3 Ways Google Analytics Can Improve Your Recruiting Process
By Michael Altiero
It’s common today to hear the phrase “sales is marketing.” This is especially true in the B2B space, where the sales process is more complex and personalized than ever before. However, marketing isn’t just important for sales. That’s because for talent acquisition, “recruiting is marketing,” too.
We have seen and read a lot about the ongoing war for talent. As jobseekers gain the upper hand in the recruiting process, companies and their recruiters have had to step up their efforts or risk losing top talent to the competition. This has led to the growing importance of the candidate experience and employer branding, among other relatively recent talent acquisition initiatives.
These trends have led to a rise in recruitment marketing, as recruiters are required to think and act more like marketers. In many cases, especially for SMBs, the recruiting team even falls under the overall marketing department, leading to much more collaboration and knowledge sharing between the two functions.
One tool that marketers from all sized companies have come to depend on and embrace is Google Analytics. I would go as far as saying that it is essential for any company today, as the amount of information you can get is invaluable. And Google Analytics doesn’t just benefit marketers, it can be an extremely useful and powerful resource for recruiting teams, too. Let’s dive into a few ways Google Analytics can help improve your recruiting process!
1) How Are Candidates Getting to Your Career Site?
One of the most important metrics that Google Analytics provides is a breakdown of website traffic sources. You can see whether visitors came to your site via organic search (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), direct to your site (entering in your URL, bookmarks, etc.), social media, or referral sources. This information helps marketers adjust their overall digital marketing strategy, and it can help recruiters in much the same way.
By knowing how candidates are getting to your career site (and how they are not!), you can adjust your strategy accordingly and try new methods to increase traffic from specific sources. For example, if you notice your organic search traffic is low, perhaps your career page isn’t search engine optimization (SEO) friendly. Making a few SEO updates to your site would then be in order. This information can help your team drive more traffic to your career site and get more applicants into the hiring process.
2) How Long do Candidates Stay on Your Career Site Pages and Do They Bounce?
Getting more candidates to your career page is important, but keeping them on your website is even more valuable. If your career pages are bland and don’t have much information, then chances are high that your time on page will be low and the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page) will be high. Both can spell problems for your recruiting efforts.
Luckily, these metrics are tracked and reported by Google Analytics. By paying close attention to this data, recruiting leaders can take steps to improve onsite content that keeps visitors engaged and hopefully gets them to apply to a position!
3) Which Pages on Your Career Site Are Most Popular?
Great career sites have multiple pages with unique content on each. This allows companies to show off various aspects of their organization and hopefully entice potential candidates to apply. Knowing how each page of your career site is performing is incredibly important, and Google Analytics provides this information. In addition to the metrics listed above, recruiters and marketers can get tons of data that can help improve your career site.
Another cool thing you can find out is which career site pages are bringing in the most traffic (landing pages). Perhaps your career site homepage isn’t your top landing page, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But having this knowledge can help you edit your website accordingly, and perhaps make efforts to direct even more traffic to your most popular landing page. Anything you can do to drive more traffic should be your recruitment marketing goal.
Don’t Fear Google Analytics, Embrace It!
As someone who has used Google Analytics for years, I know it can be extremely daunting and challenging when first using it. The amount of information available is overwhelming. So instead of worrying about tracking and looking at everything, instead choose a few of the most important metrics to start. Google Analytics can be extremely valuable for recruitment teams and can greatly assist in improving your overall strategy and results. Don’t be afraid of becoming a data-driven recruiter!
Michael Altiero is the Digital Marketing Manager at Extensis Group. Follow Mike on Twitter @MichaelAltiero and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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