Your organization’s ability to attract and retain new talent is essential for continued success. Many organizations fail to optimize their recruitment efforts due to a lack of understanding of their hiring strategies. When you know how your recruitment strategy works, you can make informed decisions about tactics.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategies are front of mind today. Your recruitment marketing strategy and DE&I strategy should be tightly integrated to optimize the organization’s resources and find lasting success.
Recruitment marketing experts Patty Silbert of Aspirant, Michelle Krier of ClearEdge Marketing, and Jacquese Brown of Cielo Talent shared their best practices for measuring recruitment marketing and aligning DE&I with talent acquisition strategy at RPOACON 2022. This post is a summary of their panel discussion.
How To Measure the Effectiveness of Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy
There's no cookie-cutter way of knowing the success of a recruitment marketing strategy. There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of a recruitment marketing strategy. For organization A, traffic to the website might matter the most; for organization B, the number of candidates might matter; and for organization C, share of voice online and being a positive employer might matter.
With that said, Krier noted that organizations should start the measurement conversion by asking, 'What is success going to look like at the end?'. "And then work backward from there to be able to indicate what those markers of success are along the way," she said.
She emphasized that this process will be different for each organization because of candidate demographics, where the organization is at on its recruitment journey and the business goals and aspirations of the company.
Silbert agreed and added that a foundation piece is needed at the start of measuring the effectiveness of a recruitment marketing strategy. She pointed out that companies need to start with baseline data to know where they are today regarding their recruitment strategy. She noted that some of that data comes from market research. That research will help you understand how your company resonates with your target audience. It will also show you where to grow your followers and interest levels. She also shared that it can be hard to see the return on investment in a recruitment marketing strategy, but a baseline of data will begin to shine a light on your return on investment.
Silbert emphasized the importance of testing your employer value proposition (EVP). She observed that many companies create their EVPs and leave them alone. A company's EVP is not static. She said that testing your EVP is vital because it's an evolving message that evolves with your organization. She added that EVP testing is also essential because the people coming into your organization are developing your culture and organization.
She pointed out that your EVP is made of five elements:
- The employees
- The benefits of working at your company
- The compensation
- The type of work
- The purpose of the organization
Silbert recommended that companies test their EVP every six months to see if it's true of where they are today and where they want to go. She said that asking employees for feedback on the EVP will help companies know if they are representing themselves in the right way. Employees will tell the company whether its EVP matches the reality of working there.
DE&I and Recruitment Marketing Strategies
Today, it's important that your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategy tightly aligns with your recruitment marketing strategy. Brown indicated that many organizations have a DE&I strategy, but it's not always aligned with their talent acquisition strategy. She added that aligning these two strategies is the biggest opportunity for companies. The recruitment marketing strategy and DE&I strategy should run alongside each other, built off of the company's overall goals. The strategy needs to be mapped out and tracked from end to end with baseline data.
Just as your talent acquisition strategy needs baseline data, Brown emphasized that the DE&I strategy needs baseline data. She said that many companies make lofty diversity goals that don't match the reality of their prospective candidate demographic. As a result, these companies fail to reach their diversity goals.
For companies to reach their diversity goals, she said they must first identify where they're at on their DE&I journey and where they want to go. And then make an informed strategy based on some level of in-depth metrics. She added that companies must see the strategy work from end to end. She noted that many companies can see the number of clicks to apply they have, but they need to know where the drop-offs are with their hiring managers.
Brown recommended that companies have an equitable scoring process to allow people to avoid the gut reaction of thinking a person wouldn't want to work for this company. She added that companies need to apply both value add and value fit to their diversity strategy; having both will create innovative conversations around diversity that move the organization beyond DE&I lip service and prevent the diversity strategy from becoming reactive.
Brown also shared that a DE&I strategy is long-term and constantly evolves with the organization. Diversity strategy data often needs analyzing because that data develops and changes with time. She emphasized that data pulled in January will look different from those drawn in March, June, etc. As a result, it's vital to track diversity data regularly to ensure the success of any DE&I strategy.
To learn about measuring the effectiveness of your recruitment marketing strategy and more, visit the 2022 RPOA Conference on demand to watch the whole discussion.
