Asking the right question is the key to getting meaningful, accurate insights from your data. Small changes in wording—such as adding a time frame, defining a metric, or specifying a stage—can significantly change the results you receive.
This guide shows the difference between effective and ineffective questions or prompts, explains why certain phrasing works better, and provides ready-to-use examples across common recruiting and talent metrics. You’ll also find practical tips to help you refine your questions, request the right visualizations, and reduce ambiguity so the AI can return results you can confidently act on.
Use this article as a reference when exploring data, building reports, or validating insights—so your questions are clear, specific, and designed to deliver the answers you actually need.
In this article:
Effective vs. Ineffective Questions
Sample Questions
Quick Tips
Recruiting Keywords
Additional Resources
Effective vs.Ineffective Questions
| Effective vs.Ineffective Questions/Prompts | ||
|---|---|---|
|
AI may not interpret "bottleneck" as you might intend |
Which 5 stages have the longest average days in stage? | |
|
Question requires too much interpretation. |
Show the number of hires by month for the past 6 months | |
|
“Best performing” is vague; AI needs a specific metric like hires. |
Which sources have the most hires? | |
|
Missing a date attribute to clarify context |
Show me how many candidates by race that applied in 2024 | |
|
Specify Lucas Rodriguez’s full name and position. |
Show me all the candidates that were in the interviewing macro stage for the recruiter Lucas Rodriguez | |
Effective vs.Ineffective Prompts - See how the data changes with these different examples.
These prompts are all effective; these examples show how the data changes with different wording.
|
How many candidates in each macro stage? How many candidates currently in each macro stage? |
Show all candidates currently in the “offer” macro stage. Include the stage, recruiter, hiring manager, date applied |
|
How many candidates were in the interview macro stage that applied last month? How many candidates were in the interview macro stage that entered the stage in the last month? |
Which stages have the longest days in stage? Which 5 stages have the average longest days in stage? |
Sample Questions
Application Metrics
- How many candidates completed an application last month by department?
- Show me all the candidates that completed an application for requisition title [insert exact requisition title].
- What is our application completion rate per role sort descending?
- Which 3 departments have the lowest application completion rates, exclude 0%?
- How many applications were completed this year? Show weekly and use an area chart?
TTH/TTF Metrics
- What is our average time to fill each month?
- What is the average time to hire for candidates sourced from referrals, by department?
- What was the average time-to-hire for each requisition title, sort by descending?
- What was the time to fill for each recruiter for the past 6 months?
- What is the average time to fill open positions by role?
- Show me the time-to-fill trend for the past 12 months by recruiter.
- Which 5 recruiters have the lowest average time to hire in 2024?
Offer Metrics
- What is our monthly offer acceptance rate on a monthly basis, compare this to last year?
- How many candidates are in the offer macro stage show this by recruiter.
- How many offer letters have been accepted by each department, and hiring managers use a pivot table?
- On average, how long does it take for an offer to be accepted by a hiring manager sort by descending
- How many average days between offer letter created and apply date, break by department in 2024?
- What is the offer acceptance time per req?
- Which 10 requisitions had the longest offer approval time include the recruiter and hiring manager?
- For each recruiter, what is the average time between offer approved and sent?
- Show me all the requisitions and a count of offer letters that have approval complete but were not sent, and the recruiter use a pivot table chart.
- Show me each candidate in the offer macro stage and their offer status.
- Show me each requisition title that is open that don't have a hire, and the date the offer letter was approved include the offer letter status
- How many offer letters did we send out last month?
Source Metrics
- How many candidates come in from each source that applied last quarter, sort by descending?
- Show me the number of candidates from each source broken out by macro stage.
- How many hires per source this year?
- How many hires came from the public career site this year vs last year show quarterly?
- How many candidates were sourced from referrals in the past year include the source detail and use a pivot table chart?
- How many candidates applied from sources that contain Indeed, show each source?
Gender, Race, Veteran Metrics
- What is the breakdown of our candidate gender?
- Which races are applying the most to our jobs?
- Show me the gender breakdown of hired candidates over the past year.
- What is the racial diversity of candidates hired in the last six months?
- What is the average time to hire for female candidates break by department
- Which offices hire the most veterans?
- Show me candidates in the offer macro stage by disability use a pie chart.
Interview & Scorecard Metrics
- How many interviews were completed for hired versus dispositioned candidates, broken down by role?
