Data Reporting Is the Necessary First Step to Better Recruiting Decisions

When it comes to recruitment tools that offer analytics as part of a package, usually what you are getting is simply data reporting.

Analytics and data reporting differ in that data reporting presents a summation of past events from which you can monitor and compare recruitment efforts. It’s just an overview of past events. You get that data in all the pretty graphs, charts, and plots in an overview of what has happened over any time period.

Analytics is the drilling down of that data that tells you the why of things. While reporting shows you that you had fewer events on one social media page than on another, analytics lets you drill down into that data and discover why there were fewer events.

For example, if you’re looking at sourcing and you see that those Facebook ads aren’t drawing the traffic that you expected as compared to say, a Twitter campaign or one on another social media site, well the report shows you that your spend may be in the wrong area and you may want to cut Facebook out of the equation.

If, however, your recruiting manager is set on using Facebook in your recruiting strategy and wants to know why you aren’t having as much success, then your web analytics lets you drill down and do a complete analysis to find the cause. This is about as clear as it gets in the differences.

One shows you the what, the other gives you the why.

Which is better for your organization?

Well, both, of course.

But we believe the reporting is a crucial first step in determining where a problem lies in your recruitment strategy. We focus on the reporting because it is critical to know what happened so that you can take the initiative to look at the whys and how-tos to make better recruiting decision.

Most companies that offer analytics with their product are really just offering you data reporting. They may say analytics in the product description, but it’s really a misnomer for what they actually offer.

Even then, when you look at web analytics programs like what Google offers, you are given a ton of information to work with. Most people find the amount of information available daunting and stick to basic reports anyway. Still, there are some 100 reports to look through.

While you should go further into the analysis of the data to really understand what is happening in your recruitment process, the reports are a good start and that’s where we focus with RightJobNow.

Really, there are four important reports to focus on: Visitors, Source, Behavior, and Conversions.

Visitors would consist of job seeker location, device used, visit frequency, and general information about an individual who is on your career page, job listing, or application.

Source is the referring source that brought individuals to your career page, job listing, or application. That could include social media, job boards, advertisements, other websites, whatever the external source may be. It defines the entry point into your web property.

Behavior tells you what is happening on individual pages. How long someone is lingering on a particular page. What calls-to-action they are utilizing. What the most used path is. What pages are consistent exit points. And so on.

Conversions detail how many job seekers are converting to applicants, signing up for your talent community, sharing jobs, following through on other calls to action, and at what rate these things are happening.

These are the top four metrics we believe are crucial to giving you the insight to make sound recruiting decisions.

While you certainly want the benefit of analysis to refine your recruitment strategy down the road and see why things are happening the way they are, data reporting is a necessary and effective starting point to measuring those important recruiting metrics.

You have to know where to look to analyze sets of data and I just don’t know how you do that without an initial data report.

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