Most recruiting organizations are measuring huge amounts of data in their recruitment marketing process.  From recruitment funnel metrics to Career Site traffic to SEO keywords to source of hire metrics, these organizations have a wealth of data to analyze in order to help them make better recruiting decisions.

To be successful, it’s not just important to make sure you are tracking the right recruitment metrics but also that you are utilizing them to make useful insights that can help improve your process and overall recruiting results.

A Few Things that your Metrics will tell you

The recruitment metrics you are currently capturing can tell you a number of different things that can help improve your process.  Let’s take a look at the different metrics you are capturing and how they can help you gain insight:

Recruitment Funnel Metrics:  When you track your recruitment funnel, it’s important to track views, apply clicks, contacts and applicants for every recruitment source you use.  Comparing these metrics in the aggregate as well as per recruitment source can help you identify potential bottlenecks in your recruitment process.  Here are a few to take a look at:

• Views vs. Apply Clicks: Taking a look at aggregate views (i.e. a candidate views the job ad) vs. apply clicks (i.e. the candidates clicks to enter the application), can give you a quick look at how effective your recruitment messaging is at converting candidates to begin your application.  If you have a high number of views and a low number of apply clicks, you know that your job ad messaging needs to be improved as it’s not driving candidates to apply for the job.

• Apply Clicks vs. Applicants:  If candidates have a high number of apply clicks but are not becoming applicants in your ATS, then we know that your application is the cause of the candidate drop-off.  This can be for many reasons including an overly long application process, broken or confusing step in your application or them just not being completely ready to apply.  You should go through the process to identify the potential causes.

• Contacts: This will help you determine how much additional value a simple opt-in form in your apply process can provide in terms of capturing potential candidates.  In addition, it’s crucial to track your engagement (through email or SMS) with the talent pipelines you create and see the additional value these pipelines provide in terms of applicants, qualified candidates and hires for future job positions.

Source of Hire Metrics: With source of hire metrics, you are measuring the quality of the candidates coming from a particular recruitment source (job board, niche site, social network, etc.).  With these metrics, you can truly see which recruitment sources give you real value and which don’t.

When using these metrics it’s important to track this on an aggregate level to get an overall view of recruitment source success (the more qualified candidates the better) as well as by job type or category in order to understand how recruitment sources do at attracting certain types of candidates (i.e does Dice perform better than other channels for tech talent?).

Lastly, these metrics should be tracked in coordination with cost in order to figure out the overall ROI that a recruitment source provides.  This can help you update and change your recruitment marketing mix in order to get the most out of your recruitment budget.

Career Site data:  For many recruiting organizations, the Career Site represents their recruiting hub.  The two main things you want to know about your Career Site is how candidates got to your site and most importantly what content influenced them to ultimately apply for the position.

• SEO data:  With a SEO optimized Career Site, you need to make sure you are tracking the search keywords that are sending candidates to your site as well as the specific page they are landing on.

• Content Tracking & Conversion:  Once a candidate is on your Career Site you also want to track what pages they view and ultimately if they convert into an applicant.  This will let you know what content you produce that best drives conversions so that you can replicate this type of content for other candidate populations.

• Sources of Influence: The holy grail of candidate experience is determining not only the Source of the Application but ultimately every piece of content and recruitment source that influences a candidate to apply.  For your Career Site, this means making sure you are tracking a candidate’s Career Site visit not only from when they enter via search engines but also when they arrive from other recruitment sources such as job boards.  This will help you see if they are visiting any other content before or after they apply and any subsequent visits they make to your Career Site content.  Ask your technology provider what they offer in this area in order to begin to better understand how candidates navigate your Career Site during the apply process.

Centralized Reporting is Trending Up

Recruitment organizations are starting to realize the power of the data they are capturing and the importance of having it all in a centralized location.  Organizations don’t want to have to access their data from several different systems or technologies but want to compare it side by side with one another.  And it makes a ton of sense.

In order to make the best use of the overall recruiting budget, organizations need to understand what activities are providing the most value to your ultimate goal: making great hires.  From job distribution campaigns to job boards, niche sites, etc. to social recruiting to candidate sourcing to employer branding campaigns on the Career Site to hiring events, you want to compare and contrast the cost and ultimate value that each of these activities provide in achieving your goals.

With this insight, you can truly improve and optimize what you are doing from a recruiting and sourcing perspective with every job you recruit for.