- Show me interviewers and how many interviews they completed.
- Which 5 managers have the lowest average final score?
- Show me the Scorecard Avg. Score for each candidate in the requisition title [insert exact requisition title], sort by descending.
- Which candidates currently in the interviewing macro stage have active scorecard statuses?
- How many scorecards are due by the end of the week?
- Show me the interview status for each candidate currently in the interview macro stage, and break this by interviewer.
- How many interviews were completed for hired versus dispositioned candidates, broken down by role?
Hiring Manager Metrics
- How many open requisitions for each hiring manager?
- Show me a list of candidates, their offer status, and the hiring manager for open requisitions.
- Which 5 hiring manager has the longest average time to fill?
- Show the diversity breakdown of hires made by each hiring manager.
- How many offers have been declined for each hiring manager's requisitions?
- Show the distribution of candidates by macro stages for each hiring manager.
Workflow (Macro Stage & Stage) Metrics
- Show me a current funnel chart of candidates for each macro stage, excluding dispositioned sort by macro stage
- What is the average time a candidate sits in each macro stage, excluding hired and dispositioned, sort by macro stage?
- Show all our open requisitions, include their requisition title, the furthest stage, and desired start date.
- How many candidates per macro stage, include stage, and the average days in the stage?
- How many candidates by stage that entered the stage last month?
- How many candidates entered each macro stage show this monthly?
- For candidates in the interview macro stage, what is the average days since applied?
Requisition Metrics
- Show me each requisition title that is open that don't have a hire, and the date the offer letter was approved include the offer letter status.
- Show me all our requisition titles that have paid sponsorship.
- List all our open requisitions, including the title, recruiter, hiring manager, active candidates, and furthest stage.
- How many open requisitions do we have per posted location sort descending?
- List requisition titles that are unbudgeted replacements and the number of openings.
- Show me all the requisitions that were created last year that are still open.
- How many requisitions were closed this year show monthly.
- Which requisitions have a desired start date next quarter include the count of active candidates and furthest stage?
- Show me all the requisition titles that are pending approval status, include each approver, the approver status, and the date approved.
- Show requisition titles that have candidates in the interviewing macro stage, including the candidate name, grade, state, experience level, and who they are replacing.
- How long has each requisition title been open for?
- Show me our open requisitions that have not been posted publicly.
- For requisitions that have been posted internally, show me the requisition title, max salary range, salary type, and budget type.
Candidate and Requisition Activity Metrics
- How many candidate activities did each user have, split out by activity?
- With a pivot table chart show each candidate, the candidate activity, and the count for this month.
- Show the count of candidate activities by each category of activity?
- How many candidate activities were there each month this year?
- Which 2 quarters this year had the highest candidate activity show as a bar chart?
- Which user had the most candidate activities?
- Show the count of requisition activities by each category of activity?
- How many requisition activities did each user have split out by activity?
- With a pivot table chart show each requisition title, the requisition activity, and the count for the last 3 days.
- How many requisition activities were there each month this year?
- Which month this year had the lowest req activity, show as a kpi chart?
- Which 5 users had the least requisition activities in the last 90 days?
Recruiter Metrics
- Which recruiters have the most candidates in the interviewing macro stage?
- Which recruiters currently have less than 8 candidates in the macro stage screening?
- How many requisitions did each recruiter open in the past month?
- Which 5 recruiter had the highest number of hired candidates last year?
- How many requisitions has each recruiter closed in the past six months?
- Show me the offer acceptance rate by recruiter.
- How many candidates are currently in each stage by recruiter use a stacked column chart?
- Show me all our recruiters, requisitions that are open, the requisition titles, number of active candidates, and the furthest stage.
- Show me all the candidates that were dispositioned last week, including their previous stage and the recruiter.
- Which 3 recruiters have the shortest time to fill?
Quick Tips
Request Charts in Your Question / Prompt
You can change the chart type for your Answer by either selecting it or you can directly requesting the chart type in your question or prompt. You must use the exact chart name, for example, "use a stacked column chart".
Sort by Macro Stage
Use “sort by macro stage” to match the order shown on the candidate dashboard in Recruiting.
Recruiting Keywords
Recruiting keywords allow you to perform advanced searches within ClearInsights using predefined terms. These keywords help you quickly analyze recruiting data such as candidates, requisitions, sources, and pipeline stages. Instead of manually building complex filters, you can enter keywords directly in the search bar to refine results, compare data, and identify trends.
