How to Use Analytics for Employer Branding

How do you measure employer branding success? Whether your company is just getting started or has a well-defined employer branding program, measurement is critical to monitor the success of your activities. The insights gained from employer branding efforts can help you negotiate lower advertising rates, allocate budget toward new programs, and most importantly, engage more current and prospective employees with your company's unique message. If you haven't started yet, don't feel alone. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of attendees at the Blogging4Jobs webinar, How to Measure Success in Employment Branding with Analytics, said that they were not currently using analytics to measure their employer brand. Here we share some of the key insights shared by webinar speakers Kerry Noone, Employer Brand Manager at Amtrak, and Carrie Corbin, Director Employer Brand at Randstad Sourceright. Source of hire measurement You're probably already doing some source of hire measurement, but may not be thinking about how this can be used to measure your employer brand. Source of hire measurement has evolved far beyond candidate self-reporting via drop down menus. The current methods include ATS tracking mechanisms, URL builders, and cookies. If your ATS integrates with the major job boards, you already have a built-in source of hire measurement capability. It's important not to rely solely on the analytics provided by the job board. Having a big-picture view of where your best applicants and best hires are coming from helps you determine which job boards are working the best at delivering hires at the right price. When you track source of hire data all in one place, you find out which job boards work the best for which jobs.  Use this information to negotiate better advertising rates with the job boards that are working best for you, and shift budget away from those that are not. Custom URLs can be built as vanity URLs or with a URL builder. Vanity URLs work best with offline activities such as career fairs and print and outdoor advertising. Candidates enter a short, easily memorizable custom URL and are directed to a specific career page. URL builders, such as the one built into SuccessFactors, enable users to build a URL that takes into account the campaign name, the referrer type, and referrer engine (e.g., LinkedIn or Twitter). It also automatically generates a shortened URL for social sharing and a QR code if desired.

The use of cookies enables you to track users if they navigate away from your career site and then return to complete the application process. Cookies provide the most accurate picture of success, and can be further used to validate the metrics provided by the job boards. Content measurement A good employer branding program should include a content component, such as a branded careers website, candidate and/or employee blogs, and a social media presence. Gaining access to Google Analytics or your company's internal website analytics platform will allow you to monitor trends in traffic to your own pages as well as incoming traffic referral sources. Use this information to determine where candidates are coming from, which devices they are using, and how long they stay and where they drop off the site. Create monthly and weekly reports to keep team members informed. You can use the information to build the case for implementing mobile apply, for example, if you find that the majority of mobile visits drop off at the application page. Several free and paid social monitoring tools will help you measure the success of social media activity. The overall engagement metric is the most important to monitor, as social success is not just about how many people saw your post as how engaged they were with it. Because each social platform favors a slightly different type of activity, use the information on engagement, likes and follows to learn about your audience and feed them more of the content that they like. For many employees and candidates alike, being re-Tweeted or mentioned in an Instagram post by a major employer is a little boost of fame that creates ripples of goodwill. Be sure to use hashtags, and consider using a hashtag measurement tool like Hashtracking. A Glassdoor employer account also enables you to monitor traffic to your Glassdoor page, as well as get information on who visits the page. Competitive measurement When thinking about your employer brand, it's important to remember that your company is competing with potentially thousands of others for candidates' attention. Competitive measurement will help you understand not only what other companies are doing (so you can learn from them), but help you put your efforts in the context of the larger employment landscape. Over time, you'll be able see if you're improving against the competitive set, and react to trends that may have influenced employment activity in one direction or another-such as a large layoff, a plant opening, a government policy change, or a natural disaster. Rival IQ is a paid tool to investigate, and free competitive tools include Social Recruitment Monitor and a Glassdoor Free Employer Account.. Get your nerd on! Yes, all that time with numbers can be considered a nerdy endeavor. But don't be afraid to dive in and get help from someone with more skills in analytics. Once you learn the ins and outs of the measurement tools, monitoring your efforts can become addictive. And when you start seeing the results of your analysis and reporting come in - in the form of happy candidates and employees, better hires, and more budget toward the things you want - you'll be a convert!