In last week’s post, Measuring Social Media for Recruitment – Part 1, we discussed the three primary phases of social media recruitment:
- Awareness
- Engagement
- Action
In part 2, we will discuss the platforms and measurements you should consider for each phase.
Awareness. In this phase you are simply trying to increase the reach of your employment brand and career 
opportunities in your target candidate segments. The social media platforms to consider, of course, include LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. But having a presence on these platforms is not enough. You must use strategies and tactics to gain followers. Consider sponsored updates and direct advertising on these platforms. You should also consider platforms specific to candidate segments to drive awareness. Place ads on industry blogs and popular social sites for specific skill sets (like StackOverflow for software developers). Those ads should drive individuals to like or follow your page on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Measuring success in the awareness phase is somewhat straightforward. You should measure the increase in your likes and followers on each platform. You should also measure the percent increase in likes and followers after you launch a sponsored update or ad campaign.
Engagement. The engagement phase requires you to create an environment of interaction – interaction between your company and potential candidates and interaction between potential candidates and each other. Many platforms lend themselves to this type of interaction. Obviously, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook allow such interaction. You should also, again, consider platforms specific to your targeted candidate segments (like Viadeo if you are recruiting in Europe, India, China or South America).
You can use very gross measurements for engagement, such as number of comments, likes, re-tweets and shares. You can also take the measurement further by monitoring the increase in the number of candidates joining your CRM and responding to messages from your recruiters/sources. Finally, you should also measure and track your Talent Brand Index on LinkedIn.
Action. In this phase, you are using social media platforms to encourage potential candidates to do something specific, often apply to an open position. Your choices for platforms in this phase should focus on those that provide the ability to market specific job openings to your already aware and engaged candidate segments. Often, you will have most success on the same platforms you used in the awareness and engagement phases. So, when selecting the appropriate platforms for you, be sure to keep your future action phase needs in mind.
Measurements for this phase can include clicks and applies from each of your platforms. You can also use more sophisticated measurements to this phase. Consider measuring the quality of candidate or hire from these sources vs. your other sources. Also consider measuring speed to interview or hire.
Check out the webinar I delivered through HCI, “How Do You Measure Social Media?” for more ideas on measurements to consider.
Once you have determined the platforms and measurements to use in each of your phases, you will need to start measuring and tracking the data. If you use a recruitment marketing platform or other 3rd party service, tracking will be much easier. If you need to start with spreadsheets, that’s OK. Just tracking some data and trends will help you understand how your social media recruitment efforts are paying off. These data and trends will also help you show your key company decision makers that you have goals and measurements around your efforts.
Part 3 of this series will cover what to do with the data and results.
Related articles
- How Employers Use Social Media For Job Recruiting (Infographic) (business2community.com)
- 4 Ways to Decide Which Social Platforms are Best for Your Business (business2community.com)
- 10 Surprising Social Media Statistics : 5. Social Media Has Overtaken Porn As The No. 1 Activity On The Web (huguesrey.wordpress.com)
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