Applications are useful. Hires are the outcome.
You asked for more applications.
You got them.
Loads of them.
Great.
Then somebody asks: “How many did we actually hire?”
And that is normally where the conversation gets more interesting.
Because application volume can tell you whether people are entering the recruitment process.
It cannot tell you whether they were suitable, whether anyone interviewed them or whether they eventually became a hire.
We can often tell you exactly how many times a vacancy was seen, how many people clicked it and how many applications came through.
Then the candidate enters the ATS and, somehow, the trail gets a lot less clear.
If your reporting stops at Apply, you’re only seeing half the story.
Start with three things: suitable applications, interviews and hires. Then work backwards.
Applications are part of the story, not the outcome
Applications matter. Obviously.
But a low cost per application can make some fairly questionable recruitment activity look brilliant.
Imagine two channels.
Channel A
- 200 applications
- £10 cost per application
- 10 interviews
- 1 hire
Channel B
- 60 applications
- £25 cost per application
- 20 interviews
- 6 hires
If we stop at CPA, Channel A wins. Except Channel B produced six times as many hires.
So which one actually performed better?
This is why measures such as cost per interview and cost per hire matter. Indeed’s guidance on cost per hire looks at the wider cost of making a hire and how that information can help employers assess recruitment performance and where resources are being spent.
Cheap applications are not necessarily cheap recruitment. Especially once recruiter time enters the chat.
The interesting bit happens after Apply
Advertising platforms are very good at telling us what happened on their side:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Applications
- Spend
- Cost per application
All useful.
But none of those things tell you whether the candidate was actually worth interviewing.
That is where your own recruitment data needs to take over.
Where your systems allow, you should be looking at:
- Suitable applications
- Interviews
- Offers
- Hires
- Application-to-interview conversion
- Cost per interview
- Cost per hire
Because once you can see that, the question changes from: “Which channel gave us the most applications?”
To: “Which channel gave us the candidates we actually wanted?”
Much more useful.
Your ATS should not be where attribution goes to die
Candidate sees advert. Candidate clicks advert. Candidate applies through the ATS.
Source: Website.
Excellent.
Very useful.
This is where attribution can unravel.
Or one recruiter updates every candidate stage properly while another has half their applicants permanently sitting in “Interview”.
Then six months later somebody asks which source produced the hires.
Cue spreadsheet.
Your ATS should help solve this.
For example, Teamtailor’s guidance on source of hire focuses on identifying which channels candidates originally came from when they eventually become hires, so teams can distinguish sources generating volume from those actually producing successful candidates. Its recruitment reporting also tracks candidate progression, hires and movement through the pipeline.
Having an ATS and having reliable source data are not the same thing.
At a minimum, understand:
- How candidate source is captured
- Whether that source carries into the ATS
- Whether job references remain consistent across systems
- Whether recruiters update candidate stages consistently
- Whether interviews, offers and hires can be reported by source
It does not need to be perfect overnight. It does need to be trusted.
But if the data does not join up, the decisions probably won’t either.
CPA is useful. It just isn’t the final answer.
There is nothing wrong with cost per application.
We use it.
It helps us compare campaign efficiency and spot changes.
The issue is when CPA becomes the verdict.
You can reduce CPA from £20 to £8 and still make recruitment performance worse if the extra candidates are not suitable.
And there is another cost that rarely appears neatly on the dashboard.
Recruiter time.
Screening hundreds of unsuitable applications is not free.
Neither is hiring manager time.
This is also where newer AI tools can genuinely help, if they are used properly.
Indeed Smart Screening is designed to assess applications against employer-defined criteria, score and summarise candidates and help recruiters prioritise who to review first.
LinkedIn Hiring Assistant takes a broader approach. It can help identify and source candidates, evaluate applicants against hiring criteria, support outreach and pre-screen interested candidates, giving recruiters more time to focus on the conversations and decisions that need human judgement.
There are other tools moving in the same direction too. Eightfold AI uses skills-based matching to rank candidates against role requirements, while platforms such as hireEZ combine sourcing, screening, interview support and pipeline automation.
None of this means handing recruitment decisions over to AI. Please don’t.
It means using technology to deal with some of the repetitive work so recruiters can spend more time on the bit that actually needs them.
Because if your team is drowning in applications, the answer is not necessarily more applicants. It might be better filtering, better targeting or better use of the tools you already have.
If one source produces fewer applications but a much stronger interview and hire rate, that should influence where the next pound goes.
CPA tells you what an application cost. It does not tell you whether you spent well.
We’ve looked at this from another angle in Your Recruitment Campaign Is Working… So Why Aren’t You Hiring? because sometimes the advertising is doing exactly what it should and the actual problem sits further down the recruitment journey.
Stop asking which channel is “best”
“Indeed works really well for us.”
“LinkedIn is too expensive.”
“CV-Library gets us loads of candidates.”
Maybe.
But for what?
Which roles?
Which locations?
How many interviews?
How many hires?
There probably isn’t one “best” recruitment channel across your entire organisation.
One source might be brilliant for high-volume roles and poor for specialist hiring.
Another might produce fewer candidates but convert far better.
The useful question is: “Which channel is producing the outcome we need for this particular hiring problem?”
That is a much better basis for deciding where the next pound goes.
So what should you actually do?
If your reporting currently stops at applications, keep it simple.
- Agree what a suitable application actually means
- Check how candidate source is being captured
- Record interviews, offers and hires consistently
- Report conversion by source, role and location
- Add cost per interview and cost per hire where possible
- Use what you learn to change the next recruitment plan
And one more thing: Ask the recruiters whether they trust the data.
Because the prettiest dashboard in the world is fairly useless if everybody looking at it knows the source field is wrong.
You’ve got the apps. Now find out what happened to them.
Applications still matter.
They are just one part of the recruitment journey.
Instead of only asking: How many applications did we get?
Ask:
How many were suitable?
How many did we interview?
How many did we hire?
Which sources produced the people we actually wanted?
And where did the good candidates disappear?
If your reporting stops at Apply, you’re only seeing half the story.
Start with three numbers: suitable applications, interviews and hires. Then work backwards.
How Artfully helps
At Artfully, we help clients connect recruitment marketing activity with what is actually happening further down the hiring funnel.
Sometimes the answer is changing the channel.
Sometimes it is improving the tracking.
And sometimes the campaign is working perfectly well and the issue is what happens after somebody applies.
For clients who need a deeper strategic review, Artfully Elevate gives us the framework to look across media, recruitment data, candidate experience, process and measurement, so we can identify where change is actually needed.
The point is knowing which problem you are trying to fix.
If you can see the applications but not the hires, ask us to review the data and where the funnel is breaking.
