Retargeter

HR Focus: Early Results Find Companies Spend $173 on Advertising Per Hire

Software Advice, in partnership with the National Human Resources Association, has published initial findings from a study that determines cost per hire in accordance with the American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI) U.S. standards and conformity assessment system.

The approval of the cost-per-hire algorithm is being lauded as the “the first official recruiting standard for the HR profession.”

Recruiting professionals now use a number of online and offline channels to reach candidates.  According to the study, a full 85% of respondents said that job boards were a primary advertising channel for their company.

With that being said, there are a large variety of sites on which to advertise open positions – from large, general sites like Monster.com to more niche-focused sites like marketinghire.com.  Additionally, a type of highly targeted advertising – called retargeting – is now being widely used by many major, leading brands such as Disney, CVS, Verizon, and others to find skilled candidates to fill their large workforces.

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that helps companies keep their brands in front of bounced traffic after they’ve left a website. For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on an initial visit. Retargeting is designed to help companies reach the 98% of users who don’t convert right away.  In the case of recruiting, a conversion is defined as an applicant and ultimately, a new hire.  For a deeper dive into retargeting, read on.

“Posting to job boards isn’t free, so recruiters should be sure to post strategically to ensure their cost per hire is as low as possible – as well as ensure they’re reaching the most relevant and qualified audience for those positions,” said Erin Osterhaus, HR analyst at Software Advice. “Many applicant tracking systems now offer unique URLs so recruiters can see which postings are generating the most applicants and hires. By retargeting job postings from the best performing job boards, employers can improve their conversion rates and, in turn, create a larger applicant pool from which to select the best talent.”

Now, there is a uniform way to measure and compare one of HR’s most important metrics:

CPH = ( External Costs + Internal Costs / Total Number of Hires)

See the full report in detail on SlideShare.

Are you an HR/recruiting professional and would like to participate in the survey?  Take the survey now.

For more information on how HR and recruiters can use retargeting in their hiring efforts, read our collection of HR and recruiting focused blog posts.