What is the average cost per recruitment campaign on Facebook?

Based on analysis of 290 recruitment campaigns within the JobsHype network, Facebook recruitment advertising delivers an average of 186 unique people reached per £1 spent, 294 impressions per £1, and 15.4 candidate engagements per £1. Total spend analysed across the dataset was £5,624, generating 1,058,000 impressions and 87,400 engagement results. These figures allow employers to forecast realistic candidate engagement volumes from any given recruitment budget.

Key Statistics

What could your recruitment budget deliver on Facebook?

Rather than reporting an average campaign spend figure, which varies widely based on employer objectives and location, the most useful data for recruitment decision-makers is what a given budget will actually deliver in candidate reach and engagement.

Based on analysis of 290 recruitment campaigns run across the JobsHype network, with £5,624 total spend analysed, Facebook recruitment advertising delivers:

• 186 unique people reached per £1 spent
• 294 impressions per £1 spent
• 15.4 candidate engagements per £1 spent

Budget outcome benchmarks

The charts above project expected campaign outcomes at common recruitment budget levels, calculated directly from JobsHype historical performance data. Estimates are based on the 290-campaign average; actual results vary by location, sector, role type, creative quality and audience competition.

How the benchmarks are calculated

These projections are derived from three confirmed efficiency ratios across the full JobsHype recruitment dataset.

Reach per £1 spent The average CPM of £3.40, combined with an average frequency of 1.58, produces a confirmed reach rate of 186 unique people per pound spent.

Impressions per £1 spent Total impressions divided by total spend equals 294 impressions per £1, equivalent to a network average CPM of £3.40.

Results per £1 spent With an average cost per result of £0.065, each pound delivers approximately 15.4 candidate engagements, including shares, clicks, comments and link visits from local candidate audiences.

How performance varies by budget level

The data reveals meaningful efficiency differences across budget bands.

Smaller campaigns in the £5 to £10 range, targeting tight local audiences, achieve CPMs of £1.90 to £2.10, which is comfortably below the network average. Mid-budget campaigns of £20 to £50, targeting larger catchment areas, typically see CPMs of £3.00 to £4.50 as audience size increases. Larger campaigns of £50 to £100, run in major cities including Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and Belfast, operate at CPMs of £3.50 to £5.37 due to audience competition, though they compensate with substantially greater total reach.

Engagement rates remain strong across all budget levels. The lowest observed engagement rate in the dataset was 2.0% by reach and the highest was 16.7%. The network average of 8.7% significantly outperforms typical paid social benchmarks of 0.5% to 1.5%.

What drives campaign efficiency

Two factors most strongly predict campaign performance.

Audience warm-up is the single biggest efficiency driver. Campaigns run through established local jobs community pages, where followers have opted in to see local vacancies, consistently outperform cold audience targeting. The JobsHype network's 1.2 million followers across 300+ pages represent pre-qualified local candidate audiences.

Role-audience alignment is the second key factor. Logistics and driving roles such as Delivery Driver and Warehouse Operative achieve the lowest cost per result, as low as £0.021, because the local audience contains high proportions of working-age candidates in those sectors. Retail and admin roles show broader variance depending on local employment market conditions.

What the numbers mean for employers

For a recruiter evaluating a volume hiring campaign, the benchmarks translate into practical outcomes.

A £500 investment can realistically reach 93,000 unique local candidates, generating an estimated 7,700 candidate engagements from people who clicked, shared or interacted with the job post. That translates to a cost per engaged candidate of just £0.065, a fraction of the cost of a typical job board click-through.

Spreading a £500 budget across five to ten targeted local community pages allows simultaneous coverage of multiple hiring locations at the same efficiency rate, making Facebook particularly well suited to employers with multi-site or regional hiring needs.

The data consistently positions Facebook recruitment advertising through established audience networks as one of the most cost-efficient candidate reach channels available to UK employers, particularly for volume roles in logistics, retail, hospitality and the public sector.

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