Recruitment advertising can be a great way to attract candidates, but if you’re not tracking it properly, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not. Whether you’re running paid social campaigns, promoting roles through job boards, or using programmatic platforms, having visibility over the performance of your adverts is essential if you want to improve results and avoid wasted spend.
In some cases, schools have unintentionally made changes that led to a sharp drop in applications, simply because they didn’t have effective applicant tracking in place and couldn’t see where their applicants were coming from.
A real example: when tracking goes missing
We recently worked with a school that had been receiving a steady flow of applications. They had various adverts running, including through a long-standing subscription to a recruitment platform. Confident in their setup, they decided to discontinue that subscription to cut costs.
Shortly afterwards, they saw a dramatic drop in applications.
Because their adverts had been directing traffic back to their website and then to an external ATS, there was no clear tracking in place to show where the applicants had originally come from. They had no way of knowing how important that platform had been to their recruitment efforts until it was removed.
This is a common issue. Without the right tracking setup, it’s very easy to underestimate the value of a channel and make decisions that negatively impact recruitment numbers.
Track, even when using external platforms
It’s not always possible or practical to direct applicants to your own website, especially when you’re working with a centralised application process or using a trust-wide ATS. But that doesn’t mean you should lose all visibility.
To track your recruitment advertising more effectively, consider:
- Using UTM codes. These can be added to links, even if they go to an external platform, to help you track the original source through tools like Google Analytics or your campaign reporting.
- Asking applicants how they found the role. A simple question in your application form can help fill in the gaps. It’s important to differentiate between where they saw the role and where they applied.
- Tracking clicks and impressions at the ad level. Most advertising platforms, such as Meta or Google, allow you to monitor link clicks, engagement, and audience behaviour. Use this data to assess performance.
- Requesting referral reporting from third-party platforms. Some ATS or job boards offer basic reporting that shows where candidates are coming from. Make sure you’re making full use of this.
Set clear goals and measure what matters
If your goal is to increase the number of applications, you need to be able to see which campaigns are driving results. But if your goal is better quality or more diverse applicants, then you’ll want to measure more than just clicks.
This is where clear applicant tracking becomes essential.
Key metrics to track include:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Applications started
- Source of hire
- Drop-off points during the application process
Even if some of these are tracked manually, the insights are still worth gathering and reviewing regularly.
Avoid making decisions in the dark
It’s understandable to want to streamline costs or reduce reliance on external platforms. But if you’re not tracking effectively, it’s easy to cut something that was quietly delivering results. The impact may not be obvious until application numbers start to fall. At that point, it’s much harder to fix.
Having a simple but reliable applicant tracking approach in place means you can make informed choices and build a recruitment strategy that genuinely works.
In summary
You don’t need to send all applicants to your own website to track effectively. But you do need to make sure you have enough visibility to understand what is working and what is not.
From UTM tracking to platform reports, even small steps can make a big difference. Without them, you risk cutting valuable channels and losing great candidates without realising why.
Need help getting your recruitment tracking in order? Get in touch — we’d love to support your school’s hiring goals.
