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Measuring effectiveness5

Mar 05
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That Little Agency - Employer Branding - Careers Website - Content Marketing - Effective KPIs

The importance of effective KPIs for your employer brand

By Measuring effectiveness

In today’s competitive job market, your employer brand plays a crucial role in attracting and retaining top talent. It’s not just about looking good on paper – it’s about creating a company culture people genuinely want to be a part of. And in a world where resources are often stretched thin, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re doing more with less. That’s where employer branding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come in.

By tracking the right KPIs, you can ensure your employer branding efforts are aligned with your business goals and generating real, tangible results. Think of it as finding the most efficient route to success – getting the most bang for your buck while improving your bottom line.

What are employer branding KPIs?

KPIs are measurable values that help companies track the success of their efforts. In the context of employer branding, KPIs are metrics that show how well your brand is doing in attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent. They help you understand what’s working and what’s not, and they guide your decision-making.

Tracking the right KPIs is vital as it allows you to allocate resources wisely, prioritise the areas that need attention, and focus on the strategies that are delivering the best results. A little investment in measuring the right KPIs can pay huge dividends in the long run – helping you attract quality candidates, improve retention, and create a brand that stands out in a crowded market.

Employer branding KPIs you can’t afford to skip

Here’s a breakdown of the most important KPIs to track in your employer branding efforts:

Talent attraction and recruitment metrics

  • Application conversion rate: This is the percentage of job seekers who apply after viewing a job post. A higher conversion rate suggests that your employer brand is enticing potential candidates to take the next step. 88% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before applying for a job, so getting yours right is critical to scoring well here. Tracking your conversion rate can help you optimise your job listings to attract the right talent. (Source: Vouchfor.com, 2025)
  • Time-to-Fill: This metric measures the time it takes from posting a job to hiring a candidate. A long time-to-fill can indicate inefficiencies in your hiring process, while a shorter one suggests your recruitment efforts are on point.
  • Quality of hire: This KPI evaluates the performance and retention of new hires. It’s essential because hiring the right candidates isn’t just about filling positions quickly – it’s about finding people who will thrive in your company culture and stay for the long-term.
  • Candidate experience score: How do potential hires feel about your recruitment process? Tracking this score allows you to gauge candidate satisfaction and identify areas for improvement, which can significantly impact your employer brand’s reputation.

Employer brand awareness metrics

  • Career site traffic: Tracking the number of visitors to your career site helps you understand the reach of your employer brand. More traffic often means greater awareness and interest in your company, which is a great sign of your brand’s appeal.
  • Social media engagement: Likes, shares, comments, and interactions on your employer branding posts indicate how well your brand resonates with potential candidates. It’s important to monitor how your brand is being received on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, as these can be powerful tools for recruitment.
  • Employee reviews and ratings: Reviews on platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed offer valuable insights into your employer brand from the people who matter most – your employees. These reviews can show where you’re excelling and where there’s room for improvement.
  • Employer Net Promoter Score (eNPS): This measures how likely employees are to recommend your company as a place to work. A high eNPS means your employees are happy and willing to advocate for your brand, which is a powerful tool for recruitment.

Employee Retention and Engagement Metrics

  • Employee retention rate:This metric tracks how well your company is keeping talent. A strong employer brand that supports employee growth and satisfaction can help reduce employee turnover by as much as 28%. (Source: dsmn8.com, 2024)
  • Internal mobility rate:This KPI reflects the opportunities for growth within your company. High internal mobility is a sign of a healthy work culture where employees feel they have room to grow.
  • Employee engagement scores:Regular surveys can give you a snapshot of how engaged your employees are with your company’s culture and mission. Higher engagement (which will come naturally with a stronger brand – sometimes by up to 20%) means your brand is likely creating a workplace people want to be a part of. (Source: Vouchfor.com, 2024)

Why these KPIs matter

So why track all these KPIs? The answer is simple: it lets you make decisions driven by real data. 72% of recruiting leaders around the world agree that employer branding has a significant impact on hiring. By understanding where you stand on key metrics, you can allocate your resources more effectively, targeting high-impact areas which need attention. (Source: Vouchfor.com, 2024)

  • Prioritisation of high-impact areas: Not every part of your employer branding strategy will deliver the same results. Tracking KPIs helps you identify what’s working and where to focus your efforts – ensuring you’re not wasting time or money on initiatives that aren’t bringing value.
  • Cost savings & ROI: A little investment in tracking and optimising your KPIs can result in huge savings in the long run. For example, a strong employer brand can reduce recruitment costs by up to 50%, while also speeding up the hiring process. That’s money back in your pocket and less stress on your HR team. (Source: Vouchfor.com, 2024)
  • Competitive advantage: Employer branding is a powerful tool in attracting top talent. By tracking KPIs, you can continually refine and improve your strategies, building a stronger brand that stands out in the job market.

