If talking about your accomplishments can feel uncomfortable, I understand. I’ve been there. But I’m here to tell you to get over it (I know that’s easier said than done)!
At December’s RallyFwd virtual conference, I gave a full presentation (surprisingly for the first time!) and talked about tracking, measuring and how analytics are personal. I shared some of the lessons from my own career journey and explained how I came to understand my data story. I want to help you discover how to use data and measurement to create your data story in order to reframe the way stakeholders and leaders see you and your role and how it can help you further your Recruitment Marketing career.
What’s your data story?
I founded Rally Recruitment Marketing in 2017, when I saw the need for a community around how TA, HR and Recruitment Marketing fields were evolving from a support function to enabling an organization’s growth. Since then, we’ve polled and surveyed thousands of you and the #1 challenge across the community has always been analytics.
From our research in the Rally community, we’ve found that many practitioners are struggling to prove their value, and many managers don’t understand Recruitment Marketing. Part of your job is to educate others of what it is you do.
About a third of Recruitment Marketing practitioners have managers who don’t understand what they do, according to a recent Rally community poll.
Whether you have a full-time role in Recruitment Marketing and employer branding, or it’s just one of your many responsibilities, time and again you say it’s a challenge to get the support you need to do your job and show the impact of the work you do.
As you can tell, I’m very passionate about analytics because I believe analytics are personal. I like to refer to how you describe your impact at work as your data story. To get a job or a promotion, you need a professional data story that you’re confident talking about.
When I look back at my old resume from 1997, I wish I knew how important data and language around analytics would become. For the first 10 years of my career, I talked about how I did my job, not what I achieved. I see someone who doesn’t know their own value, never mind how to communicate it to someone else.
Your data story = problem + strategies + results. And in this story, you’re the hero. Before job interviews or promotion discussions, prepare your data story positioning yourself as strategic and results-oriented, not tactical. Changing how you describe your work will alter how you’re perceived as a professional. Only you know how to turn your data into a story so others can understand what you do and the impact you’re making everyday.
Remember, when you’re asked to present the effectiveness of a campaign, it’s a reflection of your strategy, your abilities, and of you. You may be the first Recruitment Marketing person at your organization or part of a larger team, but either way you should be proving your value to the company every day.
Change your language: Move from I think to I know
I’ve worked in various marketing roles across industries, and led digital marketing projects before digital marketing was considered a role. Over time I learned the importance of using tools and technologies to help track and measure my efforts in order to show, definitely, my impact.
How many times a day do you say “I think” instead of “I know”? Language matters, and you can’t measure what you don’t track. In Recruitment Marketing, we’re often between HR, TA, and Marketing teams and many of us may be measuring the wrong things to know if we’re being successful (if we’re measuring at all)
The fundamental difference between traditional recruiting and Recruitment Marketing:
- Traditional recruiting attracts talent to a job.
- Recruitment Marketing attracts talent to an employer. This of course includes jobs, but as we know today, virtually no one is going to take a job at a company they know nothing about.
There are very different metrics to track impact on advertising jobs vs. marketing employees.
Being measured only by traditional recruiting KPIs (key performance indicators) will never tell the full picture of the value you bring in attracting and influencing people to want to work for your company. It’s no surprise then that our latest project at Rally is a new tool that addresses this gap, and provides a way to measure Recruitment Marketing impact.
Rally Inside shows you what works best to attract talent to your employer brand by analyzing candidate engagement with your Recruitment Marketing content. Its goal is to empower Recruitment Marketing professionals to show clear impact through data in order to educate your leaders to see the value of your work.
Make tracking Recruitment Marketing Content a priority in 2022
What can you do right now to help you start measuring your work so that you can see (and then show) your impact this year?
In real estate, they say it’s all about location, location, location. In Recruitment Marketing, it’s all about tracking, tracking, tracking!
Many of you are forging the path forward to modern recruiting, and it’s an exciting time to be in this field. You have an opportunity to be a champion for Recruitment Marketing and employer branding, but also a champion of tracking and measuring your strategies to help your company, your team and your own career.
To check out my full presentation from RallyFwd, access December’s Virtual Conference On Demand. And, to start to measure and track your strategies (and your impact) right away, sign up for your free Rally Inside account.
