Once considered groundbreaking for the HR industry, data and analytics are now a key business driver for companies looking to maximize budget, improve hiring KPIs, strengthen employee retention and engagement, and more. In today’s market, most businesses are tracking their recruitment marketing investments to get a better understanding of their costs and performance in order to enhance their talent acquisition (TA) strategy. These metrics, including job ad impressions, clicks, and application volume, allow HR and TA professionals to make data-driven decisions that strategically inform their campaigns.
While there is a plethora of insights to be gained from these various advertising metrics, it’s crucial that businesses track quality data allowing them to connect the dots between the top-of-funnel campaign performance and the recruitment process.
Understanding Current Recruitment Metrics
Today’s labor market leaves many recruiting teams stretched thin and struggling to get the right amount of HRIS or data analytics support to fully grasp the return on investment from their recruitment advertising.
The most basic metrics, while still helpful, focus more on quantity over quality. Using this approach can result in hidden costs and inefficiencies as many HR professionals are left without specific insights about what channels are driving quality candidates to their career sites.
Oftentimes, the go-to performance metrics for recruitment advertising campaigns are impressions or clicks, measuring how many people have seen or engaged with a particular campaign. However, the conversion from impression to click (known as click-through rate or CTR) does not typically equate to a full application or, more importantly, a quality application. There’s a large disconnect in the industry as to which sources are driving applicants to make it further in the recruitment process, but analytics tied to quality metrics can help bridge this gap.
The Call to Measure Quality Metrics
Quality metrics take into account an organization’s recruitment operations and functionality, providing insight into the dynamic nature of priority job openings that attract top talent. It’s important to keep in mind that “quality” is not a one-size-fits-all.
The quality metric that works for a particular organization can and likely will be different from others depending on specific objectives and the recruitment process. For instance, evaluating cost per applicant (CPA), cost per quality applicant (CPQA), and cost per hire (CPH) can help produce more accurate metrics than simply relying on time-to-fill or quantity of applicants.
CPQA is a significant measurement because it provides insight into how much a company has invested in a campaign to yield a “qualified” candidate for a particular role. Additionally, evaluating CPH identifies the cost of bringing a candidate into the recruiting process and ultimately, over the finish line as a hire for an organization. Knowing how much it costs to secure a qualified applicant and ultimately a hire provides essential insight for HR teams to forecast recruitment budgets based on the number of hires needed, better align with workforce plans and long-term business goals, and create enhanced strategies that further optimize output via recruitment marketing channels.
Transform Business Operations with CPQA
Given a better understanding of advertising and applicant performance, teams can level up their recruitment marketing strategy even further. Leveraging reporting through an applicant tracking system (ATS) allows visibility into quality metrics so HR teams can better execute their recruiting initiatives and hiring objectives that correspond with overall business operations.
Having an understanding of the channels that drive more qualified candidates can positively impact job satisfaction. By attracting better-suited candidates, organizations can improve long-term employee retention. Under these circumstances, business operations are enhanced because of cost-effective recruitment sources and reduced turnover rates.
Lastly, and of equal importance, data-driven insights provide enriched strategic planning that benefits employer branding. Developing recruitment strategies that align with a company’s growth plan, identity, and offerings only maintains a stronger feedback loop of quality candidates.
How to Implement CPQA into the Recruitment Process
To measure CPQA, one must first understand an organization’s unique recruitment process. This may involve working with the ATS administrator or HRIS team to define what the various stages of the recruitment process look like. The stages within a sample recruitment workflow could be New Applicant, Initial Review, Phone Screen, Hiring Manager Review, Hiring Manager Interview, Offer, and Hire. Keep in mind, depending on organizational structure, the stages within this process could vary between different groups or functional areas.
Next, define quality criteria for applicants. Outline the stage(s) within the recruitment process that indicates a qualified applicant for the organization. For instance, if a candidate is placed in the “Phone Screen” stage in the ATS, that could be considered the status a recruiting team deems as quality for a particular role.
Thirdly, track applicants associated with each recruitment channel. When activating recruitment marketing campaigns, establish source tracking tied to each advertising channel, as defined within the ATS. Since each ATS captures source tracking differently, pay attention to how these source codes are appended to campaign URLs. The origination of a job seeker’s click can offer further insight into what advertising channels are working. Again, this may involve working internally with the HRIS team and/or recruitment marketing agency partner.
From there, measure costs and calculate CPQA/CPH for different channels. Ensure that there is a handle on the costs tied to each advertising channel the team is leveraging for recruitment marketing efforts. Capturing and centralizing these costs is paramount to measuring CPQA and ultimately CPH.
Quality is Calling: Reevaluate Your Metrics Today
In today’s quickly evolving job market, these types of data-driven insights provide organizations the ability to make strategic decisions to revolutionize the workforce, HR teams, and business operations. Better analytics and a more dynamic recruiting channel strategy allow organizations to shift their budget toward more flexible pay-per-performance and employer branding channels instead of being locked away in underperforming initiatives. Begin capturing quality metrics to build better recruitment marketing campaigns that reinforce employer brand and increase quality applicant flow, leading to more easily filled roles and better return on investment.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cori Lunnen, VP Recruitment Marketing Operations, HireClix
Cori Lunnen, Vice President of Recruitment Marketing. Cori has established herself as a recruitment marketing expert through her hands-on experience developing targeted direct response and employer branding campaigns over the past ten years at HireClix. By combining her creative thinking along with her analytical focus on results, Cori has proven herself invaluable to clients as they develop strategic plans to support their talent acquisition needs. She has developed expertise in programmatic advertising and countless applicant tracking systems (ATS) in order to help clients develop a stronger sense of data integrity around their recruitment advertising efforts.
