Recruiting staff through social media
Job boards reach the people searching today. Social media reaches the far larger group open to something better but not looking for it.
Recruiting staff through social media means advertising on Meta and comparable channels to an audience defined by function group, travel distance and interest, with an ad that shows the work and a landing page with two or three fields. The difference with a job board is that you reach people who are not searching; the difference with organic posting is that you can steer reach and cost per candidate. In our own campaigns candidates came in at €8.96 to €30.51 per candidate. Leadstars works on a retainer with an implementation fee, guarantees the agreed lead volume and delivers within 7 days.
Last updated: 22 September 2026
Key takeaways
- Social media reaches passive candidates. That is the biggest group and exactly the one job boards miss.
- Paid advertising is steerable, organic posting is not. Without budget you cannot steer volume or cost per candidate.
- Cost per candidate in our own campaigns: €8.96 to €30.51. That is a Leadstars figure, not a market average.
- Social media responses often arrive in the evening and cool down fast. Calling the same day is the difference between a lead and wasted budget.
Why social media works for recruitment
Someone searching a job board is already in the market and comparing ten job openings at once. Someone seeing your ad between posts from friends only compares with their current job. That makes the comparison easier to win, provided your ad makes clear within two seconds what the work is, where it is and what it pays.
The second advantage is control. You see per ad, per audience and per region what a candidate costs, and you can adjust daily. With a job board you pay a fixed posting fee and only see afterwards what it produced.
- Footage of real workplaces and real people consistently outperforms stock material.
- One ad set per function group and per region; merging everything makes optimization impossible.
- Steer on cost per candidate, not on impressions, clicks or reach.
Where social media recruitment goes wrong
The four causes we see most often: an audience set too broad, a job ad pasted literally into the campaign, an application form with ten fields, and follow-up that takes days. None of those four is a channel problem, and none is solved by raising the budget.
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