Recruitment advertising that reaches people and stays legal

Most people who would be good at your job are not on a job board today. They are on Facebook in the evening, on Instagram on the bus, on LinkedIn at lunch. Recruitment advertising puts the job in front of them, with pay, hours and place, and an apply form that takes a minute.

Two sets of rules shape it: the Equality Act, which makes discriminatory job adverts unlawful in Great Britain, and the platforms' own employment rules, which limit who you can target. This page covers both, then the campaigns that bring applicants.

Under the Equality Act 2010 a job advert that suggests you would treat applicants differently because of a protected characteristic can be unlawful in England, Wales and Scotland. The EHRC's guidance gives examples that still turn up in ads every week.

There are narrow exceptions, called occupational requirements in Schedule 9 of the Act, for example a women's refuge that needs female staff. If you rely on one, say so in the ad and be ready to explain why.

A job ad on Facebook or Instagram must be declared as an employment ad. Meta then fixes the age at 18 to 65+, removes gender targeting, needs a radius of at least 15 km in Europe and blocks lookalike audiences and exclusions. That is why the creative matters: you cannot narrow the audience by age, so the photo, the pay and the hours do the selecting. Our glossary entry on the special ad category lists the full rules.

People decide in a second whether a job is for them. The ads that bring applicants show the role, the pay, the hours and the place in the first line, a real photo of the workplace or the team, and a button to apply.

• Pay in the adAds with a pay range get more relevant applicants and fewer drop-outs at the interview.
• Hours and shift patternDays, nights, weekends: the thing a candidate checks first.
• A short formName, phone, a few yes or no questions. Ask for a CV later.
• A careers pageFor people who want to read more, with the team and what a day looks like.

Keep the primary text between 50 and 150 characters for the feed, and test it in the Facebook ad preview. For Google, a responsive search ad for "warehouse jobs Leeds" or "HGV driver jobs" works when the landing page shows the job straight away.

On LinkedIn you can target by job title, skills, seniority and company, which suits roles where the skill matters more than the place: engineers, accountants, account managers. Clicks cost more than on Meta, so the ad and the job page must do the filtering. Google reaches people who search the job title and the town; a search campaign for "HGV driver jobs Doncaster" works when the page shows the job, the pay and a short form straight away. Google does not offer a separate job ad format for this, so the landing page does the work.

Count applications as the first result and hires as the real one. A lead form makes it easy to apply and easy to apply carelessly; compare the share of applicants who turn up to an interview per channel before you move budget. Tag every link with the UTM builder, so your applicant tracking or Analytics shows which ad brought whom. Our guide to LinkedIn ads cost and Facebook ads cost explain the price per click on each.

Ads bring applicants for one role. Employer branding makes people want to work for you before you advertise: posts about the team, the work and the people who stayed. Your LinkedIn company page and regular posts through social media management make each job ad cheaper, because people already know the name.

Agencies advertise for many clients, often the same roles in different towns. One campaign per role family and region, a template ad that changes only the place and pay, and a shared careers site with a page per vacancy keep it manageable. If you are setting up an agency, read how to start a recruitment agency in the UK, and see recruitment agencies for the software side.

A recruitment agency advertises for clients, a direct employer for itself. The rules on wording are the same for both, but an agency also has to be clear that it is an agency, and often advertises roles without naming the client. Candidates are more careful with those ads, so pay, location and the type of contract matter even more. An agency that advertises the same role on several boards should tag each link, so it knows which board brings the people its clients hire.

For a direct employer the careers page and the company page carry more weight: candidates check who you are before they apply. Start with how to post a job on LinkedIn for office roles and how to post a job on Facebook for roles on site.