Optimising employer branding efforts with limited resources

You don’t need a massive budget to make a big impact with your employer brand. Here are a few ways to optimise your efforts and get the most out of your limited resources:

  • Employee advocacy: Encouraging employees to share content on LinkedIn, Instagram, and other social media platforms is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your employer brand. Employees’ authentic stories carry more weight than corporate messaging and can help you reach a wider audience.
  • Automate and streamline processes: Use tools to help you track and analyse your recruitment, social media, and employee engagement metrics. Automation saves time and ensures you’re always on top of your KPIs.
  • Focus on organic growth: Enhance your career site’s SEO, showcase your company’s culture through storytelling, and be transparent about your values. These efforts can create traffic and help attract the right candidates without spending a fortune on paid ads.
  • Repurpose & reuse content: If you’ve already created content for your recruitment efforts, repurpose it! Use the same blog posts, videos, and testimonials in different formats and across different channels to maximise their reach.

In conclusion

Tracking KPIs is crucial to the success of your employer branding efforts. By measuring the right metrics, you can ensure your recruitment, retention, and brand awareness strategies are aligned with your business goals. And you’ll be able to do all of this with minimal investment.

A little time and effort spent tracking your KPIs can lead to huge benefits in terms of cost savings, improved efficiency, and a more attractive employer brand. In the end, it’s all about doing more for less. And with the right approach, you’ll be on your way to building a brand that not only attracts top talent but keeps them around for the long haul.

Want some help?

If you feel you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around your employer brand KPIs or other aspects of your employer brand and talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a Zoom call.

Oct 07
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Google Search Console for Recruiters

Google Search Console – getting started for recruiters

By Careers websites, Measuring effectiveness

This is another in our blog series where we explain how Google can help you better understand and improve the performance of your careers website. We’ve looked at Google Analytics, Google for Jobs and now cover the Google Search Console – formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools.

Before you rule yourself out as a ‘non techy’ person, don’t worry. Google Search Console doesn’t require any specialist knowledge and Google are getting much better at making their data easier to use and interpret. We also appreciate many readers may be coming at this as a complete beginner – so we’ve written this to be as jargon free and easy to follow as possible.

So, get ready to discover how the Google Search Console can really help you get the best from your careers site – with links to relevant Google pages where we feel you need to know more.

What is it?

Google Search Console is a free tool that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results, and learn more about the search terms that are leading people to your website. In this article we are going to look at all of this in the context of a careers website.

How it helps you as a recruiter

Google Search Console helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site. You can view Google Search traffic data, how often your site appears in a Google search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers (or potential hires) click through for those queries, and more.

Crucially, it will tell you which pages aren’t indexed by Google – something you’ll really want to fix as you may have great content that’s not being found. We index all career websites produced by That Little Agency, but you may have an older site that could have been setup better. You’ll soon find where you need to focus to correct this.

If you’ve invested in a recruitment or employer branding video – and we really think you should – Google Search Console will give you data on the performance of your video pages. Again, just as long as they are indexed.

It’ll also tell you which pages are getting the most conversions (that’s the number of people who completed your call to action out of everyone who landed on your page) so you can make them even more effective. So, for example, if you are running several recruitment campaigns on your careers site, you can tell which ones work the best, and those that might need some work. In summary, as a recruiter, the better you understand your site’s performance the better you can tweak what’s working and improve what’s not.

How to set it up

We do this automatically on any new TLA site build. But, if your current site doesn’t have it, Google have a guide that you can follow. They’ve categorised users into different types, so you can select the one that best matches how you are likely to use the console. This ranges from beginners up to experienced web developers.

We think most users in a recruiter role would probably want guidance at what Google call Beginner (willing to learn) level. So just click the ‘Get Started’ button and go from there. At this level you’d be interested in improving your site’s appearance on Google Search and be willing to put in a little time learning about search engine optimisation (SEO) and Search Console. These are all handy skills to know. In our experience, anyone who masters any aspect of resourcing data quickly becomes the ‘go to’ person in the resourcing team!

