Recruiters who have followed the development of the world understand the importance of new technologies and the role social media plays in recruiting. Moreover, some of these recruiters understand the importance of data and analytics, and are able to significantly improve their own recruitment processes because when using them, they can clearly identify the issues, what channels work and why, and where too many good candidates are lost.

 

Here are a few basic and key figures that should be followed by every person who is responsible for their company’s recruiting processes:

 

Visits per job advertisement

All recruiters should be aware of how much attention the job advertisement is getting, which basically means how many times it has been visited. Visits are the first thing you should look at, especially if you are struggling the get applications.

 

Which channels are working and which are not

Very often, people who are responsible for their recruiting processes have little or no understanding of whether the channels used work or not. A decision has been made as to which channels should be used, but there is no real understanding about what works and what does not.

 

Time spent on the page / advertisement

How long the job advertisement is being watched is super important as well. If the candidate stays on the page, it means that the advertisement is working, but if the so-called bounce rate is really high, then something is off.

There are many reasons why this could be happening and candidates leave the job advertisement after reading only the first few sentences. For example, maybe this opportunity has been marketed on social media and maybe the image posted there doesn’t really provide the real picture of the job or the company behind it. Other very common problems are technological issues; surprisingly often, these job advertisements cannot be read easily on mobile devices, not to mention trouble sending the application.

 

Conversion of applications

Every recruiter should know how many applications they are receiving per 100 visits. Meaning, how many of the candidates who are visiting the job advertisement are actually applying for the job?

When the number is really low, there are again many reasons why this is happening. Here are a few of the most common ones:

 

  • Application form is veeeeeeeeeeery long. Leaving an application should NOT require 30 – 60 minutes of hard work and thinking. No, it should be done in just a couple of minutes. The best solution would be to let job seekers apply with their LinkedIn profile = a couple of clicks.

 

  • Technological issues. This is quite often connected to the one above. When companies having these very long forms, they’re normally divided into several pages. And when going from page 6 to page 7, the system says, “Oops, something went wrong,” or when trying to go back a page, the same thing happens, only the most desperate candidates will try to do it again.

 

  • The third and most common problem is that when reading the job description, you quickly understand that they’ve combined two or even three roles into one task. Companies try to be clever and save money now by recruiting just one person, but the problem is that almost no one will apply because of what the company is asking for is too demanding and pretty much impossible to fulfill.

 

So, let’s review where you should focus as a recruiter to improve the amount of received quality applications:   

 

  • Get as many visits as possible
  • Learn which channels are working for you and which are not
  • Pay attention to the bounce rate / time spent on the page
  • Get as many applications as possible per 100 visits (conversion rate!)
  • And, most importantly, try to improve the results every time!

 

If you are wondering about how to do all this and where to get the information, well, Google Analytics is a free tool and gives you all this information and much more.

 

Written,

 

Teemu Ruuska

Director

InHunt World

www.linkedin.com/in/teemuruuska

 

 

Teemu is a Director of InHunt World and has been working in the recruitment and headhunting industry since 2009. Teemu is from Finland and came to Spain in 2014 to set up and open new headhunting offices in Madrid, and later in Barcelona. Since 2016, Teemu has been focusing on designing, creating, and running the new InHunt World International Headhunting Network, which already covers over 30 countries.

 

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