Turnover fell from ~60% to 26% annually after bringing in pre-hire assessments and engagement strategies.

Harvard Business School: Found that non-degreed candidates recruited through skills-first practices had 10 percentage points higher retention and a 25% uplift in starting pay.

💡How this sounds in practice:
“By shifting to skills-first assessments, we reduced turnover by more than half in the first year. Not only did this save us thousands per hire, but it also showed that the people we hired stayed longer and performed better.”

Making ROI Clear for Stakeholders

Sharing ROI with leaders works best when it’s simple, visible, and connected to business outcomes. A few effective ways to do this are:

• Dashboards tracking retention, diversity, cost savings, and time-to-productivity.

• Candidate sentiment through surveys, Glassdoor reviews, and offer acceptance rates.

• Benchmarking against industry peers to put results in context.

When presented in the right way, these insights help stakeholders see recruitment as a long-term investment -not just a cost.

A Final Thought

The value of early careers recruitment can’t be summed up in just one or two metrics. It’s about building a future workforce that is skilled, diverse, and engaged. By looking beyond cost-per-hire and showing impact through retention, performance, and brand, employers can make a much stronger case for the power of their strategy.

At Sanctuary Graduates, we help employers measure what really matters in early careers - retention, diversity, and long-term impact. If you’d like to explore how your strategy stacks up, we’d love to have that conversation with you.

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