How to use the console and receive your data

As Google say in their user guide, once you are setup the first thing to do is relax. You see, we told you not to worry! Google Search Console is highly automated. They’ll email you if there’s any unusual events they’ve spotted on your site – such as hacking or problems while crawling or indexing your site. After this, they suggest you check in every month or so via the Search Console dashboard as the simplest way to get a quick health check on your site. However, if you are running a recruitment campaign or adding new content, you’ll want to check in more regularly to monitor results. Remember, if you add new content, you’ll need to tell Google which pages to crawl – you can do this by updating your sitemap. They’ve written a handy Basic Search Console guide to all of this.

When you are in the Search Console, you’ll see tabs on the left hand side of your screen called Performance, Index and Experience – as well as an Overview at the top.

Overview: this report covers manual actions, total website clicks, indexed pages, and more. It’s where you go to spot the major issues, as well as seeing your site’s overall performance.

Performance: This part covers your site’s total number of impressions and clicks, as well as your average click-through rate (CTR) and position in search results. It also highlights user queries, devices, locations, and more.

Index: See which pages Google has found on your site, which pages have been indexed, and any indexing problems encountered. There’s a handy chart showing your indexed and non-indexed URLs.

Experience: What is happening on your pages, what needs improvement and what is happening with mobile usability? You’ll find out in this section.

How to get summary reports

Google has made it simple to get concise reports via a WordPress plugin and an Insights report.

Site Kit: If your careers site is built in WordPress, you can get insights about how people find and use your site and how to improve your content, directly in your WordPress dashboard. Find out more here: https://sitekit.withgoogle.com/

Search Console Insights: This is a high-level summary in a concise report format. You can get this by selecting “Search Console Insights” from the top of Google Search Console’s Overview page. It’s particularly helpful for those creating content as it helps better understand content performance. Find out more here: https://search.google.com/search-console/insights/about

FAQs

Don’t you get all this with Google Analytics anyway?

That’s a good question and a common one in most articles on the Google Search Console. Yes, the search console looks like Google Analytics and you can even access your search console data within Google Analytics but there is a difference between the two. Google Search Console looks at what happens before a user reaches your site, while Google Analytics analyses what happens after they arrive on your site. You really need to understand both.

Does the Google Search Console help with SEO?

You can’t ‘do’ SEO within the search console, that still needs to be done as you setup content in your SEO module, such as in Yoast which is a popular plugin used by WordPress sites. However, the information you’ll get from the search console will certainly help you improve it – as you’ll see which pages are receiving good traffic – or not. As such, it will help you focus on the diagnostics of why – which may lead you to poor SEO which needs improvement.

You may find this additional TLA content helpful

If you want to explore ways of better understanding the performance of your careers website and SEO, we’ve got just the thing:

Search engines: Are you friendly? Or are you optimised?
How to improve the SEO of your careers website
Google Analytics, your careers website and your candidates
Measuring your online application process with Google Analytics
Everything you wanted to know about Google for Jobs

Need a little help?

If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around Google Search Console or any aspect of your website or talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a Zoom call.

Nov 15
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That Little Agency | Careers Websites | Google Analytics | Thumbnail Image

Measuring your online application process with Google Analytics

By Careers websites, Measuring effectiveness

I love a guest blog article. And so when I was recently talking to Louis Halton Davies of Web Marketer around his thoughts around the effective use of Google Analytics, I was delighted when he agreed to share his top tips and considerations with us. Google Analytics is a topic we covered earlier in the year with a look at some of the key data it will give you and some tips on how to get started. If you want to get up and running, you can read it here.

In this new post, Louis looks in more depth at the range of data you can obtain from your Google Analytics account – just as long as its properly set up. And, as well as this blog, we’ve produced one of our little guides on the topic – and there’s a link to download that at the end of this article.

So take it away Louis …

Back in 2017, The Economist said that ‘the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data’. And we’d tend to agree. Especially when we think that there’s a free piece of software that can save us all heaps of precious time and money. We’re talking about Google Analytics here. It’s one of the most underused and underrated bits of tech in the talent attraction world.

“Google Analytics is telling me that the majority of our applications are coming from our careers site?”

Sadly, if you look in your Google Analytics account and it tells you the majority of your applications are coming from your careers site (which most of them do) – it means something isn’t right with your set up.

I’ve seen hundreds of careers site Google Analytics accounts over the past four years and not a single one was setup properly. The most common offender is up to 80% of applications showing as originating from the careers site. This means that the most essential of tools, Cross Domain Tracking, hasn’t been installed properly. And if this isn’t in place what else could have been overlooked?

