Recruiters, employers and job platforms. Employment is a special ad category on the major platforms — age, gender and detailed location targeting are removed to prevent discriminatory hiring ads — which surprises almost every recruiter who meets it.
Why hiring ads are restricted at all
This one catches people out, because nothing about a job advertisement feels like a restricted
category. The restriction is not about the product; it is about discrimination law. An employer who
shows a vacancy only to applicants under thirty has discriminated whether or not anyone intended to,
so the platforms removed the ability: employment campaigns run in a special ad category where age,
gender and granular location targeting are unavailable and audience tools are limited.
What works once targeting is gone
The qualification moves into the ad and the landing page. Instead of narrowing the audience, the
creative states the role, the seniority, the location and the pay range clearly enough that the
wrong candidates do not apply. Naming the salary is the single most effective filter available and
the one most employers resist.
- One campaign per role family, not per vacancy — signal fragments otherwise and nothing learns.
- Application completion tracked as the conversion, not the click, because a form that loses
people at question nine is invisible from the platform's side.
- Feedback from the recruiter on which applicants were actually interviewable, fed back as the
optimisation target.
Job platforms are a different problem
A marketplace has to acquire both sides and the two do not move at the same speed. Buying
candidates into a platform with too few vacancies produces churn that costs more than the
acquisition did. We would rather run the two sides as separate budgets with separate targets than
report a blended number that hides which side is broken.
Where the volume is
Search for active candidates, paid social for passive ones, and organic for both — role and
salary queries are researched heavily, and an employer that answers them ranks for its own hiring
market permanently.