How Do I Monitor My Recruitment Advertising Spend?

Best Practices for Monitoring Your Recruitment Advertising Spend

Recruitment advertising is one of the largest ongoing costs for many HR teams. Without clear monitoring, it’s easy to overspend or invest in channels that don’t deliver results. By applying these recruitment advertising best practices, you can ensure every euro works harder and maximise your recruitment ROI.

What should you look out for?
Remember, if you don’t measure it, you cannot improve it. Fact.

 
1. Number of jobs advertised and the corresponding budget
You should know your cost per application (CPA) for each role type—this is key to managing your job advertising budget. Your CPA for a Registered Nurse will be higher than for a Healthcare Assistant. Why? There are more advertisers for Registered Nurses and fewer candidates, meaning more competition.

 
2. Monthly Budget
Review this weekly. Make sure your live monthly recruitment advertising spend is aligned to your current job volume. If not, two things can happen: your CPA soars when job volume drops, or your CPA drops when job volume increases—however, this can impact application quality, as your jobs may rank lower in search results.

 
3. Cost Per Application
As mentioned above, your CPA is a critical number to monitor. After a few months, you’ll know your average CPA for Drivers, Admin Assistants, Cost Accountants, Sales Executives, etc. Reviewing historic recruitment advertising performance will show you what good looks like and where spend was wasted.

 
4. Set a Limit Per Advert
When using pay-per-click job advertising, put checks in place so your budget isn’t absorbed by easier-to-fill roles. Without spend limits, high-volume roles can drain budget from senior positions, reducing applications and hires.

 
5. Test, Learn, Tweak, Repeat
As the saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The same applies to recruitment advertising strategy. Test new ad titles, shorten long job descriptions, and broaden location targeting for niche roles.

 
I hope you find these recruitment advertising tips useful for managing and optimising your spend.