Every company has an Employer Brand. Most companies have a general idea of how their Employer Brand is doing. But a general idea isn’t enough. Only when you start tracking the right data will you stop putting out fires and begin managing your Employer Brand in a deliberate and results-oriented way.

Data Is Everywhere. Intelligence Is Scarce

Today, companies have access to more data than ever before. ATS systems track every application, LinkedIn shows the reach of every post, Google Analytics measures visitor behavior on career sites, and Atmoskop collects employee reviews. Data is everywhere.

And yet, most companies don’t know how their Employer Brand is actually doing.

The problem isn’t a lack of data. The problem is its fragmentation. Each tool shows its own slice of reality, but no one puts them together.

And so the numbers exist, but no one acts on them.

Yet the difference between data and intelligence is fundamental. Data describes what happened. Intelligence explains why and what to do about it.

A single number tells you nothing. But a trend you’ve been tracking for three months in a row, and its connection to signals from other parts of the company—that’s the basis for a decision.

That is precisely the purpose of Employer Brand Intelligence.

RACE – The Framework We Use to Gather Insights

An Employer Brand doesn’t exist in just one place. It isn’t limited to your career page, job ads, or what your employees tell their friends over a beer. It exists wherever people encounter your company—whether it’s their first time or after twenty years of working together.

That’s why we need a map that covers this entire journey. And that map is the RACE model we use.

Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage are the four phases every candidate and every employee goes through. Each phase generates different signals and raises different questions.

• Reach asks whether the right people even know you.
• Act examines whether you generate interest and trust.
• Convert monitors whether you deliver on your promises.
• Engage measures what your people actually feel and say.

Why is it important to track all four? Because a change in one phase often only manifests in another. And without an overall view, you’re looking for the cause in the wrong place.

A company seeing a drop in applications may not have a visibility problem. The problem may lie in what candidates find when they look closer.

Reach – Do the Right People Know Us? And Do They Understand Us?

Reach is about visibility. But not visibility at any cost. It’s about being seen in the right way by the right people. That’s why we distinguish between two dimensions that are closely related but not the same.

The first is awareness—do people know we exist as an employer? The second is familiarity—do they understand who we are and what it’s really like to work here?

A company may be well-known, but people may have a vague or distorted impression of it. Conversely, a company may be very well understood by a narrow group, but the broader market simply doesn’t know about it.

For Employer Branding, however, familiarity is more important than mere awareness. A candidate who understands your company comes with realistic expectations, fits in better, and stays longer.

What to Measure and How

Traffic to career pages, its sources, and visitor behavior can be tracked using tools like Google Analytics. The volume of mentions of the company as an employer can be captured for free by Google Alerts, while more advanced monitoring is available through tools such as Brand24 or Mention.

Growth in the number of followers on the company’s LinkedIn page and the reach of posts can be tracked using native LinkedIn Analytics.

The number and rate of reviews on Atmoskop or Glassdoor serve as a proxy indicator of how many people have direct experience with the brand and feel the need to share their thoughts.

Search is a separate topic altogether. Google Search Console shows which search terms people use to find you, how often, and whether they actually click on your results.

Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush then complete the picture with competitive comparisons and the career page’s ranking in search results.

And then there’s an area that most companies aren’t paying much attention to yet: how they appear in the results (responses) of AI tools.

When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity about the best employers in a given industry or region, does your company appear in the answer? And if so, how is it described?

This discipline, known as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), represents a new type of visibility that is just beginning to come into play.

Whoever starts monitoring it first will gain a head start.

Act – Are We Generating Interest and Trust?

The Act phase asks one key question: What will a person do after they come across us? Will they read more? Will they look at open positions? Or will they leave because what they found didn’t convince them?

This is no longer about visibility. It’s about content, authenticity, and trust. A candidate who visits the career page and finds nothing that tells them what it’s really like to work there will leave.

A candidate who comes across a generic ad full of clichés won’t apply. And a candidate who reads reviews and sees that the company says one thing while employees say another will lose trust.

What to Measure and How

Google Analytics tracks visitor behavior on the career page. Key metrics include bounce rate, time spent on the page, and clicks on specific sections or positions.

Low time on page with good reach is a clear signal that the content isn’t convincing.

The conversion rate of job postings—that is, how many people saw the posting and how many actually applied—is shown by the ATS system in combination with LinkedIn Analytics. This ratio is one of the most direct indicators of whether your offer is resonating.

Engagement with career content on LinkedIn—comments, shares, reactions—is measured by LinkedIn Analytics. Pay special attention to whether employees are sharing the content themselves. Their shares carry a completely different weight than a company post.

There is a qualitative signal that the numbers won’t show, but which is just as important: are the applications relevant? Do candidates understand what you’re looking for and what your culture is like?

If not, the problem isn’t with Reach; the problem lies in what you communicate and how.

