iCIMS Hire Expectations™

Companies have a plethora of options to choose from when it comes to recruiting avenues. You can choose the expensive big boards, cheaper options, and free options like social media tools, but how do you tell what is REALLY working for you? How do you truly measure the success of your financial investment and more importantly, the TIME invested? Did you know with a little tweaking you might be able get some real numbers that could help you concentrate your budget and time to resources that are truly working for you. Here are a couple of suggestions to help.

• Talk to your talent management system provider because most TMS or ATS providers have the ability to track the site a candidate came from by either collecting the referring site or through a tag attached to the apply URL. You will want to automate this process because if you leave it up to the candidate to populate the “How did you hear from us?” field the candidate is either going to choose the option that they think makes them a better candidate for the position, viewing this as a pre-screener question, or just pick any option to get past this mandatory field so they can continue on with the application. By taking this option out of the candidate’s hands and by automating the process you can ensure that you accurately run your source report to see who is providing you with candidates.

• Are these quality candidates? So, three major boards sent you over 1000 candidates. Success right? Not so fast. It’s great if you got a boatload of candidates from your job posting as it means that the posting was seen by a lot of candidates and many of those applied. That is success by marketing standards but what about by HR standards. Were these quality candidates? There are several ways to tell if a source really is as successful as they claim. A high number of applicants from a source is great, but it is important to take a look at the number of candidates that made it to the Phone Interview.  If a recruiter took the time to pick up the phone and call the candidate then that candidate fit the requirements of the job.
  
  I know some of you may say what about just looking at hires. And my answer would be, hires may be a misleading stat simply for the fact that it does not tell you the whole story. Candidates get cold feet and back out or sometimes there are personality conflicts with the hiring manager or the hiring manager went with the first quality person they were able to get on the phone. If a source is supplying you with quality candidates they are definitely worth the time and money.

• Social media is all the rage these days and many companies are hiring specialists to help them recruit on social media. But is social media the right avenue for the HR department or for the Marketing department? By accurately tracking the number of candidates that come to your career section from a social media site and then looking at the number of quality candidates that came from that traffic, you will be able to tell if this is something you want to invest time and manpower in or if it is better left to your Marketing department to increase your brand awareness.

So, take a look at your metrics. How well is your online recruitment program? And, how well is each channel performing?