There’s no reason that a careers site can’t have the same level of mouth wateringly useful insights as an ecommerce site. But it just isn’t available out of the box. Not being set up properly means not being able to tell where applications are coming from. Instead, we should be seeing Social, Organic Search, Paid Search and referring websites.

What can you get from a properly set up Google Analytics account?

A well-configured Google Analytics account is an absolute goldmine of insights. Amongst other things, it will tell you:

  • How Google for Jobs traffic compares against job boards.
  • How organic social measures up against paid social.
  • What jobs people are searching for on your website.
  • New websites to advertise on.
  • Where people are abandoning your online application process.
  • Job page views by location, seniority and/or function.
  • Insight into the typical online application journey.
  • Number of applications by device.
  • What people are searching for on Google when your website shows up in the results.
  • How differently careers site users from different cities or countries behave.
  • Which advertising campaigns are working well (and not so well).
  • What can be done on your careers site to encourage more applications.
  • How fast your careers site loads – and which pages need attention.
  • How long it takes the average person to complete an application once started.
  • How many visits it takes on average before an application is started.

And so much more. Which is why getting your account set up properly is so important. Fortunately, we know how to help you with that.

How to get an Google Analytics account set up properly?

Step one is getting a Google Analytics audit. That Little Agency and Web Marketer have teamed up to offer a very good one. Moving forward this will form a key part of our go live process, but it is also highly useful for those whose careers website is already live.

Our new careers website Google Analytics audit is a 54-point checklist that works on a pass or fail basis. Each fail identifies an area that needs fixing. And cross domain tracking that we mentioned earlier is just one of them.

These points range from simple aspects like whether or not the code has been installed and whether the account structure is logical, to more advanced, technical aspects – like whether job boards have been grouped as a custom traffic acquisition channel.

Google Analytics can be overwhelming, so how do we make it useful?

Quite simply, you can use it to measure (most of) the same things you’ll be including in your resourcing reports. Identifying what’s useful and what’s not is part of something we call a “measurement plan”. Because exploring data can turn into a rabbit hole and a (very interesting) time sink.

We then use these key insights and KPIs identified by the measurement plan to build a data visualisation dashboard. This is then fed with live data from Google Analytics so you can log in at any time and see only the insights you need. With the option to switch over to Google Analytics and explore in more detail as and when you fancy.

In conclusion

Chances are that you aren’t getting the very best out of Google Analytics. Setting up Google Analytics correctly can save time and money by giving you real-time insights to make decisions with. And you don’t need to learn to be a Google Analytics professional for it to be useful. You just need pointing in the right direction. And we can help you design and develop a clear data visualisation dashboard to show you only the information that’s going to help you.

Need a little extra help?

We hope that you have found this little snapshot useful. But if you’re hungry for more detail, That Little Agency and Web Marketer have teamed up to produce in-depth guide to some of the mind-blowing capabilities within Google Analytics. Including what they are, what they do and why they’re useful.

Request a copy of ‘A little guide to Google Analytics for careers websites’.

Web Marketer are a boutique, digital marketing consultancy who focus exclusively on driving conversions. To find out more about what they do and who they have worked with, visit www.webmarketeruk.com or drop Louis a line at louishd@webmarketeruk.com

Jul 27
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That-Little-Agency-Employer-Branding-Our-Work-Employer-Brand-Development-Toolstation-EVP-Thumbnail

Building your talent acquisition toolkit

By Careers websites, Employer branding, Measuring effectiveness

Our little blog has covered many aspects of employer branding over the past two years, from building the business case to measuring and evaluating results – and many stages in between. So, it seemed more than a little helpful to tie it all together in an employer brand checklist.

Whether you specialise in resourcing, recruitment or talent – or are coming at it with a marketing perspective, we think you’ll find this useful. Your employer brand will be one of the most important statements your organisation will make in attracting, engaging and retaining your people. Here’s how to make it happen…

1. Get sign-off and build your team

Building an employer brand may make perfect sense to many, but this also has to be bought into by those who are signing off the project and the budget. To get them on your side, it helps to put a powerful business case. We wrote a whole blog on positioning the value of a strong employer brand – and gave a business case elevator pitch for your HR Director that went something like this …

“Our employer brand is effectively our reputation as an employer. Whether candidates decide to join us – or someone else – is often down to their view of us and what it’s like to work here. So, building a more attractive employee proposition will help us bring in more of the right people – and help us keep the great people we already have.”

Now, that’s a pretty powerful argument, wouldn’t you agree? But who’s going to build it?

