Recruiting Session 10:

Hey guys, it’s Matt. In our last Session, we began looking at six ways to switch on the lights and see our advertising results. We’ve covered two so far:

First, Web Analytics Tools, that show our landing page activity.

And second, URL Tags, that reveal which online ads bring visitors to our pages.

Both of these are important insights, but they stop short of showing us which ads lead to applications and hires. To illuminate those results, we’ll need a third way to switch on the lights. It’s called a referral code.

Unlike those jokers, you can know exactly where you’re finding applicants–and more importantly, where you’re finding qualified ones–by using referral codes. These are snippets of code that go in links to your job applications. So when someone clicks “apply”, the referral code captures where they came from. These codes are a feature of your applicant tracking system, so setting them up will depend on the ATS you’re using and will require support from your software vendor and IT staff. They can help you configure the feature and know how to access the results through the system’s reporting tools.

One last point about referral codes is that they’re often unknown or underused. Even carriers with great ATS systems sometimes don’t turn the feature on or get the most out of it. If that’s where you’re at and you’d like some outside expertise, we’d be glad to help.

Along with referral codes, there’s another tool that can show us how well certain ad services are performing. It’s called conversion tracking, and it’s our fourth way to switch on the lights. It relays messages between you and an advertising service so that you both know when what you’re doing works.

All the major online ad and job services like Google or Indeed offer free conversion tracking and make it relatively easy to implement. The service provider gives you a block of code that your IT folks add to the web page someone sees after applying. Typically that’s a “thank you” page in your ATS.

Once the code’s in place, it tracks every applicant who came through that ad service, and you can access the results through an online reporting dashboard.

So that’s conversion tracking, and using it with the three previous tools will fully illuminate your online results–from your ads to your landing pages to your ATS. Now that we’ve got online ads covered, what do we do about those at are offline? All our methods so far have relied on people clicking something, but what do you do with a billboard, a radio ad, or anything else where there’s nothing to click?

Well, the answer is our fifth way to switch on the lights. It’s called a URL redirect.

Instead of having to ask or assume, we can know who answered a traditional ad by using a URL redirect. The easiest way to explain this technique is with an example. So here’s a billboard. And it’s directing drivers to this landing page. Here’s the actual landing page address. But it’s not the address on the billboard. However, when a driver goes to drivektc.com, it immediately redirects them to the real landing page address.

So why? Why in the world do we do this? Well, for two reasons:

• Since no one can click a link on a billboard, we can give them one that’s short and easy. That way they can remember and type it into their browser.
• You can track it. In the process of redirecting someone, you can add URL tags that tell you exactly which ad they came from.

That’s how URL redirects work, but actually making them work does take several steps and technical skills. Those include buying unique web addresses for the sources you want to track and then configuring your server to handle the redirects and tagging. If those tasks are outside your technical comfort zone, just know that we’d be glad to help.

With that, let’s redirect our attention to the sixth and last way to switch on the lights. The previous five have illuminated all but one thing in our flowchart. And it’s something we normally don’t see, but hear. Telephone calls. However, a call tracking service can make even sound waves plain to see.

Jay’s right. Tracking calls is all too easy these days. Fortunately, you don’t need to worry about the bad guys; you get to track the good ones – your applicants and recruiters.

As a quick Google search will reveal, there are dozens of call tracking products, but any of them should offer two core features.

The first is the actual call tracking feature. This works a lot like a URL redirect, but for a phone number instead of a web address. Basically, you can make different numbers for different ads, so you know which ones generate calls. But this feature also lets you direct those calls to whomever can best answer them. For example, a carrier with locations across the country can have calls in a particular area always go the recruiter for that region.

The second core feature is call monitoring, and you’ve experienced this one before. Anytime you call a customer service line and hear the little message that “this call may be recorded for quality and training purposes”, that’s call monitoring. It simply lets you record and review how well your recruiters interact with candidates.

So that’s how call tracking can help us switch on the lights. And combining it with the previous tools and techniques lets us fully illuminate our advertising results. With that clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t, we can make adjustments as needed.

Now that we’ve covered all six ways to switch on the lights, it’s about time to switch them off and bring this Session to a close. And really not just this one, but the past six where we’ve looked at advertising in terms of vision.

We started by focusing on how to make ads worth seeing. Then, how to get them seen. And finally, how to see results. Those are each essential aspects of advertising, but let’s conclude by setting on our sights on the most important aspect of all. That’s the need to see our ads through.

And to be honest, the whole vision analogy breaks down here because this has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with real life. It’s all about living up to what we’re advertising.

A while back, I read an article called “3 Outlandish Tips for Trucking Companies on How to Find and Keep Truck Drivers.” Despite the title, none of the tips ended up being outlandish. They were just good solid pieces of advice, and one of them was to give drivers honest, real-world job descriptions. The writer, Jim Purcell, said it so well that I’ll just quote him:

“Bottom line, don’t sugar coat it! Statistics show that most driver turnover happens in the first 2 or 3 months after starting a new job. This means that the job didn’t meet the driver’s expectations, and probably didn’t even match the job description in the first place. Yeah, it may take a bit more time to find qualified drivers this way, but you’ll end up keeping them longer!”

He’s absolutely right. Overpromising always leads to under-delivering. Though it might win drivers in the short run, it’ll lose ‘em in the long run. And lose ‘em for good. On the other hand, telling drivers the truth about what to expect with your jobs will ensure you hire the right ones and start earning their trust. In the end, that is the best result we could hope to achieve with any ad.

And it’s also the end of this Session. But I invite you to socialize with me in the next one. Literally. Cause we’re going to begin exploring how to recruit, or rather, how not to recruit on Facebook. Until then, I’m Matt.