Following the sources of the candidate's journey

This week’s post is a detour from the topic of GraceBlocks and back to the topic of source effectiveness. Last year I wrote a post called: If a recruiting ad was clicked but not tracked, did it really happen? This is a topic that has been a considerable focus throughout my career at many employers. It’s also one that has been very frustrating. That post kicked off a collaborative effort that started with Gerry Crispin and I and then expanded to a much larger group of Talent Acquisition Professionals who are also passionate about this topic. We agreed that part of the challenge is a lack of common vernacular that would allow a common voice as talent acquisition professionals in stating our needs and how we’d like them solved.

We set out to help move the industry forward on this topic by forming an ATAP (Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals) working committee. On June 14, 2019, we held our initial meeting, and last week, almost exactly a year later, we published the guidelines as a white paper.

Click here: Source Effectiveness Guidelines to read the white paper.

Click here: Watch the July 23rd 2020 webinar conversation to see the committee members review and discuss the new ATAP Source Effectiveness Guidelines with the Talent Acquisition community.

This document was a labor or love and is literally packed with content, here are just a few things items we cover:

• What’s the difference between a lead and a prospect and an applicant?
• How can following models borrowed from Marketing too closely get Talent Acquisition teams in trouble?
• What’s the difference between sourcing and a source?
• What is a quality hire?
• What are the different source attribution models?
• What is a conversion ratio?
• What are some concrete metrics you can use to evaluate source effectiveness?

If you are a talent acquisition professional, I hope you find this white paper helpful in guiding your talent strategy. But these guidelines are not just for talent acquisition professionals, it’s also for the solution providers who serve them. If your customers can’t prove the value of your solution, they will be hard pressed to justifying spending money on your product. While I was working at various recruitment technology providers, I would have found this white paper invaluable. Having this framework delivered through ATAP means solution providers now have guidelines to consider when architecting their solutions. Please consider using them.

Thank you to all of the committee members for all your hard work on this project. We all learned from one another; it was an amazing team:

• Tyler, your continued passion were an inspiration, and in particular your guidance to avoid trouble comparing TA to marketing were gold.
• Kathy, you kept us on task and really helped ensure true clarify on so many points in explaining the hiring journey.
• Jen, your executive guidance on how to round things out with guidance on next steps and metrics examples were truly helpful.
• Andrew, you helped ensure we continued to align our approach with one that could be followed and implemented in the real world.
• Glenn, you helped guide so many of the definitions to clarity.
• Heather, you were the most wonderful editor anyone could ask for.
• Alan, you were a constant force of reassurance and encouragement and gave great words for us to end on.
• Gerry, you were a constant force of leadership for the team that was so appreciated. You helped ensure we started at the very beginning, with defining, what is a source anyway!?
• Debbie, thank you for your insights and ensuring we kept things broadly applicable, and of course thank you for Symphony Talent’s sponsorship of this work ensuring it could reach as many talent acquisition professionals as possible.
• Allyn, thank you for your initial contributions to getting this all started with the webinar last summer on source of hire and thank you for bringing Tyler into the group.
• Martin, you helped kick things off as well with our conversation with Gerry at Unleash last June. Thank you for helping to get the ball rolling.
• Ryan, there were some critical junctures where you helped give essential clarity on leads vs. prospects and how deep to go in explaining attribution model metrics, thank you.

Finally, if you have not yet joined ATAP, consider doing so. It is a great organization who is helping to move the world of Talent Acquisition forward. This is not a passive organization, join, get involved and help shape our profession. Starting and/or participating on a working committee is a great way for you to connect with peers across the industry in a meaningful and productive way. My final thanks goes to Kristen Leblanc, the Executive Director of ATAP, thanks for your partnership and guidance producing this white paper.

Join us July 23rd for a conversation where the committee members will review and discuss the ATAP Source Effectiveness Guidelines. Register here

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