Social recruiting is used by so many, but misunderstood by
many as well. It’s become a regular part of most recruiters’ repertoires, but
all too often it seems that we measure success by the number of likes or
followers we get, when it’s really about the interaction that comes after that
initial contact. In part one of this series, I gave five things that your
social should be to go beyond the likes and shares, including being
interactive, traffic minded and more.
Here in part two, I’ll share my take on a question that’s
been around for as long as the social networks we use: how do you measure
social success? We know that conversations, engagement and interactivity from
candidates is key, but what does that get us in the long run? Rather than
measuring success on likes or even engagement with our social networks, it’s
all about what those things lead to. A retailer doesn’t measure its social
success by shares but instead by purchases made through those shared links. The
same is true of social recruiting, so here are five ways to measure your social
recruiting success:
Sources
of hire
This is the most obvious way to measure social recruiting
success. Essentially, you want to know if a social network led a candidate to
apply for your job opening. You can do this by looking at how many people are
clicking the links you post, using your website’s analytics to determine how
people got there and of course asking on your application where the candidate
learned of the position.
Talent
network growth rates
One attribute of social recruiting success is two-way
conversations that lead candidates to your talent networks, where you can
actually build relationships. You can measure the success of this aspect by
looking at whether or not your talent network is growing. Thinking long term in
this way means that you’re building communities for the long term that
recruiters can pull and source
from first.
Candidates
by source
Often times, a candidate won’t use a direct link from your
social networking site to apply for a position, or better yet, may connect with
you on social long before they ever apply. That’s actually a good thing as one
of the best qualities of social recruiting is the fact that it helps build
long-term relationships. You can track candidates by source that follow this
pattern by using cookies and url trackers, ensuring you get an accurate
evaluation of where candidates are connecting with you.
Candidates
by recruiter
Since recruiters are the ones connecting with candidates on
your social networks, they can provide qualitative and quantitative evaluations
of how many candidates they’re connecting with, the quality of those candidates
and whether or not they apply.
Influencer
relationships
Not all candidates are the same, and not all social
followers are the same. Who’s connecting with you that you consider
influential, interesting, a leader and someone you want to recruit and engage?
If you’re reaching
people that fit in these categories, count that as a success.
The truth is, you don’t have to have 300,000 followers on
Twitter or 100,000 likes on Facebook to leverage social recruiting. Think
quality over quantity and measure your efforts to make sure it’s a sound
investment of time and resources.
Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.