There are many stakeholders in a successful employer brand. It has traditionally ‘sat’ within recruitment, but it touches many other parts of the organisation such as marketing, IT, compliance. Then there are your external partners – that could be an agency (we know a great little one), an ATS provider, a video specialist, perhaps a social media strategist. It can be a big team and you may well be spending some time together – we know!

Tip: Start by building your business case, talk to marketing, your resourcing team, your agency – and get everyone on board and their roles defined at the outset.

2. Do your research

Would a marketing team launch a new product without first researching the target market and what they might want from this product? No, of course they wouldn’t. An employer brand should be no different. That’s why we recommend you start by understanding where your existing brand sits with your internal and external audience – and what your target audience is looking for …

For example, what might candidates want from a career with you, and what do they think a career with you might be like? What do they like about working for you – is it what you expected, does it sound unique in any way? What are they saying on social media? We might even suggest a focus group of target employees.

And what about your internal audience, what are their views of the good and the bad – and what do they make of the external findings? Finally, what are you going to build on – what are the current stats on time to hire, cost to hire, sourcing channels, turnover rates, etc?

Tip: Whatever role you do, think like a marketer. Get to know your target market and build a baseline of data on which to build.

3. Develop your Employer Proposition (EVP)

The research will have identified what is demonstrably good, and ideally different about working for you. Undoubtedly, you’ll also uncover areas for improvement or consideration too. Overall, you’ll have real confidence that you’ve captured the opinions of your employees and an external view of your target audience.

The process will ensure that you can agree on your employer proposition and all aspects are fully and accurately represented. And, just like any well-planned product offering, it will provide the research-based foundation for the creative development of your employer brand.

We’ve covered the research and building an employer proposition in more depth in our posts ‘Building an employer brand your candidates will want to buy’ and ‘A little guide to your proposition, your brand and your marketing‘.

Tip: Your employer proposition underpins the process that develops the core creative message of your employer brand. Don’t make any assumptions at this stage, it will only come back to bite you where it hurts later.

4. Develop meaningful marketing

The secret to successful employer or recruitment marketing comes from delivering a compelling creative message to the right people – at the right time, in the right place and on the right media. It’s a message that will be articulated through your careers website, social media activity, and advertising. All of which will raise awareness of your brand and help attract more informed talent.

So, how do you get started?

If you haven’t started working with an agency (they may have already helped you carry out research and developed your proposition) then now is the time to – or at least have a chat. Naturally, as an employer branding agency we would say this – it’s what we do (and we love our portfolio of work), but in the interests of impartiality, there are other creative routes you can take and your marketing team might have the resources in-house.

Whatever you decide, the creative output must look and feel like you, which is why involving your existing people for feedback is a good idea. If you show them concepts and they don’t recognise the business (or fall about laughing) it’s not a good sign.

We’ve recently covered two areas very relevant to the creative output of employer branding. The use of film and video is becoming more and more popular as a form of content that shows what it’s like to work for an employer. We’ve also gone into more depth on the need for authenticity in your employer brand.

Tip: You marketing will need to articulate your employer brand across all platforms. A creative partner experienced in employer branding will be able to help with this. It must be authentic to you and believed by your existing people.

5. Build your careers website

Your careers website is probably going to be the first place that a job seeker is going to come into contact with your employer brand. So it needs to make a strong, positive first impression – as well as meeting the needs of your prospective candidates. There’s lot that goes into a careers website and, if you are in an HR role, you’ll be working with an extended team that will probably include marketing, IT, an ATS provider and a creative agency too. That’s why you’ll want to create a good brief.

Writing a brief is a very handy process to clarify your thoughts and create something all stakeholders can sign-off on. If you’ve done your thinking about your employer proposition, you’ll be able to include a steer on your messaging and you may even have a creative approach in place.

We’ve written this article on planning and briefing your careers website but, in brief you should include your values as an organisation, what you are there to achieve, why people will want to work for you and your target audience itself, their likely values and motivations.

Tip: Your careers website should sit at the centre of all your recruitment activity where the candidate is your customer. So, just like any other website, think about what would make the customer take the next step – and write a comprehensive brief. Your web designer will love you for it.

6. Plug it all into Google

You might be delighted with how your new employer brand has translated to your shiny new careers website, but if Google doesn’t know it’s there, your careers website (and the roles on it), is not going to get found.

Fortunately, Google is very helpful when it comes to this. It publishes directions so that you can set-up job postings to be better found in Google searches, leading to the posts having increased chances of discovery and conversion.

And then there’s being set-up for Google’s own job search experience, Google for Jobs – there’s a few things to do for that too. And what about the way your postings and website content is written? Again, there are things you can do that will have a huge impact on how they are found.

