Recruitment marketing metrics: the two numbers recruiters should care about most

TL;DR

• Treat talent like a business line. Anchor your recruitment marketing metrics on two core numbers: Candidate Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Talent Lifetime Value (TLV).
• CAC shows what it costs per hire by channel. TLV shows the value created after the candidate accepts the job offer. Together they guide budget allocation, not just reporting.
• Build CAC from all inputs: paid media, job boards, content, careers site conversion, recruiter time, assessment layers, and coordination effort. Track variants such as cost per application, cost per qualified candidate, and cost per hire.
• Build TLV from outcomes: time to productivity, tenure, internal mobility, first year attrition, manager satisfaction, and quality of hire proxies.
• Fix attribution. Combine ATS source, UTMs and a self-reported “How did you hear about us?” field to see which recruitment marketing channels create qualified candidates, not just clicks.
• Make interview-first your operational anchor. Short, structured, mobile interviews at apply improve completion, speed and signal, strengthening every metric. Sapia.ai overlays your ATS to do this in weeks, not months.

Why recruitment marketing metrics need a profit-and-loss mindset

Any leader with P&L accountability knows margin is a health check. The same mindset belongs in talent acquisition. If you believe your talent business model is as important as your core product, your recruitment marketing should be managed with the same clarity of input, output and return.

That is where two numbers dominate: CAC and TLV. Borrowed from marketing, adapted for recruiting, they act as the north star for your recruitment data, your budget allocation, and your day-to-day optimisation. Everything else in your dashboard is there to diagnose why CAC went up or TLV went down.

This is not a call to add fifty key performance indicators. It is a call to make data driven decisions using a tight set of key metrics that link your recruitment marketing efforts to business value.

Defining the two numbers: CAC and TLV for talent

In order to discern the true value of marketing metrics, you must first understand the difference between CAC and TLV.

Candidate Acquisition Cost (CAC)

What it answers: How much do we spend to hire one person, by source and campaign?

What to include:

• Media and advertising costs across social media, search, display and online job boards
• Content and creative for your careers site, job postings and brand campaigns
• Recruiter time for sourcing, screening and coordination
• Assessment spend and interview logistics across the recruitment process
• Technology costs for your applicant tracking system and point tools
• Pro-rata training costs tied to new-hire ramp (optional but useful in some models)

Simple formulas you can actually use:

• Cost per click = media spend ÷ clicks
• Cost per application = media + content spend ÷ applications
• Cost per qualified candidate = spend ÷ screened and advanced
• Cost per hire = total acquisition spend ÷ hires

Track all four. Together they tell you where the funnel leaks and which recruitment marketing channels are truly efficient.

Talent Lifetime Value (TLV)

What it answers: What value do we get from a hire over time?

What to include:

• Time to productivity and revenue or output contribution
• Tenure curve and promotion velocity
• Quality of hire proxy: early performance flags, 90-day outcomes, hiring manager satisfaction
• First year attrition rate and replacement cost avoided
• Internal mobility rate versus external replacements

No TLV model is perfect. Start with a practical proxy such as: 12-month retention x average monthly contribution, adjusted by manager satisfaction. Improve it as your recruitment marketing analytics mature.

The CAC drivers you can control

Three levers have the biggest impact on CAC. Get these right and your other recruitment marketing metrics improve with them.

1) Direct recruiting capacity and focus

How many recruiters are on the brief, and what are they doing with their time? If hours disappear into CV triage and calendar tennis, CAC rises. If hours move to candidate care and hiring manager partnerships, CAC falls. Track recruiter performance metrics such as time spent on screening versus interviewing.

2) Speed and scalability of screening

Slow first contact kills conversion. Faster first steps lower cost per qualified candidate. Interview-first is the simplest fix: trigger a short, structured, mobile interview at apply, then nudge completion with two reminders. Tools like Sapia.ai run as an overlay to your ATS to do exactly this, at scale, without re-platforming.

3) Assessment layers and friction

Every extra step adds cost. Some steps add signal, others add noise. Audit your layers: CV skim, phone screen, video screen, live interview, panel, task, reference. Keep the steps that add evidence, remove the ones that create drop-off. A cleaner application process makes your recruitment funnel more efficient end to end.

4) Conversion on your careers site

Your careers experience is a key component of CAC. Measure referral traffic, page-to-apply conversion rate, and how many candidates abandon forms. Simplify job descriptions, reduce clicks to apply, and ensure mobile performance. Small UX fixes create large cost effects.

5) Message and channel fit

Stop paying for impressions that never become qualified applicants. Use recruitment marketing analytics to link message, audience and outcome. For early careers, campus content outperforms generic ads. For specialist roles, employee referrals often beat other sites. Invest where your target audience actually converts.

