How to measure your employer brand

What is your employer brand and why is it important?

Deciding where to work is one of the most important decisions candidates have to make when going through application processes. Let’s imagine someone has received job offers from two different companies for a similar job role—what would make them choose one over the other? The answer? Employer branding.

Employer branding comes down to the company's overall reputation and culture. For candidates, this starts long before they even choose to apply. Your candidates will do a lot of research on your company before applying. Having a strong and honest employer brand is essential.

How to measure your employer brand

Measuring the effectiveness of your employer brand is important so you know when and where to make changes. Candidates’ priorities are constantly changing, so your employer brand should be adapting to these changes. Below, we’ve listed some of the key ways and metrics to use to measure your employer brand.

Application volume

A high application volume indicates a strong employer brand. If this metric is consistently high, it means candidates are interested in working for your organization. To increase this number, it's crucial that your employer brand shines through in your job descriptions.

A related and more useful metric is your spontaneous application number. Allow your candidates to register their interest in working for you, even if there aren’t any active roles that suit them. This will add them to your talent pool and you can nurture and use them at a later stage.

Spontaneous applications show that candidates are still willing to apply to work for you, even without the right role. This indicates a strong employer brand as it’s the company itself which is piquing their interest.

Quality of hire

An insightful metric to track for employer branding is your quality of hire. A strong employer brand should be attracting candidates whose skills and values reflect your company's culture and mission. 

If you have an ATS, there’s likely a feature which will do all the measuring for you, giving you an easy way to track this stat. However, you can also use other tools or metrics like retention rates, surveys and productivity levels to measure the quality of your new hires.

If you notice an influx of higher quality candidates, it’s a good indicator that your employer brand is working and resonating with the right audience.

Career site engagement

The engagement you get from your potential candidates also shows how well your employer brand is doing. If your career site statistics are positive, it shows people are interested in what your company has to offer. Click through rates, conversion rates and bounce rates are good measures of how successful your career site is.

You can measure this statistic fairly easily, depending on where you host your career site. But in most cases, it will be the front-end to your ATS. You can use the analytics section to track and measure your engagement over time. This way, you can ensure it always aligns with your employer branding goals.

Social media engagement

Your social media should target your ideal candidates as well as your consumers. 79% of job seekers will research your socials before applying. People buy from people, so it's important to treat your hiring like marketing.

A strong social media presence will increase your reach and brand exposure. When using it for your hiring strategy, you can then track the engagement on relevant posts. Track your likes, shares and click through rates to measure success. You can also track your conversion sources in your ATS to see how many of your candidates are coming from your socials.

Reject reasons

A good thing to track is your reject reasons, especially if the candidate is the one who rejected your job offer. It could be that they chose another company over yours or decided to stay in their current role.

Either way, tracking these reasons helps identify emerging patterns. If your candidates are consistently choosing a competitor over you, it might be worth looking into your brand and seeing where you're falling short. This is also where NPS surveys come in handy. You can get feedback from your candidates on your recruitment process and where you can improve!

Time-to-hire, time-to-fill and acceptance rate

These metrics are crucial for hiring managers to measure in all areas of recruitment. Together, they can give a good indication of the strength of your employer brand.

Tracking these metrics together reveals how quickly and effectively you're filling positions. Having a strong employer brand will affect these metrics positively as it reflects the appeal of your organization and how quickly you're able to fill your open roles.

Reviews and ratings

Reviews are a great way to keep track of what people think of your company and its culture. Online review platforms, existing employee surveys, candidate surveys and exit interviews are all useful ways to gather feedback. People usually remain anonymous, encouraging them to be more honest without fear of reprimand.

Analyze the feedback you receive and identify common themes. This will then allow you to pick out the areas you’re doing well, as well as those that might need improvement. Again, this is something you should be reviewing regularly, to make sure you’re always on top of your goals.

Referral rate

If your company has a referral program, ensure you’re keeping track of the rate at which your employees are referring to their network. A high referral rate indicates that your employees have trust in leadership, culture and the working environment.

A positive internal reputation will also naturally have an impact on your external image as your employees will be more likely to shout about it. A good referral rate can also lead to shorter time-to-hire, a lower cost per hire, and is more likely to bring in high quality candidates.

There are multiple ways to measure your employer brand, and it's essential to do this regularly to keep on top of it. The results you get can identify areas of improvement, as well as areas you're excelling to keep your efforts consistent. Being honest with your candidates and what you're offering will help build a more successful employer brand and keep your retention rates high. If you've been measuring your employer brand but are unsure of how to improve it, we've put together a useful guide on how to do just that, which you can find below! We also cover some other ways in which you can measure your employer brand.