On this blog, I talk a lot about measuring the performance of your recruitment ads and tying back important recruiting metrics to the recruiting source that produced the results.  These metrics are important as it enables you to understand the high & low performers in your media buying strategy so you can “fire” your low performers and increase usage of your high ones.

But while measuring back to the source is something integral to your recruitment reporting, this data can often be skewed if you don’t put in the proper time to understand how to target your recruitment ad to the right population on your given recruiting channels.

When I say “target” I don’t mean just the messaging in your recruitment ad (although that always helps) but I also am talking about making sure your job ad is appearing under the proper categories and classifications that are provided to you by the recruiting source provider.  This can make a huge difference on whether candidates see your ad to begin with when they are searching through jobs on these sources.

Here are a few areas to focus on when classifying and targeting your recruitment ads:

Always fill out classifications: For most job boards and other recruiting channels, there are a number of classifications or categories they offer in order to put your recruitment ad in the right location on their sites.  Most importantly these categories are usually keyword searchable which make your job available to candidates that are searching for jobs like yours.

The next time you post a job make sure to focus on choosing the correct fields for the important categories such as Industry, Job Category, Occupation, Job Type, Salary Range, Years of Experience and anything else that adds to your recruitment ad.  If you use a global job distribution provider, make sure that they enable you to specify the most important categories for every recruitment ad you distribute from their system.

Follow with Real-Time Metrics: If you are not capturing real-time recruitment data on your recruitment ads, you should begin doing so.  By looking at your job postings the day of or a few days afterward, it can give you a good idea of if the recruiting source was a good one for this specific job or if the classification you chose for the job was correct.

Follow along with your metrics and most importantly, make quick real-time decisions to try and improve the performance of the ads.  Whether that’s re-posting under a different job category or changing the location where you posted the job.

Use Historical Data: As you are capturing real-time data you will be building a collection of extremely important and useful information for future recruitment ads. This data will help you understand what sources (such as job boards, social networks, recruiting SEO sites, SEM, etc.) work best for a specific job.

Take a look at jobs that are similar to the job you are currently posting and understand what sources and classifications worked well in terms of bringing qualified applicants into your ATS.  If you are unsure about the right source or classification, test out what you think will work and measure the results.  Your historical data can provide a wealth of knowledge of what works and doesn’t work for specific jobs, you just need to take a look at it.

The more information you provide about your recruitment ads to recruiting sources the better displayed and more available it will be for job seekers that are looking for positions like yours.  Do your best up front to have your recruitment ads found and then track the results.  This data will not only help you for this specific recruitment marketing campaign but can provide you with the information to improve all future campaigns as well.