For recruitment and staffing agencies with vacancies in logistics, transport and manufacturing, speed is often just as important as the quality of the candidate. Companies don't always give recruitment agencies weeks to find new employees. A client might have to let 20 employees go today, only to find themselves looking for 20 new employees again a month later.

We developed a scalable Meta advertising strategy that allows recruitment agencies to respond to those changes in demand quickly, while keeping the cost of a qualified candidate low.

The challenge was finding the right balance. Recruitment agencies need a steady flow of candidates, but simply generating as many leads as possible creates a different problem. Every candidate still needs to be contacted and screened by someone at the recruitment agency. Thousands of cheap, unqualified leads can therefore quickly become a burden rather than an asset.

Our goal became clear: generate qualified candidates quickly, at scale when necessary, while keeping the average cost per screened lead around €5.

Fast, Scalable Candidate Acquisition

The recruitment market is unpredictable. A vacancy can be filled today and replaced by ten new vacancies tomorrow. This makes a recruitment agency dependent on having a reliable acquisition channel that can be activated whenever new demand comes in.

We built the strategy around that flexibility.

When a new vacancy becomes available, a campaign can be launched within approximately an hour. The first applications can come in the same day, meaning an agency doesn't have to wait for organic reach, job boards or an existing candidate database to generate new applicants.

Meta is particularly useful for this because the campaigns can be targeted around the type of person the agency is looking for and adjusted as the requirements change. Whether the agency needs warehouse employees, production workers, drivers or other operational staff, the same underlying acquisition system can be adapted to the vacancy.

However, the objective was never to maximize the number of applications.

For recruitment, more isn't automatically better.

If a campaign produces 2,000 leads but only a small percentage are actually suitable for the vacancy, the recruitment agency has created hundreds of hours of unnecessary work for its recruiters. The real metric is therefore not how many leads Meta can generate, but how many relevant candidates can be delivered at a cost the agency can support.

That is why we optimize towards a target of approximately €5 per screened lead, rather than simply pushing the cost per lead as low as possible.

The Randstad has proven to be particularly effective for this model. The combination of a large labor market, high recruitment demand and frequent staff turnover creates enough volume to make the campaigns scalable while maintaining the required lead quality. We also work with companies outside the Randstad, although recruitment demand and urgency can vary significantly by region.

From Meta to CRM

There is another problem with running recruitment at scale: Meta generates a huge amount of data, but recruiters need a clear and manageable candidate pipeline.

We therefore connect the incoming leads directly to the recruitment agency's existing CRM wherever possible. Instead of recruiters having to manually export, organize and process leads from Meta, candidates can flow directly into the system the agency already uses.

For companies with more specific requirements, we can also connect the campaigns to a custom-built portal.

This creates a much more efficient workflow:

New vacancy → campaign launched → candidates apply → lead enters CRM → recruitment team follows up.

The advertising system handles the acquisition. The recruitment agency can then focus its time on what actually matters: speaking to suitable candidates and filling the vacancy.

15,000+ Candidates a Year

The strategy generates an average of 15,000 candidates every year for recruitment and staffing agencies across the Netherlands, primarily within the logistics, transport and manufacturing sectors.

The system gives agencies something that is difficult to achieve with traditional recruitment channels: the ability to react almost immediately when demand changes.

A new vacancy doesn't require rebuilding the entire acquisition process. The existing infrastructure can be adapted to the new position and launched quickly, with the potential to generate the first responses on the same day.

At the same time, the strategy is designed around controlled volume. The goal isn't to flood recruitment agencies with cheap leads. It is to provide a consistent flow of candidates that recruiters can realistically process.

By combining scalable advertising, specific targeting, lead qualification and direct CRM integration, we've built a system capable of delivering the right candidates exactly when they're needed.