FROM AUGUST 2014'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Data, big or otherwise, has taken over from social media as the hot topic in recruitment circles. One topic that frequently features in a debate on the subject centres around candidate source tracking. 

Technology providers are at pains to point out the importance of automating and optimising this process so that recruiters are able to make far more informed decision over spend and which channels are likely to prove most effective for them. Some recruiters believe otherwise though.

Power to automation

In a recent Recruiter webinar on the subject, Gerard Murnaghan, senior director of sales, international business, at the jobs search engine Indeed.com, claimed that 70% of recruitment agencies self-report but 83% of source data is not accurate and £3.2bn of annual recruitment advertising spend is not tracked accurately. More recently he told Recruiter that he believes fear and resistance to change are among the factors that hold agencies back from taking a more automated approach but those who make the shift are often taken aback when they see the metrics. 

“Some of the sources they think have performed well haven’t, whereas others that had done better hadn’t had the investment to ensure good conversion rates,” he said. “Because some recruiters are working from perception and feeling, time and time again we see that what a client thinks happens and what actually happens can be very different.”

Doors to manual

Jon Dweck, founder and managing director of Pod Talent, which specialises in recruiting for the supply chain, procurement, logistics and manufacturing and technical sectors, is among those who believes the manual approach is preferable. He simply believes it’s more accurate. The firm recruits from graduate to board level and nationally and internationally, so no one style of candidate sourcing suits all. Tracking information is therefore vital.

Dweck told Recruiter that team managers collect the data that is then put into a spreadsheet, and pie-charts produced showing the different channels from which a candidate has come. He believes obtaining the information direct from the consultant’s mouth gets over the key challenge of separating out the original source of the candidate and the source from which they have ended up on a shortlist. He contends that some technology-based trackers aren’t able to take into account the nuances of the recruitment process, which can lead to inaccurate results. “The more generic the [tracking] solution, the less accurate it is in my view,” he said, justifying his actions with the same argument as the technology providers put forward: “So if you aren’t careful you could make a decision on incorrect data.”

Meanwhile, Murnaghan reports that recruiters sometimes credit the wrong original source. He explains that its Indeed Apply platform will clearly show that a person has applied to a role for a particular position through the jobs search engine, but because they are on the agency’s database from a previous conversation, a recruiter will categorise it under ‘general headhunt’, for example. 

Looking at it analytically

Wendy McDougall, managing director of Firefish Software, whose recruitment platform of the same name was developed from the outset with data gathering and analytics built in, agrees that a key issue is ensuring the original source and channel are clearly identifiable. 

Firefish has the capability to do this, but she adds that increasingly recruiters need to collect data “on all touchpoints” of the recruitment process from advertising to placement and not be totally preoccupied with the source. She claims that the availability of such data is making many clients see the opportunities that investing in recruitment marketing brings. “It is becoming a real instrument of change,” she said. “Organisations are seeing the efficiencies made in administration and are proactively hiring marketing people who understand data and know what they are looking for. They want analytics of the entire lifecycle.”

The right formula

Recruiters are likely to have more rather than less sourcing channels to manage in the future and working out where to invest money and effort will continue to be a priority. Finding the right formula will ultimately boil down to the simple truth that in some cases people will be superior to technology and in others technology will out-perform people. As with many challenges in the digital age, it will be best met by a blend of both.

• To see Recruiter’s Indeed-sponsored webinar on candidate source tracking, click here.