For many employers, recruiting events are an important part of talent acquisition strategy. Whether you sponsor conferences, organize meet-ups or participate in campus career fairs, recruiting events can provide a great opportunity to build awareness for your employer brand, engage in real conversations with your target candidate personas and build relationships for your talent pipeline.
Sounds good, right? The catch is that it takes time and effort to make recruiting events successful. And not every event will result in immediate hires. So then how should you be measuring the effectiveness of events to know if they’re worth it? Here are 8 key metrics for measuring your recruiting events.
1. Attendance rate
This metric is the ratio of actual attendees compared to the number of RSVPs you received or invites you extended. Analyzing this data point shows how effective your pre-event outreach was, whether candidates were engaged through this outreach and how successful your other measures were in getting job seekers to show up.
(Pro tip: Use email and text notifications before an event to remind candidates that they RSVP’d! This increases the chances they will attend.)
2. Promotional traffic
For your online event promotion methods, such as a landing page, social ad campaign or email marketing, tracking the traffic that comes to or sees this content lets you know how much traction it’s garnering. Engagement is another factor that demonstrates how your ideal candidates are reacting — and interacting — with your promotional assets. Likes, shares, comments and mentions are all indicators of high engagement. If numbers are lower than expected, however, some changes to wording, design, placement or target audience might need to be made.
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3. Candidate experience
It might be a bit difficult to quantify the experience for event attendees, but survey tools can help you calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gain a better understanding of this aspect and turn it into a metric. By asking attendees how likely they are to recommend your recruiting events to friends or colleagues (or some variation of that question), you can gauge their perception of your event and whether they found it valuable for their job search needs. You can send out a survey after an event, after an attendee has submitted an application, after they’ve completed an interview or after they’ve been hired, depending on which stage you want to measure.
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4. Conversion rate
Just like you track how many candidates who interact with your employer brand online end up converting to applicants, the same should be done at your events! Of the attendees, how many went on to submit an application, either at the actual event or afterwards? This metric can highlight if your event provided candidates with the right information and tools (and encouragement!) needed to fill out an application.
5. Offer acceptance rate
Knowing how many attendees go on to accept employment offers from your company shows you how effective your events are at attracting qualified candidates and helping to move them through the application and eventual hiring process. You can also compare this metric to your overall offer acceptance rates to figure out how many new employees come from your events.
6. Time to hire
This measurement allows you to see how long it takes for a candidate who attended an event to become a hire. You might find that, when compared to your overall time to hire measurement, event time to hire is shortened thanks to the in-person opportunity. Or perhaps it’s the same or even longer depending on other factors. Whatever the measurement, this can help you determine whether or not your events help you meet your hiring goals more quickly.
7. Source of hire
Your events are obviously not the first touchpoint for candidates. They came from somewhere, and it’s helpful to know where that somewhere is from! This way, you’ll know which recruiting channels are the most effective at attracting job seekers who are likely to attend your events. It could be social is the ticket, or an perhaps email campaign (maybe someone already in your Talent Network just needed an event email for that extra push) or maybe even a job board posting is what spurs candidate action. Being armed with this knowledge ensures your event efforts remain focused on the right channels.
8. Event costs
They’re not always the most fun metrics to measure, but being aware of your event cost and the return on investment is something that can’t be overlooked. Plus, this is one that those up the ladder at your company will definitely want to know! Cost per attendee, per applicant and per hire are the key data points here. Your recruitment events are only successful if they are netting you talented new employees who will create more value for your company, so make sure you can demonstrate this is the case.
Recruiting events are still one of the best ways to reach new candidates and build talent pipelines, and they can be an effective piece of a comprehensive Recruitment Marketing strategy. When you have access to the right metrics from your events, you can show your leadership — and yourself — how they drive success for your organization’s hiring goals.