Make attribution honest: combine three data sources

Most teams optimise to the last click. That is why money piles into job boards that capture the final action while long-tail channels that built intent are underfunded. Fix it with a simple, durable approach:

1. Self-reported attribution
   Add a mandatory free-text field at the start of the application: “How did you hear about us?” Do not lead the answer. Over time, map responses to channels. You will learn which podcast, leader post or social platforms created awareness months before the click.
2. UTM discipline
   Use clean UTMs on every job ad and content link. This keeps your web analytics tools and ATS honest about referral quality.
3. ATS source hygiene
   Standardise source names. Deduplicate. Close the loop to the final number of hires by source. This pairing generates data points your finance team will trust.

Together, these inputs let you compare channel influence and channel capture. Decisions improve, recruitment effectiveness rises, and wastage falls.

Build a practical recruitment marketing analytics dashboard your executives will read

Keep it to one page, grouped to diagnose CAC and TLV.

Acquisition efficiency

• Impressions, clicks, conversion rate, applications
• Cost per application, cost per qualified candidate, cost per hire
• CAC by channel and campaign

Speed and flow

• Time to first interview, time to hire, time to fill
• Stage conversion across the hiring funnel

Quality and durability

• Manager satisfaction at 30 and 90 days
• Quality of hire proxy and first year attrition by source

Experience

• Candidate experience score and candidate Net Promoter Score
• Drop-off by device and careers site path

Attribution split

• Self-reported origins versus UTMs versus ATS source for successful hiring outcomes

Finish with three lines: what we will scale, what we will stop, and what we will test next. This is how you measure success and win future budget.

Why interview-first improves your recruitment marketing metrics

Traditional funnels put CV skims in front of evidence. That slows the hiring process, leaks candidates, and distorts your metrics. Interview-first flips the order:

• Every applicant receives a short, structured, mobile chat interview at apply
• Two time-boxed reminders lift completion without creating noise
• Scoring is blind and rubric-based, giving comparable evidence before any CV review
• Explainable shortlists move hiring managers from inbox to decision

The result is a faster first step, fewer no-shows, and cleaner numbers across the recruitment funnel effectiveness board. Sapia.ai was designed to enable this pattern. It overlays your applicant tracking system, triggers interviews automatically, scores responses consistently, and returns ranked shortlists to your workflow. You keep your stack and add intelligence on top.

If you want to learn more about candidates and AI interviewing, download our whitepaper for free: Why Candidates Love Feedback from AI.

Worked example: turning data into decisions

You run three concurrent campaigns for the same role family:

• Campaign A: LinkedIn content series and hand-raiser form
• Campaign B: Niche community sponsorship plus AMA
• Campaign C: Broad job postings across aggregators

After eight weeks your dashboard shows:

• CAC per hire: A £2,600, B £2,100, C £3,400
• Quality proxy at 90 days: A 4.1, B 4.3, C 3.6 (out of 5)
• Acceptance rate: A 71 percent, B 74 percent, C 58 percent
• Self-reported attribution: A/B dominate “first heard via” responses

Decision: reduce C’s spend by 40 percent, reallocate to B’s content and A’s leader posts, and double down on AMA sessions. Keep last-click spend where it captures genuine demand, not where it masks it.

A 30-60-90 plan to operationalise recruitment marketing metrics

Days 1–30: Make measurement usable

• Define CAC and TLV for your context. Agree formulas with finance.
• Add self-reported attribution to your application process.
• Fix UTMs and ATS source naming.
• Pilot interview-first for one high-volume role using Sapia.ai.

Days 31–60: Improve conversion and cost

• Publish your one-page report.
• Remove one assessment layer that adds friction but little signal.
• Rewrite two high-traffic job listings for clarity and mobile scannability.
• Launch a structured referral push and track CAC versus other sources.

Days 61–90: Scale what works

• Shift budget to channels with the best CAC x quality profile.
• Extend interview-first to a second role family.
• Add notification frequency and message testing to cut no-shows.
• Lock a quarterly review to recalibrate TLV assumptions.

Conclusion

When competition for top talent intensifies, the temptation is to add more tactics. Resist it. Start by anchoring on CAC and TLV, fix attribution, and make interview-first the default. Your recruitment marketing metrics will stabilise, your recruitment efforts will cost less, and your outcomes will improve.

Want to see interview-first plugged into your stack and your metrics? Book a Sapia.ai demo.

FAQs on recruitment marketing metrics

About Author

Laura Belfield

Head of Marketing