I've personally managed Meta Ads for hundreds of brands big and small
Attracting candidates and winning clients are different jobs. Most accounts try to do both with one campaign and do neither well.
Work withRecruitment accounts carry a structural problem that most media buying advice does not address.
Candidate and client advertising share a budget with no rule for which takes priority when the market shifts.
Applications are plentiful and placements are not, because the ads attract anyone rather than the right people.
The advertising sounds like every other agency: professional, reassuring and completely interchangeable.
Nobody tells Meta which applicants were placed, so the algorithm keeps finding more of whoever applies most readily.
You are running two businesses that happen to share an office. The advertising should reflect that.
A candidate wants a better job, more money or an escape. A client wants a problem solved without wasting their time. Different messages, different proof, different measurement. Trying to serve both from one campaign structure produces advertising that is vaguely relevant to everyone and compelling to nobody.
Job boards capture active candidates. Meta reaches the far larger group who are quietly unhappy but have not started searching. That is the real opportunity, and it demands different creative: not a job specification, but a reason to reconsider a Tuesday afternoon.
An application is cheap and frequently worthless. If your system knows which applicants got placed, that information belongs back in Meta. Otherwise you are paying the algorithm to become progressively better at finding people who apply to everything.
Recruitment advertising is remarkably uniform. Naming the sector, the salary band, the actual conditions people are trying to leave, that is what stops the scroll. It also qualifies before anyone applies, which protects your consultants' time.
I've personally managed Meta Ads for hundreds of brands big and small
Both sides of the account, plus a look at what happens to an application after it lands and how many become placements.
Distinct campaigns, creative and measurement for candidates and clients, with an agreed rule for how budget moves between them.
Get placement outcomes flowing back to Meta so optimisation follows results rather than application volume.
Budget follows the roles and sectors where advertising demonstrably produces placements, not the ones that produce the most applications.
What founders say about working with John on Meta campaigns
What I value most is the honesty. John tells me when an idea won't work and why, rather than nodding along and billing me for it. He's genuinely part of the business now, not a supplier I chase for updates.
Sandra Roycroft-DavisFounder, Slimpod
We'd been told our category was too niche for Meta to work properly. John rebuilt our creative approach around who actually buys from us, and the difference was obvious within weeks. No jargon, no endless meetings, just work.
Jason GrimaFounder, Swallow Co.
Both, doing different work. Specific roles convert people who are close to moving. Brand and sector level advertising reaches the far bigger passive audience and makes the role ads cheaper when they run. Doing only the first is why most recruitment accounts plateau.
By qualifying in the creative and adding friction to the application. Naming the salary, the requirements and the realities filters people before your consultants spend time on them. Volume is easy to buy in this category and it is rarely what you actually want.
Whichever is constraining you now, which will change with the market. The useful thing is agreeing in advance what evidence shifts the budget, so it becomes a decision rather than an ongoing internal argument.
Yes. Meta applies a special ad category to employment advertising, which limits targeting options considerably. That is not a barrier, but it does mean the creative carries even more of the qualifying work than usual, and anyone who ignores those rules will have their account restricted.
Tell me which side is constraining you, what you're spending and what happens after an application arrives. I'll come back with an honest view on whether I can help.