With the recent release of our annual Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report, it’s a great time to reflect not only on all the insightful data that the benchmark report provides but how to best leverage it to improve recruiting outcomes.
While the temptation is to take pricing guidelines (in the report, we cover average cost per click by state and by industry/function) and apply them directly to recruitment media buying, it’s important to leverage this data in the context of your own data. To accomplish this, you must first baseline your data and use the metrics you’ve tracked, measured and calculated to understand how to leverage this benchmark data in conjunction with your own.
You cannot improve what you do not measure. Benchmarking your recruitment data allows you to know where you stand against the rest of the market, which will help you identify both areas for improvement and a method in which to track your own progress.
There are many reasons to benchmark your recruitment marketing metrics but first you should understand what comparisons you need to make:
Compare your (past) Data to your (present/future) Data
- Identify if bidding up or down impacts your volume or quality of candidate
- Understand if changes you have made in your titles have had impact
- Understand the impact of changes to your apply process
Compare Market Data to your Data
- Understand if there are big market swings (i.e. macro-level, industry-related, etc.)
- Advocate for process or technology changes in your organization
- Provide data that influences change
Beyond baselining and benchmarking, having data about your business, especially data that relates to large costs items (job board spend, as an example) is only going to benefit you and your team as you strive to make more hires in an increasingly difficult hiring environment.
There are three types of recruitment marketing measurement you should invest in:
- Tracking key events (clicks, applies, quality candidates, hires, etc.)
- Tracking conversion events – the math between two key events (click to apply, apply to quality applies, applies to hires)
- Tracking where the money goes (source of candidate, cost per application, cost per quality application, source of hire, cost of hire by source).
With these events and conversion rates, you can easily see when your business is improving or conversely, quickly identify when and where you may have an issue.
To get started baselining your data, take a read of our white paper on Baselining Your Recruitment Metrics.
Good Luck!
