Whether hosting events for recruiting, internal mobility or early talent information sessions, there’s a strong chance that your event will be—or can be—virtual.
Virtual recruiting events are turning out to be an ideal way for local and remote candidates alike to experience your organization’s culture, so creating engaging virtual experiences is incredibly important. But it’s also just the first step. It’s vital to go beyond engagement during the event itself and cover all aspects of the event experience to measure its success and guide your strategy forward. Assessing candidate quality and hiring process efficiency metrics, along with those that measure engagement, ensures a more complete picture of virtual recruiting outcomes and actionable insights.
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Candidate Quality: The Ultimate Measure of Success
Candidate quality has been—and will always be—among the most essential measures of recruiter success, which is why many talent acquisition teams are prioritizing virtual recruiting event tools offering features and functionality that support candidate quality. For example, the integration of pre-screening knockout questions allows recruiters to ensure that only qualified, interested and available talent can register for an event.
Practices such as automated pre-screening questionnaires, along with online registration and integrated Talent CRM capabilities, also enable the ability to track conversion rates throughout the hiring process so that candidate quality can be accurately assessed and, ultimately, correlated back to the highest performing sources of candidates.
In terms of what to measure, the metrics below are a good place to start for both external and internal hiring events. Given that internal hires have long been linked to improved satisfaction rates among hiring managers—generally attributed to higher quality of candidates—you may want to track metrics that are specific to internal mobility and hiring strategies, such as gauging interest in internal opportunities over time as well as overall internal hiring effectiveness through events.
- Pass Rate: Pass rates are relevant when pre-screening functionality is integrated into the event registration process. The rate represents the % of candidates who achieve a passing score on the pre-screening questionnaire and move forward to the registration process.
- Event Conversion Rate: This metric provides insight into the % of registered attendees who are invited to move forward in the hiring process after the virtual recruiting event.
- Hire Conversion Rate: Tracking the % of candidates converting to hires is, of course, always a priority. Depending on the organization’s recruiting event process and associated goals, teams may benefit from digging deeper into this data, such as looking at the % of event attendees who convert to finalists.
- Nurture Rate: The nurture rate represents the % of quality candidates who move forward in the process but aren’t hired. Instead, these “silver medalists” are converted to Talent CRM members for automated nurturing and future consideration.
- Hiring Manager Satisfaction: Although this data can be more difficult to gather—and it may even require the creation of a brief follow-up survey or rating system widget—assessing the satisfaction of hiring managers as related to both the virtual recruiting event process and those hired through events will be highly influential in terms of demonstrating overall success and ROI.
- Internal Interest Trend: Simply track the total number of internal job applications received post-event in order to evaluate any increases or decreases over time, as well as how different internal event formats or topics perform in terms of generating quality internal applications.
- Internal Hire Ratio: Track the % of jobs that are being filled internally and look at results over time, as well as by specific functions or departments.
Hiring Process Efficiency: Virtual Recruiting Delivers Measurable ROI
Among the many benefits realized through virtual recruiting events is the positive impact on hiring process efficiency. Many organizations are able to reduce time to hire averages and filling interview slots in days instead of weeks. So, make sure your recruiters pay close attention to the metrics that reveal hiring process efficiency.
- Days to Register/Schedule: How many days does it take on average to generate completed event registrations or confirmed interview slots? Look at days to schedule averages for individual virtual events, as well as cumulatively for comparison to other recruiting methods. And, keep in mind that organizations pairing self-scheduling automation with their virtual recruiting event functionality often realize the biggest improvements in efficiency.
- Time to Slate: What is the average number of days required to present a slate of candidates to hiring managers when using virtual recruiting events? This might be in relation to the event itself if the hiring manager is part of the event, or it may represent the total number of days pre- and post-event to present the slate. Just make sure to provide clarity regarding what time to slate is equivalent to as related to process.
- Average Touchpoints to Hire: Understanding the number of virtual recruiting event touchpoints required to realize a hire can be highly informative as it allows for a comparison to traditional recruiting methods. The assessment can also lead to positive adjustments in resource allocation or expectation setting with hiring managers and senior executives.
- Time to Hire: Determining the average number of days it takes to hire candidates through virtual recruiting events is one of the most compelling data points for determining the overall impact to recruiting process efficiencies. Gathering early data on time to hire offers benchmarks that can also be used to drive continual improvement.
Close tracking and assessment of virtual recruiting event metrics is the best way for talent acquisition to articulate the tremendous value your team is delivering to the organization, especially during challenging times—and justify the ongoing use of virtual recruiting events and candidate relationship management solutions to connect with, engage and convert quality talent.