One of my goals as a Recruitment Marketing professional is to make our recruiters’ jobs easier. One way to accomplish that is by running digital advertising campaigns to get our employer branding messages and jobs in front of the right candidates.
An important aspect of this work is to keep the recruiting and hiring team partners informed along the way and to educate them on new recruiting channels, what’s working and how we’re helping them to fill their open jobs with high quality candidates. The best way to do so (and to see what’s working!) is through data analytics.
Below is an example (originally shared in the Rally webinar, Hard-to-Fill Roles, Fulfilled! – watch on demand) of how to analyze your Recruitment Marketing data and report results back to your stakeholders.
The goal
When analyzing a Recruitment Marketing campaign, the aim should be to determine which efforts are producing the best results for the least amount of money so you can repeat those tactics. Using this approach you can also potentially add or shift budget to the method with the best Recruitment Marketing ROI to improve results over time.
Getting started
To report on a specific Recruitment Marketing campaign, it’s important to track data that aligns closely with campaign goals.
To make things a bit more concrete, here’s an example of the template I use to track tactics and results. This example was used for a Recruitment Marketing campaign I ran to generate medical assistant applicants over the course of three months. We launched and internally promoted an employee referral program (ERP) bonus, ran several social media campaigns and posted job ads on Glassdoor.
This is an example of a report I use with my colleagues for two reasons: 1) So they’re well informed and can share with their hiring teams all the efforts we’re making to get roles filled. 2) The data helps us analyze which tactics and channels were the most successful methods, in order to repeat them.
Here’s a blank version of a Recruitment Marketing Campaign Report that you can download and use to launch and track your own campaigns. Click here for the free download >>>
Interpreting the data
Once you capture the data in the Recruitment Marketing Campaign Report, observe spikes, dips or changes in your metrics week-over-week.
In my example, the first spike that stood out on this report was the jump in referrals from 6 to 12 on the week of April 22.
Next, determine why the spike occurred.
If you scan up in my example to view the advertising we did that week, you’ll see there was a large push of internal communication, which was focused on the employee referral program bonus. This tactic was free, required minimal effort and, based on the results, we can confidently say the communication worked – albeit a small increase – and is something we should consider trying again. (Side note: we’d done this type of internal communication in January and saw even stronger results then!)
Next, we see a huge jump in applicants, applications, webpage views and keyword searches the week of May 20. Our digital advertising efforts that week included Twitter campaigns, Facebook campaigns and an email blast through our CRM tool. The total spend was $190 and we saw a 24% increase in applicants versus the average of the previous 10 weeks. Just like with our internal communication, that data shows that we can consider our social media push to be a success in garnering additional applicants.
Never stop improving
As you track and analyze your Recruitment Marketing campaign data, you should also keep your eye open for ways that you can optimize your campaign tracking in the future.
For instance, one takeaway we had after looking at these metrics was that we weren’t sure which social channel produced the best ROI (based on applicants), because their run times overlapped. To counter this, in subsequent months we ran ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in different weeks to better pinpoint which channel produced the most applicants for the least amount of money.
Sharing is caring
Last up, make sure that all the great work you’re doing is publicized so people know about the strategic thought that goes into your Recruitment Marketing campaigns – and so they can see the results of your hard work!
You’ll also want to make sure that the results are communicated in a way that will encourage people to take notice. For example, I give anyone who wants it full access to my set of raw data, but I know a spreadsheet full of numbers can take time to digest. Many recruiters, leaders and hiring teams just don’t have the time to do a spreadsheet deep dive.
So, to help paint the picture in a fast and easy-to-understand way, I created this Recruitment Marketing Campaign Report Template. I present it to the medical assistant recruitment team as a guest speaker on a regularly scheduled call. This gives me an opportunity to explain our efforts, ask for feedback, celebrate wins and answer any questions they have. We discuss the ongoing advertising strategy, including how they can help.
I now use this report template for several campaigns, with slight tweaks to best suit the campaign’s needs. I hope you find it useful as well! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or tweet to me at @JLSummerfield.
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Rally note: Looking to learn more about how to create and track your own Recruitment Marketing campaigns? We’re hosting a series of in-person workshops this fall across several US cities. You’ll walk away with a Recruitment Marketing Content Playbook that will provide you with examples, templates and all the info you need to build out a ton of content to supercharge your campaigns. Find out more on the Rally Workshop page.
