Member Article

What To Think About When Tracking Employee Applications

By Alex Hanson-Smith, CTPO of inploi

Technology has fundamentally changed the way the contemporary workforce approaches finding a job. The vast majority of job seekers now use online resources and information in their search, and a mobile phone to complete their applications. These digital touchpoints can provide employers with masses of insightful information about their talent attraction process and candidate behaviours. The companies who are the most successful at talent attraction know how to use this effectively.

As candidates move through an employer’s recruitment funnel - from first contact with an advertisement through completing an application, and ultimately getting hired – they generate valuable data that should be used to optimise the hiring funnel, and should inform companies’ investment decisions when considering digital real estate and recruitment marketing. Doing so effectively provides insights capable of driving down the costs and time-to-hire – all while providing a better candidate experience. To achieve this, companies need to consider the following.

Identify the right talent attraction channels

For starters, companies need to know exactly where their successful applications are coming from. Huge sums are still spent on talent attraction, with limited visibility of the success and therefore return on investment of particular channels. Identifying which channels are relevant by looking at the quantity and quality of applications allows companies to focus their efforts on channels which are performing for them.

The metrics that are particularly relevant here are:

i. Cost per click ii. Cost per application received iii. Cost per hire made

Laying marketing spend over conversion events empowers a company to identify the most successful channels for their talent attraction. Inversely, they can also assess which channels are least successful; those with the worst conversion rates (or the highest costs per conversion) and adjust spend accordingly.

Optimise the application experience for the candidate

Sourcing candidates is just one part of the puzzle. What happens once they have come into contact with your digital real-estate is also crucially important because they need to be converted from visitors to applicants. An intuitive application experience that is not too onerous and which is easy to navigate however someone accesses the internet (be it a mobile phone, pc, or tablet) is key.

Despite this an astonishing number of companies have broken applicant experiences with unnecessary friction and unresponsive pages that lead to major drop off and impaired conversion rates. A full 50% of smartphone job seekers have had problems accessing job-related content because it wasn’t displaying properly on their mobile phone.

Use data to drive the solution

Leaning on objective data allows companies to make informed decisions about where to invest and how to fix broken applicant experiences, improving conversion rates and increasing their ROI. In today’s competitive labour market this is how companies can develop a competitive advantage when it comes to hiring. inploi’s Analyse module is designed to do just this, with end-to-end candidate journey tracking, actionable data insights and aggregated analytics that provide full visibility of talent attraction efforts, return on investment, and channel success to drive critical decisions.

inploi’s Attract module gives companies access to millions of potential job seekers across all digital channels including aggregators, job boards and social media, seamlessly integrated with existing HR systems to deliver an improved candidate experience, powered by powerful data insights to inform their investment decisions.

Embracing a data-driven approach to talent attraction, through product and marketing, is key to successful talent attraction. Those companies which embrace this approach will be well positioned to win in the competition for talent.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by inploi .