Ever wondered why, when you're looking to buy something online, it follows you around the internet for a week, and then lands in your inbox with 10% off?
It's all because retailers track every step you take from the browse to the click to the left-over basket. They know a sale rarely happens on the first visit, so they measure the whole journey leading up to the payment.
Recruitment marketing works similarly, but most teams still measure it like it doesn't. A candidate can see your employer brand on LinkedIn, browse your careers site, leave, come back through Google a week later, then apply, and your ATS will credit only that last step. All the work that built their interest along the way goes unmeasured.
How do I actually prove recruitment marketing is working? When your ATS says one thing, but you know your campaigns influence far more than the applications it attributes.
It's a brilliant question because recruitment marketing is still playing catch-up on measurement compared to consumer marketing.
If recruitment marketing wants to be viewed like performance marketing, it needs to be measured similarly.
Track the journey
Applications are only the final step in a much wider employer brand journey, so to understand what's really influencing candidates, you need to measure the behaviours that happen beforehand.
Start tracking:
Job page visits
Apply Now clicks
Application starts
Completed application
These signals show where candidates engage, where they drop off, and which campaigns drive intent before an application is submitted. They also help you spot friction in your candidate journey, giving you opportunities to improve conversion rates and campaign performance.
Connect your data
To improve your reporting, it's important to connect your three key sources of data:
Your careers site analytics
Platform tracking (such as LinkedIn, Meta and Google pixels)
Your ATS
This way, your analytics will show how candidates behave, and media platforms reveal which campaigns influenced those actions. And you can use your ATS to confirm who went on to apply, progress and get hired.
Looking at these data sources together helps you understand why it happened, making it much easier to optimise future campaigns.
"You’ve built an employer brand that reflects who you are as an employer; now it needs to be seen, remembered, and trusted. Through the right mix of targeting, creative, and media strategy, you can put your brand in front of the right people, at the right time, with the right message."
Measure influence
Expecting recruitment marketing to prove its value through hires alone is a mistake many organisations can make. Employer branding does more than generate applications. It builds awareness, shapes perception and encourages the right candidates to keep coming back until they're ready to apply.
If you're only measuring the final click, you're only seeing the last chapter of the story. The real value of recruitment marketing lies in everything that happens before it. When you can show how your campaigns influence candidate behaviour across the entire journey, it becomes much easier to justify investment, improve performance, and demonstrate recruitment marketing's true impact on hiring.
