Tracking These 6 Employer Branding Metrics Will Help You Hire Better

No matter what hiring initiative you're working on, tracking recruiting metrics is crucial. Without data, you won't know if you're on course or off track. Creating a successful recruiting strategy requires a data brave approach that looks at different elements of the hiring process—including employer branding. Although it may not be something your team has considered, when you track the success of your employer brand, it allows you to find out if the public, especially job seekers, view your company in a positive light. These are the employer branding metrics to track if you want to improve your recruitment approach. 

6 Employer Branding Metrics to Track

In order to get the most relevant information, you need to capture and analyze the most relevant data, without getting bogged down with irrelevant data. You can measure the success of your employer brand using the following six metrics.

1. Brand Awareness

Although brand awareness itself doesn’t yield many numbers to crunch, it's still important to pay attention to. It will let you know if people are aware of your organization, as well as what they're thinking, and saying, about you as an employer. To gain an understanding of the type of buzz your employer brand is generating, look into using a social listening tool and pay attention to how often your company is mentioned and what is being said when it is. 

If you don't feel like enough people are talking about your employer brand, ramp up the content you put out to get the conversation started. If the information already being shared is negative, look at the feedback to determine if there are trends in what is being complained about, and figure out what the organization can do to fix the problems and change the narrative. 

2. Number of Applications Received

The more successful your employer branding is, the more applicants you will receive for every position you post—which means this is an employer branding metric worth tracking. However, recruiters should keep these figures in perspective. You don’t want more applicants just for the sake of having them. You want more qualified applicants, so also track the quality of the candidates coming in when there’s an uptick. If the quality of candidates is poor, it's time to rethink the messaging in job descriptions and information on your recruitment website and social media posts. 

3. Employee Referrals

A happy employee is the best brand ambassador you have, so the employee referrals metric is definitely worth paying attention to. And more referrals lead to more quality hires. In fact, according to Payscale, 40 percent of new hires are the result of employee referrals, even though only 7 percent of applicants get into the hiring funnel because of referrals. The benefits of a good referral cannot be understated, so you need an employer brand that makes workers want to recommend your organization to their networks. If you're not getting as many referrals from untapped communities as you’d like, make sure to put an emphasis on having your employees work together to build a representative workforce. 

4. Hiring Manager Satisfaction

Hiring manager satisfaction may seem hard to measure, but finding out what hiring managers think about the quality of candidates coming in, as well as the people being hired, will go a long way toward determining if your employer branding needs tweaking. Are hiring managers satisfied or dissatisfied with the caliber of talent your company’s employer brand attracts? In order to measure this, partner with hiring managers to find out their opinions and make efforts toward ensuring that the talent being brought in is what they want.

5. Diversity Of Applicants 

Demographic data is one of the metrics you may overlook when analyzing your top-of-funnel pipeline. This number is crucial to track when trying to determine whether you're building a representative workforce through employer branding. The demographic data of your top-of-funnel candidate pipeline will tell you a lot. You can check for diversity gaps, biases, and what types of candidates your job advertisements attract. This information will allow you to determine if your employment branding is inclusive or needs to be improved.

With Untapped’s Diversity Analytics your team can uncover diversity disparities, identify biases, and track progress to hit DEI goals with confidence. 

6. Stay and Exit Interview Information 

At the heart of your employer brand is worker satisfaction, so you want to find out what makes people leave, as well as what makes people stay. To get this information, conduct exit and stay interviews so you find out the reasons for both attrition and retention. If common themes emerge, they’ll inform you on what needs to change at your company, as well as what makes your employer brand successful.

Employer branding metrics can guide the way your company is perceived by job seekers, and help you make changes that will attract the talent you want. When you have positive employer branding, recruitment becomes easier because you increase the number of applicants you receive, boost the quality of the hires you make, and increase the chances that employees stay at your organization.