Social Media Recruitment Measurement and Metrics
The social recruitment is another recruitment channel, which is different and requires a different approach from Human Resources and HR Recruiters, but it needs to be measured. The organization invests time and the money into building engaged communities of followers and it has to measure its return on investment. The measurement of the performance of social media is difficult and the organization has to decide about its methodology and measures as it provides some basic stability to the team.
The measurement of the social media recruitment should not be based on the number of job vacancies posted or the number of followers. The issue is more complex. It is about the influence in the community. It is about spreading the right messages and reaching the unreachable candidates. This is extremely difficult to measure exactly. The Finance guys do not like vague measures and social media is about vague measures (at least in the beginning).
The social media recruitment measurement has to be defined in the social recruitment strategy. The measurement is not a goal, it is a tool to measure the implementation of the social media recruitment strategy. Many managers are interested in the results of the measurement, but they do ignore the strategy supported by measures.
The social media measurement in the recruitment area is usually about:
- Size of the engaged community
- Growth rate of the community
- Engagement of the community
- Influence of the organization
- Number of vacancies spread to connected networks
- Number of successful placements
- Cost of Hire
- Social Media Recruitment ROI
Each measure has its importance in a different stage. In the beginning, the organization needs to focus on the overall size of the community and its growth rate. It is a pure sign, that it targets the right audience through right channels. The community grows, but it is not the engaged community. It is just a number of followers. It says nothing about the engagement of the community and its potential for the social recruitment.
In the next stage of the development, the organization has to focus on the engagement of the community. The organization has to join discussions and it has to provoke interesting and positive discussions in the community. It has to measure the length of discussions, the main topics and number of retweets to other networks. It is extremely difficult to measure the engagement and the influence, but it brings benefits. It helps to shape the profile of the company in social media.
The traditional recruitment measures come next. The number of posted job vacancies and the number of successful placements. It measures the cost saving or costs against the traditional recruitment sources. It does not measure the additional quality of candidates delivered.
Finally, the social media recruitment ROI comes to play a significant role. The social recruitment ROI can change results significantly, but the organization has to agree on the methodology.