With the close of 2012 only a few months away, many people are trying to everything in order before the end of the year.  From buying presents for the holidays to getting your house ready for winter, there’s a number of things that need to get done before the end of the year.  And somewhere on that list is a end of the year doctor check-up (I know it’s on mine) to make sure you’re healthy for the holidays and the beginning of the new year.

For organizations, the end of the year is just as hectic and the most important task for most departments is coming up with (and fighting for) their next year’s budget.  In order to make these budget considerations, organizations need to fully flesh out what programs and initiatives they want in their strategy next year and what they need to support them from a technology and resources perspective.

This is why it’s important to do an end of year check-up on your recruitment marketing strategy.  Determine what you did well, what you would like to improve and what initiatives you do not currently run that you would like to in the future.  When sitting down and looking at your recruitment strategy, it’s important to look at two things in particular.

First, you need to make sure you have the metrics to evaluate all the initiatives you run from a recruiting and sourcing perspective.  This includes job board postings, social recruiting, referrals, web sourcing, events and all the other places or initiatives you used to attract candidates.  Make sure to have comprehensive recruitment metrics for all these channels (in terms of qualified candidates and hires) and a centralized place to capture and analyze all this information.  By doing this, you will be able to see what in your recruitment marketing mix truly helped you attract qualified talent which can help you better allocate your budget to the right channels.  (And also understand what channels you need to use from a compliance standpoint.)

Second, take a look at your process and start to focus on improving it.  This may include re-evaluating your apply process, identifying bottlenecks in the attraction funnel, determining ways to get more value out of your job posts (i.e. Talent Network Forms) and looking more deeply into the candidate experience.

Once you’ve done this review, it’s important to start planning your budget based on the apparent health of your recruiting organization.  Here are a few areas you may want to look at and questions you should ask:

• Recruitment Marketing Mix: Are the channels we use today helping us achieve our goals?  Are there new channels (i.e. social, mobile, etc.) that we want to start using next year?
• Technology: Do we have the right technology for our strategy?  Is the current technology we have capable of supporting next year’s strategy?  How can we leverage technology to better accomplish our goals and free up recruiters time?
• Metrics: What should we be measuring?  What best determines success for our recruiting organization?  Can we measure this with our current technology and tools?  Is it centralized?  Does it help us prove value in our discussions with executives?
• Overall resources: What resources and personnel do we need to make our strategy successful?
• Future Trends: What trends are on the horizon in recruiting that we should keep aware of?

I encourage you to take a look back at 2012, begin evaluating your recruiting organization performance and determine what you could be doing better.  This will not only help you start drafting your budget estimates but should help you in proving why you need this budget in order to be successful in 2013.