A registration is not a candidate
A registration report looks good right up until the recruiter starts calling. In the hackathon cases we counted confirmed applications: 534 registrations produced 398 applications, 772 — a 58% completion rate.
Meta Ads for hiring and employer brand
Thirteen hiring projects: mass retail, internships, IT hackathons, a master’s program. We count not registrations, but confirmed applications and people who made it to the interview.
- 500managers hired in 30 cities in a month and a half
- 7,500internship applications — three recruiting seasons in a row
- 58–67%share of registrations that reached a confirmed application
What usually hurts
Mass hiring runs into cities
One campaign for the whole country brings applications where there are no vacancies. We split by cities and locations and monitor the fill rate of each separately.
The IT audience is expensive and burns out
Developers are a narrow and overheated segment. In hackathons we held the cost per application at $1.20–$4.84 without raising bids, thanks to creatives built around a specific stack and task.
What we do
The target event is the application
Optimization for a confirmed application or response, not a click on the “participate” button.
Breakdown by city and vacancy
Own campaigns and budgets for every city and profile. Fill rate is tracked per position.
Creative for the candidate
The language of the vacancy, not the brand: what the task is, which stack, what the person gets. Separate messages per segment.
Recruiting deadlines
A weekly plan up to the recruiting or hackathon deadline, with budget reallocated to lagging cities and profiles.
Data in the ATS
Applications go into the hiring system with a source tag — you see which campaign produced people who started work.
The numbers we rely on
| $0.83 | per hackathon registration, 58% reached the application | A hackathon needs participants, not registrations — 58% reached a confirmed application |
| $6.02 | per internship application, 7,500 of them | Three intern recruitment seasons in a row — 7,500 applications at $6.02 |
| $13.15 | per application in mass hiring, 4,900 of them | Hired 500 managers in 30 cities in a month and a half |
| $5.02 | per response to a leadership program, 5,000 of them | 5,000 applications to a leadership program at a $5.02 CPL |
| $11.22 | per master’s program applicant, ROMI 1483% | A narrow master's program audience — 1483% ROMI |
Hiring and employer brand case studies
1483%ROMIRecruited master's applicants in a narrow audience4,900leadsHired 500 managers in 30 cities in a month and a half7,500applicationsThree intern recruitment seasons in a row5,000applicationsApplications to a leadership program — silver at Tagline Award532leadsGathered a narrow IT audience by the hackathon deadline201confirmed applicationsNot registrations but participants who completed the application398confirmed applicationsWe counted participants who completed the application, not registrations371confirmed applicationsHackathon registrations without dead souls — 67% confirmed applications445confirmed applicationsA hackathon needs participants, not registrations — 58% reached a confirmed application
Nearby
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Whole sections
FAQ
How does HR advertising differ from product advertising?
By the target action and the cost of error. You have to count not applications, but people who made it to the interview: the completion rate in our cases is 54–67%, and that is what determines the real cost of a hire.
Can you close mass recruitment on time?
Yes, if the plan is split by cities and run week by week. In the retail case 500 managers in 30 cities were hired in a month and a half.
Do you work with IT hiring?
Yes — seven cases of hackathons and technical contests. The cost per application stayed within $1.20–$15.45 depending on how narrow the stack was.
Let’s discuss your task
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