Articles 
In today’s fast-evolving recruitment landscape, conversations about “Source of Influence” have gained momentum, emphasizing the importance of understanding the entire candidate journey with its myriad touchpoints. As candidates now resemble consumers more than ever, with an average of 12 touchpoints before decision-making, the need to decipher “Source of Influence” appears evident. However, it remains unclear why this concept alone holds such significance for recruiters. While Source of Influence illuminates the steps candidates take before applying for a job or joining a talent community, it falls short in providing insights into what transpires after that crucial point—the result.
Maximizing Recruitment Effectiveness with CRM and ATS Integration
The concept of Source of Influence, while meaningful in theory, attains its full potential when integrated into the power of a Candidate Relationship Manager (CRM) and Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Engagement efforts in recruitment are undeniably influential, but they come at a cost, encompassing time, energy, ad expenses, and more. Therefore, it’s essential to apply these efforts based on outcomes, specifically the candidates who successfully navigate the hiring process.
Nevertheless, when Source of Influence is reduced to a mere media tracking exercise, its utility diminishes, primarily due to two major challenges. Firstly, tracking all touchpoints a candidate has with an employer brand proves impossible, rendering the data’s conclusions potentially inaccurate. Tracking is typically limited to career portals, social media platforms, paid ads, or job boards equipped with tracking codes, leaving a substantial portion of online interactions uncharted.
Moreover, the landscape is evolving with increasing data privacy regulations that allow individuals to opt out of extensive tracking. Consequently, reliance on such tracking for success strategies becomes untenable. The internet serves as a self-service content generator, and not all content and opinions about a brand are controllable. Discerning a candidate’s motivation or intent from numerous, seemingly random online interactions is intricate and fails to provide actionable insights for marketing behavior adjustments.
Beyond Online Metrics – Understanding the Untraceable Candidate Journey
Tracking online data points poses challenges, but the complexities of tracking offline interactions are even more daunting. The candidate journey often extends beyond the digital realm, encompassing real-world interactions. Candidates may receive opinions from neighbors, encounter information in newspapers, or hear about a company through podcasts. Attempting to chart a complete and holistic candidate source journey in these instances proves unfeasible.
While understanding the candidate journey before conversion, such as applying for a job or joining a talent community, is insightful, it doesn’t suffice to dictate future advertising or content-generation strategies. In 2022, what recruiters need is a comprehensive set of metrics, including recruitment effectiveness backed by conversion rates and quality of hire, to evaluate candidates’ journey success.
In the end, the primary objective is to hire the right people. To achieve this, organizations must focus on who is ultimately hired, where top talent resides, and what recruitment teams must do to convert them successfully. This necessitates the examination of multiple sources and activities, including data from ATS systems.
Most companies rely on various channels to discover and attract talent, including recruitment marketing campaigns, talent community sign-up pages, career sites, university events, job boards, proactive outreach, and more. To gain true insights into recruitment effectiveness, it is crucial to access information from all these channels and activities within a centralized dashboard.
Two important considerations should be noted at this point:
- Conversion rates, although a familiar metric, must provide a holistic view, encompassing the entire journey from lead to hire. Having all this information within the same system is essential to avoid information gaps and integration challenges.
- Quality of hire, a complex metric dependent on each company’s business strategy, plays a crucial role. Avature offers multiple approaches to assess quality of hire, including Hiring Manager satisfaction surveys, turnover and retention rates from HRIS, and performance-related statistics from Performance Management systems.
Recruitment effectiveness cannot be evaluated based on a single variable, whether it’s Source of Influence or any other factor. It’s a multifaceted process that demands a comprehensive approach. Relying on a single metric can lead to incorrect decisions and suboptimal results.
Contact us, if you’re interested in learning how Avature can help you gather and leverage all relevant recruitment information and enhance your recruitment marketing.
