Hires are an outdated way of measuring Employer Brand - so why are so many leaders still using it?
In this blog post, we’ll explore why investing in your employer brand is essential in 2025—and how to get started.
By Molly Johnson-Jones
CEO & Co-Founder at Flexa
29th Oct 2025
• 5 minutes
The conversation is predictable.
There’s the hopeful beginning:
“We’re really investing in our Employer Brand, we understand the long-term gains of becoming an employer of choice, and we’re ready to build a stronger talent pipeline”
And ends with frustration:
“We’re measuring success based on click-through rate to application, and number of hires”
Now, there’s a reason why so many smart leaders are tripping up when it comes to measuring their Employer Branding ROI – and it’s usually not their fault.
Companies have been trying to push modern day hiring and talent management into old-fashioned measurements, and it doesn't work.
So what’s the better option?
The very best leaders are stealing from our friends in the marketing department.
This blog will cover:
- Why traditional hiring metrics fail to measure Employer Brand success
- How to use the Employer Branding Funnel (EBF) to track meaningful impact
- The difference between recruitment metrics and brand health indicators
- How to interpret your data to drive strategic action
- Practical steps for implementing the EBF framework
Think in a funnel
Marketers, the good ones anyway, think in funnels and journeys. Not in individual metrics.
In marketing, you don’t just have to prove the important metrics are moving; you have to understand the forces that make those numbers move, and how to control them. That’s important. We’ll come back to this.
A marketing funnel is quite simple:
- Getting noticed: that’s your brand work, advertising, anything that grabs attention
- Engaging your audience: organic socials, email marketing, your website
- Converting them to customers: conversion rates, return on investment and return on ad spend
The Employer Branding Funnel (EBF):
- Awareness: This represents the number of people who are aware that your company exists, and who are starting to consider you as an employer they’re interested in
- Attraction: This represents a level of connection with talent, who have taken an action (big or small) to find out whether there’s a match
- Engagement: This is the deepest and most important part of the EBF, and is a clear indicator of the size, quality and makeup of your current talent pool.
Now we’ve sorted our metrics, we have to understand what makes them move. Without this piece of the puzzle, it’s just a bunch of numbers on a dashboard that we can’t do anything about.
Develop contextual understanding
You’ve got the lay of the land with your EBF, and should already be pulling out insights of where your Employer Brand is strong and where it could do with some work.
However, numbers without context are pretty useless to all of us.
We need to understand why the numbers are the way they are, and what we can do to influence them.
Here are some common things you’re likely to be seeing in your metrics, and how to turn the numbers into strategic outcomes and actions:
Implementing this system
You’ve got everything you need. Here are the steps to implement the EBF measurement and finally get control of your data.
- Build out your EBF and share it with your team and managers across the business. Adding the context of your own business challenges and goals will double the impact of the funnel framework and help to cement the process internally.
- Identify your top 5 current challenges using the Employer Brand performance framework: Metric Status or Problem, Additional Data Required, and Insight and Strategic Outcome
- Review this with the downfunnel HR team who are focused on hires (or with your manager) and agree on a clear separation between Employer Brand and Recruitment metrics. It helps to show the links between the two, but it doesn't help to blur the lines!
- Create a regular update format (we recommend quarterly) to review the EBF metrics, and your challenges and opportunities.
FAQs about measuring employer brand
1. Why are “number of hires” and “click-through rates” poor measures of Employer Brand?
Because they only capture the end result of a much longer journey. Employer Brand is about long-term perception and connection, not short-term conversions. Measuring it purely through hires ignores the awareness, trust, and engagement built along the way—and reduces Employer Branding to a transactional activity instead of a strategic investment.
2. What is the Employer Branding Funnel (EBF)?
The Employer Brand Funnel is a framework inspired by marketing funnels, designed to capture how talent moves from awareness to engagement with your brand. It includes three key stages:
Awareness: How many people know about your company as a potential employer.
Attraction: How many are taking actions to explore whether you’re a good fit.
Engagement: How many are actively interacting with or considering your brand.
This approach helps teams focus on brand strength and pipeline quality rather than just hires.
3. What’s the benefit of thinking like a marketer when it comes to Employer Branding?
Marketers measure journeys, not isolated numbers. They understand what moves their metrics—and why.
Applying that same thinking to Employer Brand means you can identify what’s influencing your awareness, attraction, and engagement levels, then build strategies that improve them rather than simply reporting outcomes.What kind of data should I track to understand Employer Brand performance?
Track metrics across the EBF that show movement, not just volume. For example:
Awareness: Reach, brand mentions, career page traffic, social engagement.
Attraction: Talent following your channels, signing up for job alerts, visiting your Flexa profile.
Engagement: Returning visitors, content interactions, saved jobs, referrals.
Layer this with qualitative data—like candidate feedback, employee advocacy, and social sentiment—to build a more complete picture.
5. How can I make sense of my Employer Brand data?
Numbers without context are meaningless. To turn data into insight:
Look for patterns—where in the funnel is performance weakest?
Add context—what’s happening in your business or market that could explain it?
Translate insights into action—adjust messaging, content, or engagement tactics based on what you’ve learned.
6. How do I separate Employer Brand metrics from Recruitment metrics?
Employer Brand metrics measure perception and engagement with your company as an employer.
Recruitment metrics measure hiring efficiency—time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, etc.
The two are connected but distinct. Keeping them separate helps each team focus on its own impact while recognising how brand health supports hiring success.7. How can I implement the EBF system in my organisation?
Follow these key steps:
Build your EBF and align it with your company goals.
Identify your top 5 Employer Brand challenges using a framework of “Metric, Additional Data, Insight, and Strategic Outcome.”
Review metrics with HR or Talent Acquisition teams to clarify where Employer Brand ends and recruitment begins.
Create a quarterly review rhythm to evaluate progress and refine strategy.