Measuring Attraction Return on Investment
It has never been more important to maximise return on investment on attraction spend, but can this be effectively measured?
As a general rule, sourcing channels are expensive. They are only going to get ever more expensive as free or low-cost social networking becomes more “business as usual” in recruitment and the use of more traditional recruitment channels dwindles. Case in point: When was the last time you looked in a paper for a job?
So with budgets under scrutiny and increasing costs of specialist sourcing channels the requirement to accurately measure return on investment has never been greater.
How is this achieved?
Firstly: define “return”
The “R” means different things to different people, so decide what it means to you. What is your goal – a strategic employer brand campaign or a more tactical short term open requirement?
Return usually means hires but channels that deliver strong talent pools and future prospects shouldn’t be over looked. This is, however, much harder to quantify.
Understand and track your costs.
Sounds simple, right? It’s remarkably difficult to attribute costs to individual adverts/database searches or other media so think about grouping your spend. Having an appreciation of how much you have spent per channel or outlet is the key here, not necessarily at a micro level per transaction. Decide and on your measurement period. You can’t measure this weekly or even monthly. Quarterly or longer provides more accurate results.
Sometimes the simple solutions are the best – there is no beating actually asking candidates how they heard about you.
Accurate Tracking
Finally, accurately track source of hire. This is the single most overlooked or underestimated activity in tracking ROI. Technology can help you do this but there is no beating actually asking candidates how they heard about you. Presented with a list of options, the typical candidate chooses the first option, having established it’s not a deal breaking question in the application process. This is usually something like Television Advert. Which is, let’s be honest, unlikely…(unless you happened to be applying for “The Apprentice”!)
If you have the true source of your hires, indicative costs of your channels over a reasonable time period you can rank and measure your investments. You can then make informed and strategic decisions with based on measurements and quantifiable data.
So. What does the “R” mean to your organisation? Leave a comment below!
Rick Sherlock is Project Consultant – Resourcing (Vodafone) at Alexander Mann Solutions
