Almost every agency knows its ad budget. Far fewer know their cost per candidate, and almost none know their cost per placement. That's exactly where recruitment shifts from a cost line to an investment with predictable returns.
The four numbers you need
- Cost per lead: ad spend divided by responses.
- Lead to intake: what share of responses becomes a conversation.
- Intake to placement: what share of conversations becomes a placement.
- Margin per placement: what a placement returns on average over its term.
With those four numbers you can walk straight from ad euro to margin. If a lead costs €13 and one in ten leads becomes a placement, a placement costs €130 in media. Set that against your margin and the question 'is this expensive?' answers itself.
Why the average misleads you
Cost per candidate varies enormously by trade and region. At De Klusbaas it landed at €12.76 per candidate for mechanics and foremen. For scarcer profiles that number is higher, and that's fine as long as the margin carries it. Applying one site-wide average inevitably means killing campaigns that were actually profitable.
“There is no such thing as an expensive candidate. Only a candidate who costs more than the margin they produce.”
When to scale, when to stop
As long as cost per placement stays comfortably under your margin, scaling is the logical move, even if cost per lead rises a little. You stop only when cost per placement structurally approaches your margin and improvements to funnel and follow-up no longer help. That order matters: most agencies stop on the wrong number.
Measure after the lead, not just before it
The biggest gains rarely come from cheaper ads, but from better conversion after the click. Calling faster, a second attempt, and a fixed route to intake often cut cost per placement harder than any ad optimisation.