We’ve covered all of this and more in our post ‘Making sure Google can find your careers website and vacancies’ and we also have a handy ebook, specifically about Google for Jobs.

Tip: You can’t just switch on your careers site and think that your employer brand will be out there for all the world to see. But if your careers site has been properly indexed with well written pages, well-structured job postings (and clear job titles), is set up for Google for Jobs, is mobile friendly and loads quickly – Google will take a shine to it.

7. Establish your social media strategy

Social media is where your audience are talking and it’s where trust and engagement is built. But you can’t join the conversation unless you’re in the same place as your audience. That’s Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram – places where, as an employer, its relatively low cost to be. But, it’s not only where your audience are, it’s where your audience shares what they want others to know about.

What’s more, social networks offer reach and they attract passive candidates. It’s highly likely that the network of your employees and friends is much bigger than yours as an employer. So, you can’t afford to miss out of social media for sharing all the best parts of your employer brand.

We’ve covered social media with two articles ‘How social media will support your employer brand‘ and, for those doubters in your organisation, the ‘The business case for using social media for employer branding’.

Tip: If your content is engaging and authentic, your employees will want to share it. So make it easy with share buttons and fast loading video. And don’t be one of those organisations that try to control their employees’ social media – it won’t work.  What’s more it may demotivate and kill off the engagement that’s such a powerful recruiting message.

8. Consider the candidate experience – they talk!

You don’t want to do all this work, developing your employer brand and careers website, attracting exactly the kind of people you need, only to lose them because their experience of being your candidate stinks. But it happens. The line manager who sits on CVs for six weeks, the poorly conducted interview and even the unbelievable practice of (still) not getting back to unsuccessful candidates.

All of these are guaranteed to pour a bucket of cold water over your employer brand. If the reality doesn’t match the promise, the candidate will spot it a mile off and call you out on it. There was a time when poor recruitment could be kept in-house, but that was before social media and, in particular Glassdoor and Indeed.

Think about your own relationship with a brand you like and what they do to keep you engaged. It goes way beyond the first touch – and the candidate experience is no different.

Tip: Break your processes down, see where there are any risks to a positive experience and ask candidates for their thoughts too – they’ll be pleased to tell you and it could be very valuable feedback.

9. Measure and evaluate

You’ve defined and developed your proposition, meaningful marketing, new careers website, social media strategy, candidate experience – that’s a lot of effort and cost. So how effective has it all been? What works, what impact has it made?

You’ll need to know this, so you can get the budget to keep developing your employer brand. And if your HR Director asks “so how effective is our employer brand, where have we improved, what are the cost and time savings in our hiring as a result?” It would be nice to know. So, it’s time to get analytical, but, with so many ways of measuring so many different things, where do you start

We think you should look at improvements in the recruitment process – such as time to hire, your channel effectiveness, the costs, applicant completion rate, etc. But we also believe it’s good to measure what your candidates and your internal customers – and even your hiring managers – feel too.

We’ve written a guide with ten metrics that will make you a measurement expert in no time. Check out this article on ‘Recruitment metrics. What you should be recording, how and why‘ And this on ‘Measuring your employer brand‘.

Tip: Often the best place to start is to ask, “What information do you need?” If you did your research at the start of your employer branding project, you’ll have captured baseline data on what on time to hire, cost to hire, sourcing channels, turnover rates. So you’ll be able to look again and report on not only what they are now – but show the improvements.

10. Decide what awards to enter

Why not think big? If you’ve done all the hard work and can demonstrate your employer brand development is clearly delivering (and you’ll have all the metrics to prove it), there are a number of industry awards you should consider. Share and celebrate your best practice with your peers.

The development of the employer brand is also a big commitment – and requires a lot of trust from the client. So when a resourcing manager has put their case to their board and seen it deliver a genuine benefit to their business, we think that they deserve their moment in the spotlight too.

So, what awards are there?

Let’s start with the RAD Awards, championing the very best of recruitment communications and celebrating “talented people, innovative ideas and brave clients”. We often consider these the Oscars of the recruitment communications. Glitz, glamour and the admiration of your agency peers.

We also really like the Recruitment Marketing Awards. Why? Well there are two rounds of judging. The first is by employer branding and marketing professionals. This develops the short-list and is often similar to the RAD Awards. But the second round is by human resources and recruitment professionals who often see things that the agency folk don’t. A little more worthy. A little more British. The BAFTAs of our industry.

