Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.

I won't lie, I'm in love with Recruiting Metrics! I'm totally enamored with them! I love the way they look with a big "+" sign in front of them, I love the way they look on my computer dashboard and most importantly I love the knowledge they possess. Overall, recruiting metrics rock and I'd like to share with you my top 5 reasons why I love recruiting metrics. Here's the rundown we have so far:

Reason # 5: They Tell Me What I Think I Know!

Reason # 4: They Tell Me What I Don’t Know!

Reason #3: Experimentation & Testing

Reason #2: Apples to Apples Comparisons

Reason #1: Bargaining Power

The biggest and baddest (in a good way) reason to love recruiting metrics is bargaining power. When we talk about bargaining power we don't just mean negotiating with job boards / vendors (although that's an important part) but we also mean bargaining power within your organization in terms of funding and influence with decision-making. The more metrics, data and analysis you have at your disposal, the more control you'll have in the conversations and discussions you have on a daily basis and more influence you'll have over the decisions that are ultimately made.

In recruiting, the bargaining power provided by metrics can be utilized in a variety of ways. Here are the situations that we've seen where this bargaining power has helped companies and recruiting departments:

1. Negotiations with Job Boards / Vendors
   • One of the biggest complaints about the major job boards is that they provide little to no metrics around how successful job ads are on their sites. By investing in a technology that tracks these metrics, you will have a nice stack of chips to go to the bargaining table with the next time your contract comes up for renewal. By sharing your performance metrics on all your job boards you can work out better dealsand more benefits than you are receiving today from your job distribution sources.
   • Real Life Example: One of our clients was able to save over $20,000 due to recruitment metrics on a new job board contract. Check it out!
   
   
2. New Opportunities / Initiatives
   • One of the biggest obstacles to new initiatives that you want to try is the status quo. The company has been doing the same thing for a number of years with moderate success so why change it. Recruitment metrics provide a great way to show why change is needed and filter funding from legacy programs that are under-performing to new initiatives that you want to sink your teeth into.
   • Real Life Example: We spoke to a recruiter the other day that was able to convince management to divert some funds from job boards to a new social recruiting initiative due to recruitment metrics they collected.
   
   
3. More Funding
   • When asking for funding all the cost/benefit analysis in the world won't get you anywhere unless there is some persuasive data to accompany it. Recruitment Metrics can help prove why more funding can have an exponential impact on the organization.
   • Real Life Example: A recruiter has been collecting metrics on all their job board postings for over a year. They've came to realize that a few niche job boards are performing extremely well. They provided the metrics and asked for more $ to put into using these boards. And you know what, they got it.

Metrics are a great persuasion tool and are essential in all negotiations you have outside and inside your organization. Collect the right recruitment marketing metrics and bring them to whatever meeting you go to. Let others know your arguments in those situations and make sure to defend your arguments with these metrics. It will make your arguments more convincing and give you true BARGAINING POWER!

About the Author: Chris is a Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly provides the first recruitment marketing platform called WildFire that enables companies and staffing firms to easily launch and more important measure the performance of their recruiting efforts online.

The WildFire recruitment marketing platform offers every tool you need for your recruitment marketing needs all in one solution including Job Ad Distribution, Social Networking Delivery, Recruitment Opt-In Database, Recruitment CRM, Web Commercials / Micro-sites and Resume Sourcing services.