Beyond Measurement: The FYI on KPIs

You need robust analytics to track results and manage your recruitment budget. Quite simply, if you can’t measure your recruitment performance, you can’t improve it. Which KPIs are most important to your organization? How are you currently measuring or analyzing your metrics to make data-driven decisions? We recommend a phased approach in addressing these questions:

IDENTIFY your KPIs
In our previous blog post, NAS discussed the 5 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that we focus on as the first step in the process of identifying and defining your hiring strategy. Refer to that article for a detailed discussion of each of the following:

• Career Page Conversion
• Application Conversion
• Conversion Time
• Mobile vs. Desktop
• Cost Per Apply and Cost Per Hire

MEASURE the information collected
From a measurement perspective, it’s vital to ensure that you have the proper tools in place to measure the KPIs you require. You may need to check with your IT and marketing teams if you are not certain of what you are currently measuring. For example, tracking codes may need to be placed to capture the data you want.

NAS provides our clients with a full suite of measurement tools via a client-managed dashboard featuring real-time access. It allows you to track from visit all the way through to hire, in order to gauge performance. We also handle the setup and ongoing management to make sure you are measuring the KPIs that are vital to you. Having the proper data tracking method in place is key to creating an effective strategy.

ANALYZE your performance
Once you’ve measured your performance, the next step is to analyze the data. KPIs are interconnected and there’s always more to what you see. There are many variables to candidate behavior that may be affecting your results. The analysis process should not just be a high-level overview; it must focus on the nitty-gritty details.

With analytics performance reports, we’re able to see when and how candidates got to your site, the referral source that brought them there, their path once they arrived, how long they stayed, etc. All of these details, working together, are critical and allow us to sift through and find that missing puzzle piece that gives us a clear indication of the issue so we know what to fix and can accurately identify areas for opportunity to improve.

IMPROVE with appropriate actions
There are two factors at play here: identifying areas for improvement and measuring against growth goals. Analytics can help you understand and improve:

• Candidate behavior on your site
• Career site content and redesign
• Strategy implementation
• Results of digital campaigns
• Best media sources

Let me give you a few examples:

• Analytics are telling us that candidates for warehouse jobs are dropping out of the apply process at a very high rate due to the length of the application in the ATS. Solution: set up a landing page with a quick apply form.
• For a specific campaign, analytics are telling us which media sources are driving candidates to your site and, further, how many are actually applying. Solution: adjust media to put more spend to the sources that are driving the most applications.
• Analytics for the career site are indicating high engagement on the page that showcases your community efforts. Solution: weave messaging around this topic into social media to drive more candidates to the site.

Knowing the right solution is key, and analytics allows you to measure against many different variables. We can interpret the data, identify root cause and provide the most cost-effective recommendations.

REPEAT, repeat, repeat
Once you implement a strategy, you should revert right back to measuring. That way, we can see the impact, analyze it and if we need to adjust, we do so. Initially, you want to fix areas that are problematic. Once you’ve gotten into the groove, how can you get better? What can you do to increase traffic, conversions and ultimately, quality of hire?

Analytics is essentially an auto-loop process that is continually rotating and evolving, which in turn allows you to continue to refine and optimize your hiring strategy.

Check out our case study on how we helped an education client with analytics. NAS has a full suite of analytics offerings that can dramatically improve your recruitment marketing efforts. We’ll be happy to walk you through the process and show you the major impact that analytics plays in your hiring success. Contact us to learn more.

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