Measuring employer brand has always been viewed as a challenge. Everyone understands the importance of building the brand, but few know where to start when it comes to measuring its success. Those that try all seem to have a different process.
Don’t let the ambiguity or complexity scare you off. It is far simpler than we make it out to be.
The key to creating any recruitment metrics is knowing your business goals. What is most important to achieve the results your business needs? By clearly defining your goals, you can identify ways to measure your brand’s impact.
Let’s Start With Some Basics
One of the main reasons you are building a brand is to drive traffic to your careers page. More page visits should translate to more applications completed. Identify the key pages you are driving traffic to. For most, it will be the main careers page.
Use your Google Analytics dashboard to measure page visits by both new and returning visitors. This number can help keep your pulse on whether various ads or campaigns you run are driving incremental traffic month-over-month or year-over-year. You can even track the source of the traffic. You may be surprised where your traffic is coming from! These are great metrics for reinvestment opportunities.
As your number of applications grows, it may be beneficial to know your Applications-to-Interview Ratio. This will tell you the number of applications it takes to find qualified people to interview. If the brand you are projecting is attracting the right candidates, you should see this ratio increase. A larger qualified applicant pool means a better quality of hire.
With more quality applicants, streamlining your interview process is important! You need to be able to handle the additional volume while still maintaining adequate time-to-hire. To keep your team in check, measure your time-to-fill or time-to-hire and set a benchmark around what is considered the target number of days. This target can be set based on historical data and operational needs.
A strong employment brand should help you improve your quality of hire. Therefore, measuring your retention and internal promotion rates would make sense. Are people staying longer? Are you promoting more people internally? Do your 30-60-90-day turnover rates decline?
Don’t forget brand authenticity. This is likely the most ambiguous metric. What it really comes down to is determining if your team is delivering on your value proposition. Does your candidate experience stack up to the expectations you set?
The easiest way to measure candidate experience is through candidate surveys. To get a clear, accurate picture it is best to implement a technology partner that can offer end-to-end process data points. Obtaining data only from candidates you interviewed or hired is skewed. When your insight also includes the person that only applies online and gets declined, then you have a full picture of your brand and the experience you deliver.
Once you have your starting metrics identified and know your numbers, you can establish realistic service level agreements with your clients. These numbers will also help you establish credibility with the business and influence future investment (or reinvestment) in recruiting.
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