Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.

In today's recruiting, the more information you have the better. Recruitment metrics are a way for companies to discern what's working with their recruitment marketing strategy and just as important what's not. For this article, I'd like to take a look at a few metrics that can be collected in your recruitment marketing process and what they can tell you about your recruitment marketing funnel.

To begin the conversation, I'd like to provide my definitions for the metrics that I'll be discussing. All these metrics are different stages in the recruitment marketing funnel and are defined as follows:

• Views: # of people that view the job description where you post the job ad.
• Apply Clicks: # of candidates that click to apply for the position and enter the application
• Contacts: # of candidates that opt-in for future job updates from your company
• Applicants: # of candidates who complete the apply process
• Hires: # of candidates that are hired for your job ad.

So now that we defined the metrics you can collect in your recruitment marketing process, let's take a look how you can use these metrics together to glean meaningful insights into what's working and what's broke in your recruiting funnel.

1. Views & Apply Clicks - These two metrics can tell you how effective your job ad messaging is in compelling candidates to click apply to the job.
   
   • When You Know it's broke: You have a high number of views but a disproportionately low number of apply clicks. (The percentage of Apply Clicks/Views is one you should track.)
   • How to Fix it: Test different job ad messaging by posting identical jobs with one changed variable on the sources you distribute to (Make sure to not change more than one variable i.e. the job description or job title.) Here's some messaging tips you may want to think about.
   
   
2. Apply Clicks & Applicants: These two metrics provide great detail into how effective and easy your job application process is.
   
   • When You Know It's Broke: You have a high number of apply clicks but a low number of total applicants. (i.e. Candidates are starting your apply process but are not completing it.)
   • How to Fix it: Do a quick user testing of your process with a few candidates. See where they fall off the process and more importantly what the stumbling blocks are. (One quick way to alleviate this can be to give candidates an expectation of the time and/or the # of pages in the application at the beginning.)
   
   
3. Contacts & Apply Clicks: In comparing Contacts against Apply Clicks you are seeing how many Contacts you are capturing out of those that clicked to Apply. Since 50% of the candidates that start the application process don't finish it, you'll want the total # of Contacts you collect to be as high as the # of Apply Clicks you receive (the bigger the better.) These Contacts can then be used in future job campaigns, which is great since they have obvious interest in your company.
   
   • When You Know It's Broke: First, if you don't have an opt-in option in your recruiting process, add one. Second, if you are receiving a lot of apply clicks but little to no Contacts then you are making your opt-in page too hard to access.
   • How To Fix It: Make the opt-in page a part of the apply process. Insert it in between the job ad page and your application process. It can yield real results.
   
   
4. Applicants & Hires: The most important metric to a recruiter is # of Quality Hires. If you are bringing in quality people consistently you know you are doing your job right.
   
   • When You Know it's Broke: If you are not bringing in quality hires, period. It's an even bigger problem if you have a high number of applicants but little to no quality in this group.
   • How to Fix It: Obviously you are not targeting and/or reaching the right groups of candidates. Take a look at the quality people you do hire and identify the sources that they used to find your positions. Fire the sources that are not producing quality and increase your investment in sources that do produce.
   
   

Using Recruitment Metrics can help you identify problems in your recruitment marketing funnel quickly thus saving you valuable recruiting dollars and time to find the next qualified candidates. Finding a technology solution that can provide you with these metrics is a crucial step to understanding and making informed decisions on your recruiting strategy. Find one that you a comfortable with and get started!

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst at SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly provides a recruitment marketing platform that enables companies to easily launch and more importantly measure their recruiting efforts on the web.