When implementing any new concept, it is important to measure certain aspects in order to know if it was successful. The same goes for social recruiting. If you want to know how well your strategy is doing and what can be improved, you will have to quantify the performance. The following article shows some of the most important metrics that can be used to indicate a successful social recruiting strategy.

Number of followers, likes, retweets, shares, mentions,…

These are probably the first metrics that come to everyone’s mind when it comes to measuring social media activities. They are very easy to measure and keep track over time. The number of followers can indicate your company’s overall attractiveness and the other parameters will show you how engaging your content is. This is very important, because engagement is key in increasing your reach and attracting potential employees to your company. You can create engagement by always providing interesting and relevant content that resonates with your audience. Another thing to consider is the timing and frequency of your posts that can have a big impact.

Brand Awareness

Closely connected to this is the concept of brand awareness. In order to assess how your employer brand is perceived on social media you should send out surveys every few months. Randomly chosen people should answer questions about their knowledge of your company’s social recruiting efforts or if they have considered you as an employer. If you do this regularly, you will find out if your strategies are working and what can be improved. You should also asses the users’ general feelings and attitudes towards your employer brand. You could do this by reading their comments on social media, in forums and blogs.

Number of applications

Clearly, this is one of the most important metrics. Even if you have thousands of followers that like and share your content, it means nothing if there are only a few applications. If this is the case, you should find the problem as soon as possible because your good content marketing is going to waste. You should also measure the share of applications that come in via social media and compare them to other channels, as well as industry benchmarks.

Quality of applications

Not only the quantitative aspect of the applications is important. If you have 100 applications but all of the candidates are not qualified, you will still not be able to fill your vacancy. An important part of HR activities is to reach the right prospective candidates. Measuring the quality of your applications and how many applicants actually fit into the position is necessary in order to know if you are targeting the desired audience.

Cost per hire

With all these parameters in mind, you should never forget about the cost aspect. As the name suggests, cost per hire is determined by the expenses that are necessary to recruit one employee. It is also used in traditional recruiting to assess the effectiveness of recruiting strategies and methods. When implementing social recruiting, this number tends to decrease, because it tends to be more effective and efficient than putting expensive ads in traditional channels.