Personally, we’re big fans of the FIRM Awards. Celebrating excellence, innovation and best practice within in-house recruitment. For in-house recruitment professionals, voted by in-house recruitment professionals. The Writer’s Guild Awards.

Finally, the Employer Brand Management Awards is focused purely on the definition of your employer proposition and how you develop and manage your employer brand. It has quick become considered a real benchmark of a company’s employer brand management process. The Larry’s (Olivier Awards) of our industry, maybe?

Here’s our take on the importance of awards – for clients and agencies alike.

Tip: Entering an award is a great way to raise the profile of your organisation and your employer brand development work amongst your peers. Submitting the entry can take time so ask your agency to help, they’ll know what to say and which awards you should go for. Good luck!

In short

Developing and managing your employer brand is one of the most important and high-profile decisions your organisation will take. That might sound like a grand statement but not if you consider that the employer brand attracts and retains talent so has a direct impact on productivity and shareholder value. And where would any organisation be without the people they need?

That’s why the process deserves as much careful planning as any other aspect of brand development – and this checklist has been written to give you all the main pointers although there’s a lot more involved in the detail. Which is where we can help.

Personally, we believe that an effective and award-winning employer brand comes from the combination of a bunch of talented people who all want to deliver something special, a great creative approach and a brave and ambitious client. And if we can have some fun delivering it, all the better.

Need a little help?

We are That Little Agency, we help employers tell their story and we do this by developing award-winning employer brands and careers websites. All designed to help you deliver measurable results.

If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around defining your employer value proposition, developing your employer brand or any aspect of your talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Jun 09
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That Little Agency | Employer Branding | Blog | Recruitment Metrics 910 x 510 Image

Recruitment metrics. What you should be recording, how and why

By Measuring effectiveness

If you’ve been reading our blog you’ll know we’ve covered employer branding, the employee value proposition, Google for Jobs, careers websites, social media – we might be little, but we’re big on helpful content. So, if you’ve been implementing at least some of all of this – you should be experiencing an upturn in your recruitment activity. But how effective has it all been? And, if the HR Director wants to know what the resourcing budget has produced, what are you going to report back? Yes, it’s time to get all analytical – but don’t be scared, it’ll be OK, trust me. In fact some of this is so simple you’ll wonder why you’ve not looked into recruitment metrics before.

A little word about measurement

Your recruitment budget is competing with the training budget, the health and safety budget, the HR IT budget, the Friday cake budget – there’s only so much available. If you can demonstrate the success or return on investment (ROI) on what you have spent it’ll make getting the same (or more) next year all the more likely. And that depends on how accurate you can be at measuring your recruitment effectiveness. What’s more, if you don’t know what’s working (or not) how can you be confident about your future strategy?

You know it makes sense. But, with so many ways of measuring so many different things, where do you start? We’ll show you what we think are the main ones – to measure the recruitment process itself and then post recruitment effectiveness and feedback. Start working with these and you’ll be a metrics star before you know it.

Key recruitment metrics – process

1. Time to hire. This can be a contentious issue in an organisation. A hiring manager wants a vacancy filled, how long will it take? Rush the process and you risk undermining quality and missing out on good candidates completely, take too long and you’ll not only frustrate the hiring manager but the candidate might lose interest too. Looking into time to hire can unravel issues that are holding up the process. The ads might have run quickly, but is someone sitting on CVs internally, is there a problem with assessment results taking to long? Are you in turn taking too long to respond to candidates? As you identify and address internal issues, the time to hire should come down.

Time to hire = average number of days from the start of the recruiting process to the signing of the employment contract

2. Sourcing channel effectiveness. This one is about quality, not quantity. In reality, who wants to wade through thousands of unsuitable applications when a shorter list of better qualified candidates can be generated? No one. This metric identifies which channels send you the most suitable and better quality hires. For example, if you receive 2000 applicants through social media and hire 20 candidates, that’s 1%. Alternatively, 20 hires from 500 referrals is 4% – that’s three times more effective and gives you an idea on where to invest budget and effort next time around.

Sourcing channel effectiveness = # of hires generated by a channel / number of applications generated by a channel

3. Sourcing channel cost. Effectiveness is one thing, but what about sourcing channel cost? You can calculate the cost efficiency of your different sourcing channels by including the amount of money spent on each channel – such as the advertisement or referral programme cost. By dividing the spend (per channel) with the number visitors who successfully applied through the vacancy you measure the sourcing channel cost per hire.

