Now this statement seems pretty self-explanatory right?  Obviously with every recruitment marketing campaign you run, you want qualified candidates above all else.  But the real question is how are you measuring which candidates are qualified and which are not.

There are a few levels of qualified candidates that should be pretty easy to track and measure:

Meets Qualifications: These candidates have the necessary experience and skills needed for the position.  This can be tracked by your recruiting team as they are filtering through resumes.

Interviews: These are candidates that have meet qualifications and are compelling enough to think that they might be the right fit for not only the position but for your company.  This data should be available in your ATS.

Final Interviews: These are the candidates that are were the cream of the crop for the position and would have been hired if there wasn’t someone else that fit the position just a little bit better.  These candidates have great value for when a similar position opens up at your company so keep them close.  This data should also be available in your ATS.

Offers: This is one I missed the first time around but it was brought to my attention that it was a glaring oversight.  Offers is a great metric to keep around to make sure that you are attracting and meeting the expectations of the jobs you are filling.  If you are offering a lot of candidates and not receiving hires, you may need to do a better job of identifying proper fit with candidates early on in the recruiting process (Why should you go through the whole process only to realize you are not compatible in terms of salary or benefits.)

Hires: The most qualified should be the ones you hire right?  This is the best barometer of recruiting success.

For all these levels, make sure to collect and analyze your recruitment metrics and track the source for all these candidates whether it was a job board, social network, SEO, referral or another recruiting campaign.  Continuously look at how these recruiting channels are performing so you are not wasting money on channels that don’t bring you the candidates you want: THE QUALIFIED ONES!

Ask your job distribution and ATS vendor how you can most accurately track these candidates so you can begin to understand which recruiting channels are the best for your organization!