As the saying goes, you cannot grow what you do not measure. Therefore, you cannot expect to grow a successful employer brand if you don’t collect data at each stage of the candidate experience.
As the current hiring crisis continues, employer branding is essential to attract and retain top early-career talent. According to Glassdoor, the overwhelming majority (92%) of employees would consider switching jobs if offered a role with a company that has an excellent reputation. What’s more, a strong employer brand presence can reduce your cost per hire by half, while a negative reputation can cause a 10% increase in your cost per hire.
As the Great Reshuffle continues, attracting top talent doesn’t just mean presenting competitive salaries and benefits packages. Instead, your company needs to position itself as a place where recent grads can launch a successful career, gain access to mentorship and networking opportunities, and make a positive impact in their communities or the world in which we live. So, how do you communicate all of the above to your talent community? By developing a rich content strategy that connects with candidates at each stage within their journey.
Collecting the right data arms your employer branding team with the information necessary to refine the candidate experience. By knowing which metrics to track, you understand which pieces of content lead to the highest engagement within your talent community — and hopefully, a higher conversion rate.
The Two Types of Data Every Hiring Manager Should Be Tracking
In order to create (and improve upon) a candidate-first experience, hiring teams should track two types of data: by-journey and by-candidate. Fortunately, Abode's platform automatically measures both, thereby preserving recruiting resources and bandwidth.
1. By-Journey Data
By-journey data tracks the aggregate number of applicants who engage within a certain step of your candidate journey. Over time, these metrics help you determine which pieces of content best resonate with your audience (or, conversely, which low-performing deliverables could be swapped out for another piece of content).
Abode's platform automatically tracks engagement rates across a number of mediums, allowing you to see how many people clicked, downloaded, viewed, or otherwise interacted with a piece of content. If you see your engagement rate take a nosedive, it could be a clear sign you need to tweak your candidate journey (more on this below).
2. By-Candidate Data
By-candidate data tracks individual engagement as they move throughout the talent pipeline. This data is invaluable when reducing renege rates and early-career turnover, as it shows which candidates are most invested in the opportunity.
Abode tracks metrics such as how often a candidate views a long-form piece of content, how long they watch a video, and how frequently they participate in meetups, surveys, and feedback requests. In addition, Abode shows hiring managers how many times a candidate interacts with a specific step within the candidate journey and their overall progress. Over time, you’ll be able to predict which candidates are excited about the role, and which pose a risk of reneging on an offer.
4 Ways to Leverage Abode Data to Attract and Retain Top Talent
Data is a tool — it’s a way to help you better understand your talent community as a whole and each individual candidate. But data on its own isn’t enough to execute a successful candidate engagement strategy. Instead, you need to use these metrics to see where you can tweak different stages of the candidate journey, ideally reducing turnover, while boosting employee retention.
1. Consider a Different Medium
Humans absorb information differently, which is why it’s important to use a variety of mediums within your candidate journey. In a recently-published guide on employer branding, LinkedIn advised hiring managers to create a “blended” candidate journey — one that layers different content types within the hiring pipeline.
Abode's insights go beyond simply tracking your open or click rate, thereby enabling you to use a variety of media in your candidate journey. If you notice your engagement rate is stagnant, consider mixing things up — create a list of podcast episodes, record a video from your CEO, or host a virtual webinar between an incoming cohort and former interns.
2. Allow Space for One-to-One Connections
Today’s Gen Z candidates are the first generation of digital natives and are perfectly capable of recognizing a blast email. Therefore, it’s important to blend mass communications with one-on-one connections, allowing your talent to meet mentors, future managers, and hey — even each other.
If you notice a dip in engagement across your talent community, perhaps it’s time for some face-to-face interaction. Organize a meetup, happy hour, or afternoon wellness retreat to get candidates excited about their new role. Or, if you notice an individual candidate suddenly stops interacting with your content altogether (an early sign of reneging on an offer), hop on a call. See if there is any guidance, resources, or feedback you could offer to re-engage the applicant.
3. Show Off Your Company Culture
Your content strategy shouldn’t be a stagnant list of onboarding documents and recommended reading lists. Instead, your candidate journey should paint a clear picture of what a day in the life looks like, and whether the individual is a good fit within your company culture.
According to Jobvite, 60% of recruiters state that culture fit is of the highest importance when making a hiring decision. As the Great Reshuffle continues and employees search for a positive work environment, LinkedIn reports there’s a 67% boost in engagement when a job post mentions company culture.
While this might be a tough pill to swallow, consider this: If your engagement rate takes a plunge, maybe the subject matter has been a bit…stale. Switch things up by showing off your company culture, thereby getting candidates excited about being part of your team.
4. Place Mental Health a Top Priority
Today’s early-career candidates aren’t just looking for a paycheck. They’re looking for a place where they can build a successful career while maintaining a positive work-life balance.
According to the Employee Wellness Trends for 2022 report, mental health is a must for attracting top talent. In fact, the overwhelming majority (90%) of companies surveyed increased their investment in mental health programs this year.
If you’re looking to increase event participation throughout your talent community, think beyond the stereotypical happy hours and mixers. Think of group activities with mental health as a focal point, offering a meditation workshop, yoga flow, or even a group hike for your recruits.
Leverage Abode’s Data to Improve Your Employer Brand
Fortunately, Abode's platform goes beyond tracking opens and clicks to paint a clear picture of candidate engagement — both at the journey and individual level. With Abode, you can see which pieces of content generated more clicks, downloads, or views, and which candidates spend the most time at each stage of the candidate journey. As the Great Reshuffle continues, maintaining a strong employer brand is a must if you want to attract and retain top talent. To develop a candidate-first experience, you need the right metrics to guide decisions within your hiring team.