Sourcing channel cost = Spend per channel / number of successful applicants per channel

4. Applicant completion rate. You’ve attracted their interest and got them this far – but will they complete the application process? A low applicant completion rate suggests something is putting candidates off. Is the form on your website or ATS too long and repetitive for the role, is it asking for too much personal information? Perhaps the form is not loading properly, risking data loss which would frustrate a candidate who’d be unlikely to enter it all again. If rates suddenly drop something is probably amiss and needs investigation – and your first point of contact should be the candidates.

Application completion rate = number of submitted applications / total number of applications started

5. Applicants per hire. Applicants per hire is the ratio of how many applications are considered for each actual hire. It’s a sign of how hard it can be to recruit for certain positions and can vary widely from role to role – so calculate it for each type of position you fill. This metric shows whether you are effectively sourcing applicants, and should it be low you’ll need to explore what else could be done to widen the net. Are there different approaches or is the campaign message misfiring?

Applicants per hire = number of applicants for a position / number of hires for that same position

6. Offer acceptance rate. This metric can help you spot where there may be issues that deter candidates from accepting your offers. It compares the number of candidates that accepted a job offer with the number to whom an offer was made. A low rate indicates problems – a low remuneration rate perhaps or issues around benefits or flexible working arrangements.

Offer acceptance rate = number of offers accepted / number of offers

7. Cost per hire. The ‘show me the money’ metric. What does it actually cost to get the candidates on board? You can go for a broad approach and look at all candidates across the year or focus on a particular campaign. The objective is to work out how much you spent on each new hire. To do this effectively you’ll need to consider not only the external recruitment campaign costs and any recruiter fees or ATS software costs – you should also include internal costs – such as the cost of your resourcing team and the cost of building your careers website and creative work on your employer brand.

Cost per hire = (total internal costs + total external costs) / total number of hires

Key recruitment metrics – post recruitment satisfaction

8. First year retention or attrition. Successful recruitment is about more than accepting a role – a lot more. It take a few months for a new recruit to become productive so, if they then leave within the first year the whole exercise will be costly with little return. Of course there are always some candidates that just don’t work out and their departure may be managed by the employer. But those that leave of their own accord when they are a perfect fit suggest problems may exist. They might have had unrealistic expectations – or feel that the opportunity was over-sold, they may not like the reality of the organisation or there may be an issue with line management.

Interpreting this can can be seen two ways. Positive – your retention rate. Negative – your attrition rate.

Retention = the number of employees still in post after 12 months / total number of new hires over 12 months

Attrition = the the number leaving a post within 12 month / total number of new hires over 12 months

9. Candidate experience satisfaction. A lot has been written about the candidate experience over the past few years and with good reason. Candidates have opinions and they talk about their experiences good and bad, and particularly the bad, often via their social network. Bad experiences can damage employer brand reputation, hampering future recruitment exercises. So tracking candidates views about the recruitment experience – for successful and unsuccessful candidates alike, can detect whether expectations set during the recruitment process met the reality. And offering the opportunity to give feedback may even improve their perception of the experience.

There’s no formula for measuring candidate experience and satisfaction – but you can create a short online survey using SurveyMonkey, asking for their views on the application experience. There are also third party feedback services you can use such as Mystery Applicant.

10. Hiring manager satisfaction. How your internal customers feel about the recruitment service they receive is an equally important metric. Positive feedback would indicate a successful recruitment exercise. Positive hiring manager satisfaction also suggests that they are satisfied with the quality of candidate within their function – this in turn is likely to engage the new employee and lead to better retention which, as we know, suggests a successful hire.

Feedback can be gained face to face or by an anonymous survey. Hiring managers tend to be forthcoming when they are not happy so finding out what they think are the positives is worth capturing too, along with being seen to care about the service being delivered from the resourcing team.

Conclusion

So there are lots of ways to demonstrate how good a job you’re doing. But from my experience the best place to start is to simply ask … ‘what information do you need?’ Chances are whoever is interested in the data you’re providing is after something pretty specific. Something they can sumarise quickly and efficiently, and put into a format that their manager needs it. So never assume what information people need, just know that if you’re ever asked the question, ‘just how effective is our recruitment process’ that you have at least ten data sets available to you.

We’ll help you keep track

We are That Little Agency, we help employers tell their story and we do this by developing award-winning employer brands and careers websites. All designed to help you deliver measurable results. If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around defining your employer value proposition, developing your employer brand or any aspect of your talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Sources

https://www.analyticsinhr.com/blog/recruiting-metrics/
https://enlightened-digital.com/the-top-5-metrics-to-best-measure-your-candidate-experience/
https://hire.google.com/articles/20-recruiting-metrics/

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