Effectively Measuring Social Recruiting Strategy

Social recruiting is an important part of maintaining your brand's visibility in the digital age. Though social media is a large part of almost all healthy social recruitment strategies, it is far from the only thing to consider. Many experts recommend taking a holistic approach to social recruiting, keeping a close eye on your recruitment metrics so that you can see what is working and what isn't, and shifting your strategy as needed.

Social recruiting metrics can be divided into qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative metrics involved numbers that can be measured by human resource and recruiting managers, such as the number of a new hires over a given period of time and the number of employees who stayed on a job in the long term. Qualitative metrics are more difficult to measure accurately, but they are equally important. These involve talking to people and finding out what the think of the new strategy, getting suggestions for improvement and learning more about how your social recruitment strategies are perceived.

One major benefit of social recruiting strategies is the relatively low cost. After all, posting a job announcement to your company Facebook page is essentially free. However, associated costs such as advertisements, sponsored postings and the time spent crafting each post can add up. One important recruitment metric to keep track of is how much you are spending on each new recruit. Social recruiting may end up costing you more in the long run than more traditional recruitment methods.

Another thing to look at when implementing a social recruiting strategy is the quality of the candidates who are applying for jobs and being hired. Choose some areas that you think are important and can be quantified fairly easily, such as the level of relevant education or past job experience. If social recruiting sources more qualified candidates, those who are likely to become the future leaders of your company, you can feel confident that you are doing something right.

A final thing to consider when evaluating your social recruiting strategy is how it has affected your candidate reach. There's a good chance that using social recruiting techniques allows you to reach candidates who wouldn't otherwise know about the openings at your business. If this improved reach is negligible, meaning that most of your social recruits would have also been reached through traditional channels that you are already using, you may want to rethink the effectiveness of your social recruitment strategy.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when using social recruiting to find new hires is that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for every company. Tailor your strategy to favor a combination of social and traditional recruitment strategies, and make sure to favor the strategies your recruitment metrics demonstrate to be effective.

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