This article explains how you can create external recruiting channels in Personio and use tracking links to analyze the channels that candidates use to apply for your open jobs.

Note
Use this option if you promote jobs on external recruiting channels independently of Personio (without Personio's Promote feature), or if you use an analog channel for candidates, such as job ads in a printed newspaper. If you only use the Personio Career page and the Promote feature, you don't need tracking links.

What are tracking links in Personio?

A tracking link is used in an external posting to send candidates directly to the application form for your job. With the tracking links, you can clearly identify the source channel of incoming applications that don't come from your Personio Career page or from the Promote feature. Tracking links will help you to evaluate the performance of your channels.

Create a recruiting channel

To promote a job on an external job board without using the Promote feature, you first need to create a channel for the external job board. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > Recruiting > Recruiting, and go to the Channels tab.
2. Click on Add new channel.
3. In Name of external channel, enter a name for the channel.
4. In Pricing type, select from the drop-down menu the relevant pricing type and, depending on the selection, also enter a cost and a currency.
5. Optionally, also add a comment in Note.
6. Click on Save & Close.
7. The new channel will be automatically created with a unique Channel ID.

Tip
To keep track of applications received via non-digital channels such as trade fairs, and ads published on notice boards, create a channel for each, and manually enter the respective channel in the candidate Profile of the application.

How to create tracking links

The URL of your career page serves as the basis of your tracking links, which is why the career page link matters when creating a tracking link.  How to create tracking links differs depending on if you are using the Personio Career page, or your company's own career page.

Personio career page

If you are using the Personio Career page, all Career page links  (to Job description and Application form) will be created automatically. To add create new tracking links for a job, follow these steps:

1. Go to Recruiting > Jobs, and click on the title of the respective job.
2. Enter the Promotion tab, and next to Tracking links, click on Add.
3. Then select from the drop-down menu the channel that you want to track for your job, and click Create.

Own company career page

If you are using your company's own career page, you first need to manually enter the link to your career page in the job's Promotion settings, before you can start creating tracking links.

Step 1: Link to your career page

1. Go to Recruiting > Jobs, and click on the title of the respective job.
2. Enter the Promotion tab, and next to Career page links, click on Edit.
3. Then insert the career page links to the Job description and the Application form.
4. Then Save.

Step 2: Create new tracking links

1. Go to Recruiting > Jobs, and click on the title of the respective job.
2. Enter the Promotion tab, and next to Tracking links, click on Add.
3. Then select from the drop-down menu the channel that you want to track for your job, and click Create.

Step 3: Implement a tracking link on your career page

To implement the tracking link on your company's career page, you will need to store the respective link behind the Apply button of your posting's HTML code. This requires help from a developer resource.

Tip
If your career page is connected via API, and you use your own application form, take a look at the documentation in our Developer Hub. The parameters recruiting_channel_id and external_posting_id need to be taken into consideration for the correct tracking. This requires help from a developer resource.

If you delete a tracking link you have created (by clicking on the x icon), you will not see it in the Tracking links section anymore. However, the link will remain active and continue to track candidates generated by the respective channel until you manually remove the link from the channel.

Channel performance

You can measure the performance of the channels based on a specific job, or in general for all jobs.

▶︎ Channel performance for specific job: To measure your Channel performance for a specific job, go to Recruiting > Jobs > Job's title > Channel performance. 

▶︎ General Channel performance report: To build a report on your general Channel performance, go to Reports > System Reports > Channels.