Blue-collar recruitment ads: what to set up before launch

What has to be ready before the first euro of ad spend

Seven things. If one is missing, the campaign still runs, but applications arrive that nobody can judge or call back.

1. The offer, written down: role, pay or pay range, shift pattern, location, start date.
2. The Employment ad category declared, with a location audience instead of age or gender targeting.
3. A decision between Meta's instant form and your own landing page.
4. A form that asks only the questions that decide, as yes/no where possible.
5. A privacy notice on the form and consent for any tracking on your page.
6. One named person who calls applicants back, with set hours and a short script.
7. A written definition of a useful application, and a weekly count of what each one costs.

The sections below take them in that order.

Do you have to put the pay in a job ad in the EU?

At EU level: not always in the ad itself, but applicants must learn the starting pay early. The EU pay transparency directive, Directive (EU) 2023/970, gives them the right to know the starting pay or its range. Article 5 names "a published job vacancy notice" as one way to give it, next to "prior to the job interview". The ad is the simplest place.

Member states had to turn the directive into national law by 7 June 2026. National law is what you actually follow, so check the rule in each country you hire in.

The same article adds two things that affect the ad itself. You may not ask applicants what they earned before. Job titles and vacancy notices must be gender-neutral. German ads already read "Lagerarbeiter (m/w/d)" because German equal-treatment law (AGG, section 11) requires a neutral ad.

In Austria the pay already has to be in the ad. The Equal Treatment Act (GlBG), section 9(2), says a job ad must state the minimum pay under the collective agreement or law, and whether you are willing to pay more.

For blue-collar roles the pay is also the strongest line in the ad. Put it in the first sentence with the hourly or monthly gross, the shifts, the location and whether transport or a room is provided. Our Superslužba project is a one-page recruitment site built on that rule: the role, the pay and the hours are on the page before anyone applies.

If you hire in the UK, the directive does not apply. The Equality Act 2010 still does: section 39 bans discrimination in how an employer decides whom to offer a job.

Which Meta ad settings apply to job ads?

Declare the campaign as a Special Ad Category, Employment. Meta says that for advertisers reaching the US, Canada and "certain countries in Europe", these options are limited or unavailable for job ads: age, gender, postal code, exclusion targeting, lookalike audiences and saved audiences. City and pin-drop audiences get an expanded radius. When you pick the category in Ads Manager, it shows the countries you can run in.

Even where Meta's limits don't apply, EU law does. Directive 2000/78/EC, the EU law against discrimination at work, covers "selection criteria and recruitment conditions", so an age filter on a job ad is a hiring decision you would have to justify.

The practical answer is the same everywhere. Target by location around the site, and let the ad do the filtering. Name the role, the shift and the licence in the first line, and the wrong people scroll past.

Before you write your own ad, read the ones already running. The Digital Services Act, Article 39, requires very large platforms to keep a public library of their ads until one year after an ad last ran. Search Meta's Ad Library for the companies hiring the same roles in your region and note what they pay and promise.

Should you use Meta's instant form or your own landing page?

Both work. The difference is how much you can explain and what you can measure.

Meta's default instant form type is "More volume", designed so people can submit quickly on a phone. The "Higher intent" type adds a review screen before submitting and runs only in mobile Facebook and Instagram feeds. If every applicant needs a call anyway, Meta's help page says the higher-intent form may make more sense.

A landing page earns its place when the job needs explaining: relocation, accommodation, a licence category, shift work. The ads for our Evroproces project pointed at a dedicated worker landing page for exactly that reason. In 2024 those campaigns brought in over 2,000 worker applications at under €1 each.

What should a worker application form ask?

Only what decides whether you call. That is usually name, phone number, the role, the location or willingness to move, and one or two hard requirements as yes/no questions. Examples: "Do you hold a C+E licence?", "Can you work night shifts?", "Do you have a forklift certificate?"

The GDPR, the EU's data protection regulation, asks for this anyway. Article 5 says personal data must be "limited to what is necessary", and a first application does not need a CV, a date of birth or a photo. Those come after the call, from the people you invite.

Meta's own rules draw some lines for you. An instant form may not ask for government-issued identifiers, and Meta names driving licence numbers among them. It also bans questions on health, criminal history, race or ethnicity, income and trade union membership. Ask "Do you hold the licence?" and check the document later.

Design the form for a phone held in one hand. One column, a number keypad for the phone field, the apply button within reach, no account to create.

What do you need for GDPR and tracking?

Two things: a notice where the data is collected, and consent before any tracking script on your page. GDPR Article 13 says that when you collect data from a person, you tell them at that moment who you are, why you collect it, how long you keep it and what their rights are. Meta makes this concrete: you can't run lead ads without a link to your privacy policy.

Decide the retention period before launch. Applications you don't take forward shouldn't sit in a mailbox for years, so write down how long you keep them and who deletes them.

On your own landing page, a tracking pixel stores or reads information on the visitor's phone. Under the ePrivacy Directive, Article 5(3), that needs consent unless it is strictly necessary for the service. Some people will refuse. So count applications in your own system as well, not only in Ads Manager.

In the UK the same two rules come from the UK GDPR, Article 13, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), regulation 6.

Who calls the applicants back, and when?

One named person, with set hours and a short script. Ads run every day, so applications arrive on weekends too; decide before launch who covers them. The script confirms the hard requirement, repeats the pay and the start date, and books the next step.

Also decide where applications land. A shared spreadsheet is fine for a two-week trial. It stops working when several people call from it and nobody can see who reached whom.

That is what happened at Evroproces, where applications arrived faster than a spreadsheet and a shared mailbox could absorb them. Recruitemy is the applicant tracking we built for it. The principle is the one in our post on one source of truth for business data: one system owns the applicant list, and everything else reads from it.

How do you know if recruitment ads work?

Agree in writing what a useful application is before launch. For example: meets the hard requirements, answers the phone, and can start by the date you need. Then count what each useful application costs, every week. Cost per click and cost per lead flatter a campaign that fills your inbox with people you can't hire.

Be careful with published benchmarks. The cost-per-applicant figures that rank today come from vendors' own campaigns, mostly in the US and in dollars. We found no EU-wide figure from a primary source, so we don't quote one. Your own number arrives within the first weeks of running, and that is the one to judge the campaign on.

What we do, and what we don't

Our blue-collar recruitment advertising sets up the campaign, the form or landing page and the applicant tracking; the offer and the callback stay with you. We run paid campaigns on Meta and Google and agree a price per qualified applicant before launch. We agree the applicant criteria with you before any budget is spent. We don't interview, hire or set employment terms; you do.

If you have a role to fill, tell us the role. A person replies within one working day. The first call covers the role, the location, the volume and your hiring deadline.