Examples include searches like:
- Top 10 recruiters by candidate count
- Candidates applied last 30 days
- Hires monthly in 2023 vs 2024
- Average days in stage by recruiter
Recruiting keywords are organized into categories to help you structure your search:
- General keywords: Sort or rank recruiting data.
- Comparative keywords: Compare values or apply conditions.
- Date keywords: Analyze recruiting data across specific time periods.
- Text keywords: Find values that match specific words or phrases.
- Number keywords: Calculate totals, averages, counts, and ratios.
Use the examples in the tables below to understand how each keyword can be used when building searches in ClearInsights.
General Keywords
| Keyword | Examples |
|---|---|
| top n | What are the top 10 recruiters by count of candidates |
| bottom n | Show bottom 3 sources by candidate count |
| sort by | Sort by descending/ascending Sort by macro stage (use to match the order shown on the candidate dashboard in Recruiting) |
Comparative Keywords
| Function | Examples |
|---|---|
| all | Show all the recruiters |
| between... and | Which hiring managers have an offer acceptance rate between 25% and 75%? |
| vs, versus | Show me hires monthly in 2023 vs 2024 |
| “Greater than” or “more than” | Which stages currently have more than 85 candidates? |
| “Less than” | Which sources have less than 200 candidates? |
| “Greater or equal to” or “n or more” or “at least” = | Which hiring managers have 15 or more openings? |
| “Less than or equal to” or “n or less” <=></=> | Which recruiters currently have 5 or less candidates in the interviewing macro stage |
| “Equal to” or “Exact” or “have n” = | Which recruiters have 3 candidates in the offer macro stage? |
| “Exclude “or “not” != | How many candidates in our macro stages, exclude dispositioned |
Dates Keywords
| Keyword | Examples |
|---|---|
| after | applied after 10/31/2024 |
| before | Reqs created before March 2024 |
| between … and ... | Hire date between 01/30/2024 and 7/10/2024 |
| daily | How many candidates applied, show daily |
| day | How many candidates applied on Monday this week? |
| day of week | Which day of the week had the most candidates apply in the past 6 months. |
| weekly | How many candidates applied last quarter show weekly |
| month | Show candidates that we hired in June this year |
| monthly | How many candidates entered the offer macro stage last year, show monthly |
| quarter | How many offers did we create in Q2? |
| quarterly | How many hires were made this year, show quarterly |
| year | Which 3 sources had the most candidates in 2024 |
| yearly | How many candidates per macro stage, show yearly? |
| week to date | Show candidates that applied week-to-date |
| month to date | Show all requisitions opened month to date |
| quarter to date | How many hires made quarter to date? |
| year to date | Show all candidates that rejected an offer year-to-date |
| last n days/weeks/months/quarters/years | How many candidates entered the screening macro stage in the past 45 days |
| last week/month/quarter/year | Show me requisitions titles that we opened last month |
| Yesterday, today, tomorrow | How many scorecards are due tomorrow? |
| n days/weeks/months/quarters/years ago | Which requisitions were closed 2 weeks ago? |
| this week/month/quarter/year | How many hires came from Indeed this quarter? |
| next n days/weeks/months/quarters/years | Which requisitions have a desired start date in the next 3 months? |
| next day/week/month/quarter/year | How many scorecards are due next week? |
Text Keywords
| Keyword | Examples |
|---|---|
| begins with | Show me reqs that begin with “LPN” |
| contains | How many candidates applied to roles that contain “engineering” |
| ends with | Show me reqs that end with “assistant” |
| not begins with | Show me reqs that does not begin with “temp” |
| not contains | How many candidates applied that have a state that does not contain CA |
| not ends with | How many roles do not end with “specialist” |
Number Keywords
| Function | Examples |
|---|---|
| “count” or “how many” | What’s the current count of candidates per stage How many candidates are currently in each stage |
| unique count | What is the unique count of candidate email addresses |
| average | What is the average days in stage for each stage? |
| sum | Show me a sum of openings per department |
| ratio | What is the ratio of new applicants per hire? |
Additional Resources
ClearInsights Max: Performance Getting Started
ClearInsights Max: Chart Configurations
ClearInsights Max: Best Practices
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