Convert – Do We Deliver on Our Promises?

Convert is the phase that determines the credibility of the entire Employer Brand. The candidate has taken the plunge. They applied, went through interviews, accepted the offer, and started the job. And now comes the moment of truth: does reality match what the company communicated?

That’s why Convert doesn’t end with the signing of the contract. It encompasses the entire recruitment process, including onboarding, all the way through the end of the probationary period.

These are interconnected. The company either delivers on its promises or it doesn’t. And that will show up in the numbers very quickly.

What to Measure in Recruitment

Time to fill and offer acceptance rate are key indicators of the recruitment process’s effectiveness and the attractiveness of the offer. Both are tracked by the ATS system.

A highly underrated metric is the candidate experience—including that of rejected candidates. A short survey after the recruitment process ends will reveal how people experienced the entire process.

A rejected candidate with a bad experience is an active threat to Reach. A rejected candidate with a good experience can be a brand ambassador and may apply again next time or recommend you to others.

What to Measure During Onboarding

Turnover during the probationary period is one of the clearest signs of a failing Employer Brand. If people are leaving within the first few months, something at Convert isn’t working. It could be the hiring process, or reality may not have lived up to expectations.

Surveys conducted after 30, 60, and 90 days will reveal how new hires experience their start and how their perspective evolves. And one question worth asking systematically: how did they envision working here before starting, and how do they see it now?

This so-called gap between expectations and reality is a direct indicator of how authentic your external communication is.

Engage – What Do Our People Feel and Say?

Engage is the final phase of RACE, but in many ways the most important one. Employees, including former employees (alumni), are the most trusted ambassadors of the Employer Brand.

Their voices carry a weight that no campaign can replace, because people trust people, not companies.

But Engage isn’t just about whether people speak up for you. It’s primarily about what they truly feel. Whether they’re engaged, satisfied, and loyal. Whether they’d recommend the company to a friend.

Whether they leave because a better offer came along, or because something essential was missing. And whether, after leaving, they speak of the company with respect or with bitterness.

It is only from this foundation—from what people are actually experiencing—that what they say on the outside emerges.

What to Measure among Current Employees

eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) is a simple yet powerful metric. Would you recommend this company as an employer? A regular pulse survey reveals trends and signals shifts in sentiment early on.

Turnover rates, and especially the distinction between voluntary and involuntary turnover, will complete the picture of who is leaving and why.

The number of internal referrals—when an employee actively brings in a candidate from their own network—is one of the strongest indicators of true loyalty. This data is tracked by ATS or HR records.

Employee engagement with the company’s career content—whether they share, comment, or participate in ambassador activities—is shown, for example, by LinkedIn Analytics.

The number and sentiment of reviews on Atmoskop or Glassdoor then reflect how willing people are to express themselves publicly.

What to Measure among Alumni

Alumni are a specific group that companies often overlook. Yet they are a very valuable source of insights. People who have left the company speak without a filter. Their voices are authentic and influential because they have no reason to sugarcoat things.

An exit interview captures an immediate perspective on why someone is leaving, what they would change, and what they felt was missing.

But even more valuable can be a survey conducted 30 or 90 days after departure, when emotions have subsided and the person can view their experience with greater perspective.

The sentiment of online mentions by alumni is then tracked by tools such as Brand24 or Atmoskop.

A company that has no relationship with its alumni misses out on two things: valuable feedback and potential ambassadors. Because, from a Reach and Act perspective, positive alumni are among the most valuable people a company has.

Where to Start? A Practical Guide

The biggest mistake would be trying to measure everything at once. Data overload is just as paralyzing as having no data at all. The goal isn’t to have a perfect dashboard right away; the goal is to start seeing what’s happening and respond before problems escalate.

We recommend starting simple. Choose one or two metrics from each phase of RACE, ideally ones you already have access to today at no additional cost.

Google Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, and your ATS system will cover a decent portion of the basic overview. Atmoskop or Google Alerts will add an external perspective. And a short pulse survey among employees will fill in what the numbers don’t show.

Set a monitoring frequency. Not everything needs to be measured every month. Some metrics make sense on a monthly basis: traffic, engagement, eNPS. Others are sufficient on a quarterly basis: turnover, offer acceptance rate, review sentiment.

And once a year, supplement this with an in-depth survey that provides context and a benchmark for all the ongoing data.

Look for relationships between the phases. This is where true insight emerges. If Reach is growing but Act is declining, the problem lies in the content or credibility, not in visibility.

If Convert is strong but Engage is falling apart, onboarding promises more than daily reality can deliver. Connecting signals across RACE will reveal where the root cause truly lies, not just the symptom.

And don’t forget the context. Data alone won’t tell you why. For that, you need someone who understands the company, the market, and the people. Employer Brand Intelligence isn’t just about numbers. It’s about the ability to read between them.