Over the past 20 years, I’ve seen more companies take an interest in what employer branding actually delivers. Website traffic, social media followers and application numbers still matter, but the questions are changing: Are we attracting the right people? Do they choose us over other employers? Can we retain them?
Measurement hasn’t always kept pace. Many teams still report what is easiest to count, with limited insight into how candidates perceive the company or why they choose another employer.
A useful starting point is to distinguish between process metrics and strategic metrics.
Reach, impressions, engagement, clicks and career-site visitors show how campaigns and channels are performing. These metrics help us make decisions about content, media spend and execution.
But when we evaluate an employer branding strategy, we also need to know whether the people we want to attract are becoming more interested in working for the company. Do they consider us? Do they prefer us to other employers? What do they associate with our brand?
A campaign can generate strong engagement without increasing candidates’ interest in the company. Looking at both types of metrics helps us see where we are making progress—and where we need to investigate further.
Here’s how I would approach measurement across the talent funnel.
1. Awareness: How well known is the employer?
Awareness remains important, particularly when a company is opening a technology hub, entering a new market or recruiting for roles that people may not associate with the company.
What matters is awareness among the people we want to hire. A company may be well known to consumers but almost unknown as an employer among software engineers or finance professionals.
We can measure whether people in the target audience name the company without prompting and whether they recognize it when prompted. The difference is useful: recognizing a name does not necessarily mean the company comes to mind when someone thinks about potential employers.
At this stage, candidates often need basic context. What does the company do locally? Who works there? What kinds of projects could they contribute to?
Sometimes, we ask people to apply before we’ve given them enough reasons to become interested.
2. Consideration: Would candidates consider the company?
Consideration is one of the most useful—and, in my view, underused—employer branding metrics. It measures the share of people in a target audience who would seriously consider working for a company.
In our research, we often see a substantial gap between awareness and consideration. People know the company, but working there does not appeal to them—or they don’t know enough about it to form an opinion.
These are different challenges and call for different responses. If candidates lack information, we need to understand what they want to know. If they have concerns about management, career opportunities or working conditions, increasing campaign reach will have limited value until we understand those concerns.
That’s why it’s useful to measure consideration alongside the reasons people give for considering or ruling out an employer. Stronger consideration may support recruitment across several channels: candidates may be more willing to respond to a recruiter, explore an opportunity or apply. Those behaviours are worth tracking, too.
3. Employer preference and EVP associations
Once candidates are willing to consider your company, the next question is how it compares with their other options.
Those options vary by audience. Software engineers and finance professionals may consider very different employers, even when applying to the same company.
We can look at employer preference within each priority audience, as well as the attributes people associate with the company. This is also where we can assess whether the Employer Value Proposition (EVP) is getting through.
If career development, innovation or flexibility are central to your EVP, how many candidates associate those attributes with your company? How does that compare with other employers? And do employees describe their experience in similar terms?
One useful indicator is the share of people who spontaneously mention an EVP attribute when describing the employer. It gives us a better sense of what people remember without being prompted.
Developing an EVP is only part of the work. We also need to check whether it reflects the employee experience and whether the associations we want to build are becoming stronger over time.
4. Applications and conversion
At this stage, we want to understand whether interest leads to action. Metrics to consider include:
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Career-site visitor-to-application conversion.
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Application completion rates.
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The share of applicants who meet the role requirements.
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Response rates to recruiter outreach.
Application volume alone can be misleading. More applications are not necessarily better if recruiters spend more time reviewing candidates who don’t match the roles.
Conversion data needs context, too. Candidates may be interested in the company but abandon an application because the process is difficult, the role is unclear or the working arrangements don’t meet their expectations.
Before concluding that we have an employer branding problem, we need to understand where candidates drop out—and why.
5. Recruitment outcomes
Ultimately, we need to connect employer branding with recruitment results. We can track cost per hire, time to fill, offer acceptance, quality of hire and hiring manager satisfaction. Source of hire can also show how the recruitment mix is changing, including our reliance on outbound sourcing.
These outcomes are influenced by several factors: compensation, talent availability, recruiter capacity, hiring manager decisions and the recruitment process.
So, we should be cautious about attributing a lower cost per hire entirely to employer branding. The same caution applies when results get worse.
Timing matters, too. Awareness, consideration and preference may improve before we see a change in hiring outcomes. Tracking both helps us assess progress without expecting every investment to generate immediate hires.
If we report only applications and hiring results, it can be difficult to make the case for work that builds employer preference over the longer term.
6. Retention and advocacy
After someone joins, we can start to understand how well their experience matches the expectations created during recruitment.
It’s worth paying particular attention to early turnover and the reasons people leave. If new employees repeatedly say that the role, management style or career opportunities differ from what they expected, we need to review both the experience and how we communicate it.
For employee advocacy, one useful metric is eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score), which measures how likely employees are to recommend the company as a place to work. We can track it over time and, when anonymity can be protected, look at differences across teams, locations and tenure groups. The reasons behind the scores matter just as much: what makes employees recommend the company, and what holds them back?
Alongside eNPS, we can track:
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Retention at 6 and 12 months, by role or employee group.
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Voluntary turnover among the people the company wants to retain.
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Participation in employee referral programmes and the quality of those referrals.
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Whether the EVP reflects employees’ actual experience.
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Continued voluntary participation in employee advocacy programmes.
For companies running advocacy programmes, post volume and reach help assess activity. But we should also ask whether employees feel comfortable sharing their experiences and whether their contributions help candidates understand the company better.
Results at this stage depend heavily on managers, working conditions, compensation and career opportunities. For employer branding teams, they offer valuable feedback on what the company can credibly promise—and where the employee experience needs attention.
Measure to make better decisions
Across every stage, I would start with the same question: Where are we losing the people we want to attract or retain?
If awareness is already high but consideration is low, we should investigate the reasons before investing in more visibility. If candidates are willing to consider the company but few apply, we can look more closely at the opportunities we promote and the application experience.
A small set of reliable metrics that helps us make decisions is more useful than a long report on activity. The value of measurement lies in understanding what needs to change—and checking whether those changes worked.
By Dragos Gheban – Managing Partner at Catalyst Solutions.
Dragos has over 20 years of experience in Human Resources field, Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing.
During his career, he has worked with local and multinational companies from various industries: telecommunications and technology, FMCG, consulting, banking, engineering, retail and BPO.
He has a deep understanding of business dynamics and challenges and has the capacity to design tailored solutions in order to meet the company’s employer branding and recruitment needs.
