No Rest for the Wicked – How to be Recruitment Ready in 2020
Although you may be thinking It’s a whole other year away yet, now’s a good time to be planning next year’s graduate recruitment campaign while everything’s so fresh! Reviewing campaign performance and benchmarking against previous years and your industry is crucial to ongoing improvement and success.
We’ve highlighted the key performance areas of a grad recruitment campaign that can be measured and assessed as part of your review to help you plan for 2020.
Attraction
Marketing plan and channels
Did you begin 2019 with a marketing plan for your graduate program? What were your key messages and which channels did you use? Major channels might be social media, careers site, careers fairs, GradConnection, and on-campus activities.
Can you rate their effectiveness?
Promotional resources
These are your printable brochures, novelty merchandise and banners. Were students engaging with your resources during fairs? If you have a lot left over – it might be worthwhile reviewing their value.
Candidate profiling / targeting strategy
Who are your ideal candidates? What do they like? Where do they hang out online? How do they like receiving information? Where are they looking for jobs? What are they looking for in an employer? And did your targeting efforts connect with your ideal candidates? You might look at quality of applications over volume.
Engagement
How did students and candidates engage with your organisation online and in person? Did you receive more enquiries (via email, phone, social media)? Did you notice more engagement on your social profiles (ex. Facebook Live questions doubled)?
Recruitment process
Applications
When comparing against previous years, how would you rate the quality of applications? Were there more and if so, better quality? What were the primary sources (ex. GradConnection, careers site)?
Shortlisting
What was your shortlisting process and was it effective in helping make quality hiring decisions? Did you use new tech tools and systems to help with your shortlisting? (Example gamified online assessments, video interviews.) How have they improved your process and hiring outcomes?
Offers
In our 2018 graduate candidate survey, 17% of candidates admitted reneging on a graduate role after they’d accepted. Did any graduates withdraw from your program after accepting? How does this compare to the grad industry? Another metric might be to look at the percentage of first offers accepted. Poor performance here could indicate problems with your brand messaging (awareness, attraction, and recruitment stages), communication, and/or candidate experience.
Timeliness / efficiency of process
Did your recruitment process run smoothly and efficiently? What was your total campaign duration from applications open to offers made? To help you benchmark, 76% of graduate employers said their process took between two and four months in 2018.
Communication
Quality communication is essential at every stage. Consider:
Was your GVP successful? Did it get the right talent through your door? How effectively did you communicate your GVP throughout attraction, recruitment and onboarding?
Did you consistently communicate with internal stakeholders and candidates, sharing details about your process, timelines, expectations, and updates? What about the grad talent who had connected with you at career fairs or online – did you keep them warm with program news and updates?
Surveys and feedback. Did you survey candidates and successful graduates to learn about their experiences? What was valued and where is there room for improvement?
Overall
Now that you’ve assessed some of the specifics, you might like to consider:
- What worked and what didn’t?
- Were you on budget, under budget, or over budget?
- What was your total spend per hire and how does it compare to your industry? In the AAGE Employer Survey 2019, the average cost per hire is $3,066 ($1,035 in marketing spend and $2,031 in selection spend).
- What would you like to do differently next year and how will you go about implementing that?
Performing a comprehensive review of each graduate recruitment campaign can help you plan improvements for next year to ensure your brand remains relevant and attractive as an employer of choice for your ideal talent.
The early bird always gets the worm
Did you know that 71% of Australian university students use GradConnection to find and apply for graduate and internship opportunities?
A quick reminder that our Early Bird promotion is currently running. Premium placements are limited so get in touch to secure your reduced rates before June 28 - [email protected].