Employer relations KPIs

What are the four indicators to track for a partner?

These four indicators read partner by partner, and feed directly into the results report.

Indicator	Definition	Formula
Attendees	Students who came to an event with this partner over the period	Counted at check-in
Applications	Applications sent to this partner after their events	Counted over the following period
Hires	Placements, apprenticeships or jobs won at this partner	Matched against agreements and the outcomes survey
Cost per hire	What each hire cost this partner through the school	Spend ÷ hires

How should these four figures be read together?

Taken separately, each of these four indicators can mislead. An event with high attendance but few applications shows a poorly targeted group: the right students were not in the room, or the partner failed to make candidates want to apply. An event with many applications but few hires shows a mismatch between the roles advertised and the profiles actually sought.

Reading all four together, in the order they occur (attendees, then applications, then hires, then cost per hire), shows exactly where in the journey a partnership loses efficiency, and therefore where a school can act for the following year.

This reading is also useful upstream: comparing the four figures across two different event formats for the same partner (a general fair and a targeted event, for instance) gives the school a concrete argument to point the partner towards the more effective format, rather than the one they are used to.

What are the three indicators to track for leadership?

These three indicators read at the level of the whole school, across all partners.

Indicator	Definition	Formula
Partnership revenue	Total invoiced to all partners over the period	Sum of amounts invoiced
Renewal rate	Share of partners who renew their partnership year on year	Partners renewed ÷ partners the previous year
Average price	The average revenue of a partnership	Partnership revenue ÷ number of partners

How do these two levels of indicators connect?

The four per-partner indicators feed straight into the three leadership indicators: partnership revenue is the sum of what was invoiced to each partner, the renewal rate depends directly on how many partners are satisfied with their cost per hire, and average price only rises sustainably if renewed partnerships are renewed at a higher price, not just in greater number.

A leadership team that only tracks the three global indicators, without ever dropping to partner level, often finds out too late that a falling renewal rate actually hides the loss of two or three large accounts, masked by the arrival of several smaller ones. The two levels are read together, never one without the other.

This link also helps split the work within the team: the four per-partner indicators belong to the employer relations team's day to day, while the three leadership indicators belong to a monthly or quarterly check-in with leadership, neither replacing the other.

How often should these seven indicators be tracked?

Attendees and applications are tracked event by event, in the days that follow.

Hires and cost per hire are tracked in waves, usually once a quarter, giving placement agreements and early applications time to turn into results.

Partnership revenue, renewal rate and average price are tracked once a year, when leadership prepares the next budget and when most partnerships come up for renewal or not.

Between these two rhythms, a light monthly check, two or three lines on partners currently deciding, avoids nasty surprises: a partner who has not replied to a follow-up in six weeks is treated differently from one who has just confirmed attendance at the next event.

What pitfalls should you avoid when calculating them?

The first pitfall, counting a hire with no demonstrable link to the event: a student hired by a partner they never met through the school should not enter the calculation.

The second, mixing direct investment (the price paid for the event) with the time the partner's own team spent on it: both count, but the second is rarely declared reliably, and it is better left out than guessed at random.

The third, calculating a renewal rate on too small a sample: under ten partners, a single departure moves the rate by ten points, which makes a year on year comparison hard to read.

The fourth, changing your calculation method from one year to the next without flagging it: if cost per hire includes the partner team's time one year and stops including it the next, the comparison loses all meaning, even if each figure on its own is correct.

Do you need a dedicated tool to track these seven indicators?

A spreadsheet is enough to start, as long as the number of partners stays limited and one person keeps it up to date. The limit appears once several people in the team touch the same file, or once the number of partners exceeds what one person can update by hand each quarter without errors.

Pypelane is designed to calculate these seven indicators automatically from the same data used for targeted groups, events and results reports, with no separate re-keying for the leadership dashboard.