How To Plan A Recruitment Advertising Budget
Most recruitment media budgets are last year's number plus a percentage. That method carries every inefficiency forward and gives finance nothing to evaluate.
How do I plan a recruitment advertising budget?
Build a recruitment advertising budget backwards from the hiring plan: number of hires by role family, the qualified applicants needed per hire, and your observed cost per qualified applicant. Multiply, add a contingency for hard-to-fill roles, and hold back a reserve for the cheap post-holiday window. Rolling last year's number forward hides both the waste and the shortfall.
Build It Backwards From The Hiring Plan
The budget is an output, not an input. Work from the number of hires the business needs, through the conversion rates you actually observe, to the media required to produce them. Every step is then something you can defend and revisit mid-year.
- Planned hires by role family and location
- Qualified applicants needed per hire, from your own data
- Observed cost per qualified applicant per role family
- Contingency for known hard-to-fill roles
- A held-back reserve for cheap buying windows
Find The Waste Before Asking For More
In most organisations a meaningful share of next year's requirement is already in this year's spend, sitting in places the reporting does not surface. Recovering it is faster and far easier to approve than an increase.
- Spend still running against requisitions that closed
- Sources that produced applications but never a hire
- Invalid and automated traffic billed as clicks
- Duplicated reach across channels chasing the same active pool
Test Before You Commit The Split
Rather than argue about channel allocation, prove it. Move roughly a fifth of current job advertising budget to a programmatic test and run it against your existing campaigns on the same openings, over the same period. Compare qualified applicants, completed applications and cost, then set next year's split from the result.
Two Ways To Set The Number
| Built from the hiring plan | Last year plus a percentage | |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Hires, conversion rates, unit cost | Historical spend |
| Carries forward waste | No — waste is surfaced | Yes — invisibly |
| Defensible to finance | Yes, line by line | Rarely |
| Adapts mid-year | Recalculated from actuals | Fixed until the next cycle |
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I calculate a recruitment advertising budget?
Start with planned hires per role family. For each, work out how many qualified applicants you historically need per hire, then multiply by your cost per qualified applicant. Sum across role families, then add contingency for roles you know are difficult and a reserve for opportunistic buying.
What percentage of a salary should recruitment advertising cost?
Percentage-of-salary rules of thumb circulate widely but vary enormously by market and role, so they are a sanity check rather than a planning method. A budget built from your own conversion rates will be defensible; a percentage rule will not survive a finance review.
Should the budget be spread evenly across the year?
No. Advertising costs and candidate activity both move seasonally, and hiring demand is lumpy. Weight budget toward the cheaper, more active windows and away from the peak-price weeks wherever the hiring plan allows.
How do I account for wasted spend in the plan?
Measure it rather than assume it. Look at spend running on filled requisitions, spend on sources that never produced a hire, and the gap between applicant volume and qualified applicants. In most plans this recovered budget funds a meaningful share of the coming year without any increase.
How should I split budget between job boards and programmatic?
Base it on evidence rather than on a fixed ratio. Move a slice of current spend — around a fifth is common — to a programmatic test on the same requisitions, compare qualified applicants and cost over the same period, then set the split from the result.
What should I present to finance?
Cost per qualified applicant and cost per hire by role family, the conversion rates behind them, and the sources those hires came from. Volume metrics like impressions and clicks belong in the appendix, not the ask.