I continuously read the blogs
and articles about social media and proactive sourcing strategies. However it
is critical to remember that we need to measure the effectiveness of what we
are trying to accomplish. In other words is our recruitment marketing efforts
solving a need or generating a result? This article will look at two dimensions
of data that will help you create an effective recruitment marketing strategy
and measure the desired program objectives.  The two dimensions we will explore is “Prospect
to Sale” and “Ratio of Source of Hire ,by Job Type”.

Prospect to Sale

Prospect: A
prospect is a unique visitor that
visits your web property i.e. career site, blog, etc.

Lead: A lead
is a person that creates a profile within your applicant tracking system.

Non-Qualified Lead: A non-qualified lead is a person
that is dispositioned by reason at each stage in the recruitment process.

Sale: The
sale is the hire.

How to look at this data

The best way to look at this
data is over a six month period, ideally in a two year time period. For
example: January through June (2010 and 2009).  When looking at this data, it is best to note:

1.
The business
environment and it’s potential impact

2.
The effectiveness
of your recruiters ability to disposition all candidates through the process

3.
The degree of
error when a candidate self identifies their source – which will come into this
discussion later on in the article.

4.
Company brand and
it’s impact on overall candidate flow

If you do not have all of
this data, than work with what you can. See a snapshot below.  Here we do not have two years of prospect
data, and have weak data associated with year 1 of profiles created in the ATS
due to a new system implementation.

The Trends We Are Looking For

The trends with this data
that we are looking for are:

1.
At  a macro level are our recruitment marketing
efforts proportionately impacting our ability to hire? If yes, how?

2.
Prospect to Lead: Are we converting our prospects to
leads. So in other words, those who are landing on our web properties are they
applying for a job? If no, why?

3.
Lead to Sale: Are we attracting the right types of people to our website?  Are our leads to sales ratios improving?

4.
Inbound Recruiting vs. Outbound Direct Sourcing: What job types
is inbound marketing lead generation efforts more effective?  What job types do we need to focus on
outbound efforts?

5.
How does our lead
/ demand generation efforts impact our recruiting process and recruiter
effectiveness?

Ratio of Source of Hire By Job Type

Now that we have looked at
the trends from a macro perspective, lets slice this data by source and job
type.  The data elements we want to
explore are:

1.
Source of Hire:
Primary and secondary

2.
Total candidates
by source

3.
Total hired

4.
Ratio leads
generated to hired

5.
Cut by job type

Again there will always be a
degree of error in the data due to self identification and whether or not
recruiters are dispositioning all candidates in the process (this is a whole other discussion).

In this example – which is a
macro view:  Conversions from temp to
perm and direct sourcing are most effective, whereas the Internet is the least
effective, but creates the most amount of work.

To further dig into this
data, my recommendation is to look at job type and determine what job types can
be filled by XX recruitment efforts, and which job types do you have to put
more proactive strategies.

What does this look like in real life?

Many of you saw the Intuit
presentation at ERE on their social media strategy.  I loved it.
This strategy addresses a complex hiring challenge and is designed to
build brand recognition and a long term call to action within a target
population.  This team has done a nice
job segmenting where sourcing strategies are needed and how to solve their
business issues both short and long term.

Example two:

An organization I worked with
had to hire hundreds of people within a targeted period of time.  The marekting plan required a higher volume of
leads to get the hires. This process also created a need for additional
screening support to drive efficiency in the process.  The net of it is, a sophisticated social
media strategy would not work for a hiring event that required speed. However a
demand generation marketing program was the right solution.

Summary

Recruiting marketing is more
than throwing the latest and greatest  activities at a problem.  It does require an analytical way to measure
the effectiveness of what you are trying to solve.   Frankly this is the most costly part of
recruiting and dollars are tight. Making every dollar work for you is what we
all aspire to achieve.

Tracey Friend, tfriend@brightfieldstrategies.com