How to Choose a Recruitment Marketing Agency

There's no standard price list. Most agencies charge in one of six ways, and each one shapes what the agency is rewarded for. DirectEmployers puts it plainly: "A vendor paid on your ad spend has a reason to want you spending more."¹

DirectEmployers says most programmatic job campaigns use performance pricing, "typically cost-per-click or cost-per-apply," not flat posting fees. On contracts, its advice is short: "Be wary of long annual commitments."¹ RC Strategies' RFP template lists retainers, payment tied to results, and hybrids of the two. It flags the retainer's weak spot as "Low performance accountability."²

Agent or principal?

Ask this early. It decides whose side the agency is on when it buys your media.

In 2023 the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) studied programmatic ad buying on the open web: mostly banner and video ads, not job ads. Its advice carries over all the same: "know the difference between agent and principal." A principal, the ANA warns, "does not need to act in the best interests of the marketer" unless it's "contractually required to do so."³ So ask, in writing, which role the agency plays on each part of your media.

Get costs on separate lines.

RC Strategies' template, written for police recruiting, is blunt: "Don't accept a single lump sum." It tells buyers to have vendors specify "what percentage of the budget goes to media buy vs. agency fees."² Here's why.

Our recruitment budget template shows one way to set out the lines. Running the review through procurement? See how we work with procurement.

Ad platforms record who owns each account and who only manages it. That matters most on the day you change agencies, so ask before you sign.

On Google Ads.

Agencies often link your account to their own manager account. Google says an admin on either side can unlink the two, and your account keeps its own campaign history.⁴ Three things can break, though:

• If the agency's manager account pays on monthly invoicing, your account stops serving. Change the billing first.
• Ad groups that target the agency's shared audience lists stop running.
• A conversion tag shared across accounts stops counting conversions from new clicks.⁴

On Meta.

Meta's business tools record whether a business is an ad account's owner or only has agency access.⁵ Ask which business portfolio owns the account your ads run in. If it's the agency's, ask what happens to that account, and its history, when you leave.

What to keep at exit.

Write the list into the contract. It's easier to agree on before you sign than after you decide to leave.

A report is only useful if you can check it. Four things make that possible.

One defined unit.

Pick one result word and get its definition in writing. Agencies count different things: clicks, applications, or something in between. Any unit works, as long as the definition stays the same from report to report. Our guide to recruitment marketing metrics shows which system can count each one.

Spend against plan, by role and location.

A monthly total hides problems. DirectEmployers suggests two questions. Can you see "exactly where your budget went"? Or is reporting "a black box of blended rates"?¹ Ask to see spend for each role group or location against its cap and its plan to date, and how spend that isn't tied to one is shown. Our free budget pacing calculator shows what "on plan" means for any month.

A dated change log.

Every budget edit, new ad, pause and link change should show its date and who approved it. Without a log, "we optimized" can't be checked.

How often?

RC Strategies' template says "Monthly reports aren't enough." Without set rules, it warns, you may get "a monthly PDF of impressions and reach."² DirectEmployers gives a job-board example: "Nobody notices until the monthly report, and by then the money is spent."¹ Ask how often the numbers refresh, and whether you can see them without asking.

That's why every Hireloud campaign comes with a live dashboard, not a monthly PDF. See what else you get with Hireloud.

Jobs close every day. Ads don't close with them unless someone, or something, stops them. An ad that still points at a closed job spends money on a dead page.

Google sets the rule for its own job search: "If the job is filled before the expiration date occurs, remove the job posting." It warns that failing to act on expired jobs in time "may result in a manual action."⁶ Paid ads deserve the same care.

What to ask.

• How do you know a job has closed? Do you read our live careers feed, or wait for us to tell you?
• When do you check: before launch only, or while ads run?
• What happens to the ad: paused, removed or redirected? How soon?
• When we repost a job, who updates the link?

Test it yourself.

Pick three jobs that closed last week. Search for them on Google and on the job sites you pay for. If an ad still points at one, ask the agency why. Want a second pair of eyes? Your free hiring plan shows where your current job ads run and what it would take to fix them.

Job ads play by stricter targeting rules than other ads. An agency that runs them should know the rules without looking them up. Here's what the platforms lock down for job ads in the US and Canada:⁷

Ask each agency how it plans around these rules. Listen for location pins, ads that name the job, and links to live listings. Also ask who reviews the wording before an ad runs. Our guide to job ad targeting rules on Meta and Google has the full side-by-side.

Last reviewed November 2026. Not legal advice; your counsel decides.

Send every agency the same 12 questions, in writing. Then compare the answers side by side. Copy them into an email or your RFP.

Our recruitment marketing RFP template turns these into a full document, with scope, budget control, data, fees and exit terms.

Price matters, but it isn't the only thing buyers weigh. Aptitude Research asked 358 TA and HR leaders, director level and above, to pick their top three criteria for evaluating partners. Services (52%) and customer service (50%) ranked above price (42%).⁸

The survey covered TA partners in general, not only agencies. The lesson carries over: weigh who does the work, how fast they reply and how they report, right next to the fee.