// Case study / Funnel instrumentation
A 50%+ candidate drop-off, decomposed step by step.
Front-end behavioural instrumentation turned a vague candidate-sourcing drop-off into a step-level funnel question, replacing manual Excel reporting with a GA4-to-BigQuery Looker Studio dashboard.
What happened
The sourcing team moved from narrative to step-level evidence.
A global AI services firm's sourcing team knew there was a 50%+ drop-off between candidate selection and start of work, but could not tell where the loss happened. Full GA4 instrumentation of the Candidate Management Platform and a Looker Studio dashboard on the GA4-to-BigQuery pipeline decomposed the vague problem into a step-level view.
The example outcome was the conversation shifting from "we're losing candidates somewhere" to "step 4 has a 43% abandonment rate; let's look at what's happening there."
Context
The team had a drop-off problem, not a location.
Metrics lived in Excel spreadsheets hand-populated from the operational system. No funnel decomposition was possible, and any conversation about fixing the drop-off was stuck at the qualitative level. The engagement had previously evaluated Mixpanel as the analytics platform, but the client chose to remain on GA4 for cost and infrastructure-compatibility reasons — a decision that contributed to low-friction adoption of the resulting dashboards.
Task
Instrument the candidate journey without over-prescribing the finding.
The goal was to make the journey measurable across application start, exam steps, compliance checkpoints, and selection status. The stakeholder framing mattered: this was presented as new data available for sourcing decisions, not as a premature conclusion to react to.
I also built and presented the analytics roadmap for the engagement, establishing measurement priorities across the Candidate Sourcing Platform, Refer a Friend, and My Performance Dashboard product areas.
Application startexplicit denominator
Exam stepswhere candidates slow or stop
Compliance checkpointsfriction vs intent
Selection statusper-candidate, per-programme
Captured the entry point into the candidate-management flow so the denominator was explicit.
Instrumented exam-stage behaviour to locate where candidates slowed, stopped, or abandoned.
Tracked required checkpoints so operational friction could be separated from candidate intent.
Connected funnel progress to selection state, enabling per-candidate and per-programme segmentation.
Action
The instrumentation replaced a manual reporting workaround.
I led front-end behavioural instrumentation of the Candidate Management Platform with two web engineers. GA4 event capture covered application start, exam steps, compliance checkpoints, and selection status, with user-identity parameters enabling per-candidate and per-programme segmentation.
I then built a Looker Studio dashboard on the GA4-to-BigQuery pipeline that replaced the manual Excel workflow with a queryable view of candidate flow.
Outcome
A qualitative concern became a measurable funnel.
- 50%+ candidate drop-off decomposed into step-level abandonment analysis.
- Step-four abandonment example surfaced as a concrete investigation point.
- Manual Excel workflow replaced with a Looker Studio dashboard on the GA4-to-BigQuery pipeline.
- Stakeholder sync in May 2025 framed the work as new data available for sourcing decisions.
Design lesson
Measurement made the drop-off actionable without claiming to explain it.
The instrumentation made the step-four abandonment visible enough that the sourcing team could investigate that moment instead of debating the whole journey at once; why candidates left remained the team’s question to answer.