As speaker Jennie An stated, data isn’t always the most egg-citing topic.

But she certainly managed to spice it up at this year’s TalentEgg Campus Recruitment Excellence Awards & Conference, with an engaging presentation that covered a range of topics – from the 2016 Census, to Justin Trudeau and pandas. However, it was her main story of successfully building a campus recruitment measurement tool from scratch that truly captured our audience’s attention.

So what does it take to create such a resource? Lucky for us, Jennie broke it down into four easy steps.

1. Ask yourself: What do you want to measure? Why?

How many students do you hire and from which schools? How many of your interns and co-op students get hired into full-time roles? While you might be able to find these numbers with a little digging, having a frequently updated measurement tool ensures you always have the right information at your fingertips. Additionally, your recruitment goals are based on supply, demand, and other factors. How large is your potential pool? Who are your competitors, and what are they offering? Having this knowledge, combined with your KPIs (key performance indicators), will help you set reachable goals.

2. Map the process. Be inclusive & realistic.

Creating a measurement tool from the ground up will definitely involve some trial and error. Don’t get too hung up on the mistakes and understand that they are an important part of the learning process. Keep track of everything you’re doing, but also be realistic about what you can achieve with the resources you have. Also, continuously adapt your tool to your current situation – the schools and programs you hired from in the past may not be where you need to direct your attention in the future.

3. Source a tool for you. Start building!

For Jennie, it was Microsoft Access, a database software that is included in the Windows Office system. This is a great tool to use if you are working with a limited budget for your campus recruitment efforts. However, any database software that allows you to easily update and track your team’s KPIs will work. Some other options: QuickBase by Intuit and Salesforce.

4. Share your information freely.

Well, not everything. While Jennie politely declined to share the database itself with our TalentEgg Awards attendees as it had confidential company information, her whole presentation offered our audience the tools they needed to build a successful measurement resource of their own. Additionally, tracking your data allows you to communicate your successes in more definitive terms, as well as pinpoint the areas where you might need to adjust your process.

Discussion: What are your campus recruitment KPIs? What tools do you use to measure and analyze your data?

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