Industry: Recruiting & Employer Branding
The skills shortage is real. Your recruiting has to be too.
You are looking for staff. The job ad on karriere.at brings 3 applications, of which one is usable. Your dream candidate is currently scrolling Instagram and doesn't even know you exist. The same channels that bring clients also bring applicants – if you use them right.
Does this sound familiar?
Three patterns we see in practically every company looking for staff.
What we deliver for recruiting
The same channels that bring clients also bring employees.
We've been doing performance marketing for over 15 years. Finding target groups, addressing them, convincing them – that's our craft. Whether the target group is clients or applicants doesn't change the channel, only the message. Meta Ads, Google Ads and precise targeting put your job ad in front of the people you want – not in front of those who happen to be on a job board.
reaches the 70 % that job boards don’t
of employees not actively job-hunting, but open to the right offer (Gallup, LinkedIn)
per application typically (vs. €200+ on job boards)
first applications typically within the first one to two weeks after launch
How it works
In 90 days your recruiting system is in place. Guaranteed.
Week 1–2: Foundation
Strategy workshop (90 min): who are you really looking for? Not the job description from HR, but: who is the person? What motivates them? What keeps them at their current employer – and what would make them switch?
In parallel: develop employer positioning, set up tracking.
Week 3–6: Build
Meta campaigns that address passive candidates – with authentic content instead of stock photos. Short application paths: 3 clicks to apply, not 15 fields in a form.
Google Ads on active job seekers. Landing page that shows your company as an employer, not just lists the role.
Week 7–12: Optimisation
Which ads, which audiences and which messages bring the best applications? Not the most – the best. A/B tests on creatives and copy.
Build pipeline: even when a position is filled, the campaigns continue and feed the talent pool.
Guarantee: All items on the system checklist delivered – or full money back. And everything belongs to you.
Pitfalls – what most get wrong
6 mistakes we see in recruiting again and again
Industry specialisation
Performance recruiting by industry
Every industry has its own recruiting reality. Here we go deep on the industries we work in most often:
Skilled Trades
Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters, roofers — cost-per-application typically between 30 and 80 euros via performance on passive candidates.
Open industry →Hospitality
Retain seasonal staff and build permanent teams — two performance waves that work year-round.
Open industry →Lessons from recruiting campaigns
How performance recruiting halves cost-per-application in skilled trades
Across the recruiting campaigns we run for SMEs in the DACH region, the same pattern shows up: job portals like karriere.at, Stepstone and regional platforms deliver three to five applications per role, of which usually only one is genuinely suitable. Cost-per-hire per actual placement is typically 800 to 1,200 euros – plus the time the managing director spends screening unsuitable CVs.
Performance recruiting flips the logic: instead of active searchers, ads target passive candidates – skilled tradespeople within a regional radius via Meta and Google Ads. Instead of a portal form, a dedicated application landing page: under one minute from click to application, mobile-optimised, WhatsApp first contact instead of mandatory PDF CV. Tracking on every step, from the first ad click to the signed contract.
Typical range in skilled trades: cost-per-application between 30 and 80 euros per qualified application. Monthly ad budget usually 600 to 1,200 euros. Comparable spend to job portals before – but three to four times the output of genuinely suitable candidates, because the audience is pre-qualified.
Job ads reach the people who actively search. Performance recruiting reaches the ones you actually want – the ones who aren’t looking, but get curious.
Who this works for – and who it doesn't
✓ Good fit
- ✓Companies with regular recruiting needs (2+ positions per year) – A system only pays off with recurring need.
- ✓Willingness to create authentic content – Photos and short videos of the team are the biggest lever in recruiting marketing.
- ✓At least €1,500/month ad budget for recruiting – Foundation for solid data and a real learning curve.
- ✓Employer who really has something to offer – not just a salary – Culture, development, leadership: that's the difference we make visible.
× Not a fit
- ׄWe pay minimum wage and offer nothing else“ – Then no marketing helps, you need a better offer.
- ×One-off search for a single role – For a single position we recommend targeted one-time placements, not a system.
- ×No interest in employer branding – If you don't want to show who you are as an employer, no campaign can compensate.
- ×Hiring process takes 6 weeks for a response – The best candidates are gone in 10 days. Fix the process first, then the campaign.
- ×Leadership problem instead of a marketing problem – If employees regularly leave after 6 months, recruiting solves the symptom, not the cause.
Frequently asked questions
What does an application cost via performance marketing?
Do I need professional videos and photos?
Can I do recruiting and customer acquisition at the same time?
How do I reach skilled professionals who aren't job hunting?
Performance audit in 4 questions
Does your recruiting work economically?
Four questions we ask in every discovery call. Anyone who honestly answers three of them with No is currently leaving money on the table.
1. Do you know what an application actually costs you?
2. Do you reach passive candidates – or only those who are actively searching?
3. How long does it take from the first click to a finished application?
4. Does your system track which incoming applications actually fit?
If you answer just one of these questions with No: we’ll review your current recruiting mechanics in a free 30-minute call. Concrete, with numbers, no sales pressure.
Book a discovery call
Not ready to talk yet?
Understand how we think first – in book form.
"Umsatz ohne Zufall" is the method behind our results. Written by Nicolas Fabjan from 15 years of practice with over 400 companies. Not a theory book – but the concrete plan we apply with every single client.
Every participant of a strategy call receives the book personally signed by post.
When the careers page is the bottleneck
Sometimes the problem isn’t the campaign – it’s the careers page behind it.
We’re the internist of your marketing. WelleWest is the surgery for your website. You need both – but you don’t want a diagnosis from the surgeon, or an operation from the internist.
Sometimes recruiting campaigns don’t fail at targeting, but at the careers page behind them: bolted onto the main site as an afterthought, without a clear applicant-funnel architecture, weak on mobile. Candidates click, glance, and bounce.
For those cases we have WelleWest as a sister specialist: dedicated careers sites with an applicant funnel instead of a tacked-on page, static HTML with sub-one-second load times, mobile-first by design. Own brand, own team, own contract.
If Patrick concludes in the strategy call that performance will only land with a new careers page, we bring in the WelleWest specialists – as a separate project with a separate contract. You end up with both, but each from the right specialist.
Ready for applications from the people you really want?
In a free 30-minute call we take a look at your recruiting situation and show you where the biggest lever lies.
No obligation. Honest. No sales pressure.
As a thank you for joining: Every participant receives „Umsatz ohne Zufall“ – the book by our managing director Nicolas Fabjan – personally signed by post. No purchase, no obligation. Even if we don’t end up working together.
About the author
Patrick Katholnig – Performance Marketing Lead
The growth we build with our clients eventually fails on the staffing side. The owner has more orders than they can deliver. Marketing works – but the workshop is understaffed, the team is at its limit, the next stage of growth slips out of reach. We’ve seen this pattern in over 15 years of performance marketing and more than 400 projects.
That’s exactly where we started turning performance marketing the other way: not just winning customers, but also winning employees. Same tools, same data logic, same funnel thinking – just a different audience and a different message.
Today Patrick Katholnig works with SMEs and mid-sized businesses across the DACH region that apply performance marketing in exactly that order: secure growth first, then find the people who make that growth possible. Focus areas: recruiting funnels, career-page architecture, cost-per-application in a measurable range – and above all: the right applications, not just many.
Most of our recruiting clients are not HR professionals. They’re managing directors who want to grow – and realise that only works if the team grows with them. That’s exactly where we come in.