Job advertising targeted by region and role – save on your budget

Targeting job vacancies by region and role means that your recruitment adverts are shown only to people who are geographically accessible and who match the job profile. This way, you don’t pay for clicks from candidates who will never apply. The difference lies in precise targeting: radius, job titles and target audience characteristics all work together to determine whether your budget is delivering a return or being wasted.

What exactly does ‘targeting job vacancies by region and role’ mean?

It involves deliberately tailoring your campaign to two variables: where your candidate lives or works (region) and what role or skills they have (position). You direct your budget towards a specific group rather than the whole of the Netherlands.

For blue-collar roles such as fitters, operators or drivers, travel distance is a key deciding factor. A welder in Vlissingen rarely applies for a job at a shipyard in Groningen. Targeting by location and role ensures that your advertising budget is spent only on viable candidates.

At FosFor, we base that definition on target audience data from hundreds of campaigns, not on gut feeling. That is the essence of our data-driven approach: first find out where your candidate is, then place an advert.

Why are you wasting your advertising budget without precise targeting?

Without targeting, you’ll end up paying for impressions and clicks from people outside your target audience or outside your job profile. Every wasted click increases your cost per application and extends your time-to-hire, whilst the vacancy remains open in the meantime.

The shortage makes this all the more painful. Engineering, construction and industry are among the sectors with the most hard-to-fill vacancies (UWV, 2024). In 2024, the Netherlands still had over 380,000 unfilled vacancies (CBS, 2024). In that market, you can’t afford to waste budget on candidates who end up being rejected anyway.

What’s more, an unfilled vacancy costs you productivity and turnover every week. The longer your search takes, the higher the actual cost. Precise targeting shortens the search and keeps your costs per hire under control.

How can you spot wasted recruitment budget?

You can tell by a low click-to-application rate, a high number of clicks from inaccessible regions, and applicants who do not meet the basic requirements. If you don’t measure this, the leakage remains hidden. Measuring quality starts with tracking where your applications come from.

How do you set up region targeting effectively?

Start by defining a realistic commuting radius around the workplace, rather than a province or the whole country. For operational roles, a radius of 20 to 40 kilometres often works better than broad targeting, as the distance between home and work is the main reason for rejection.

You should then refine your approach based on where your target audience is actually located. Skilled workers often cluster in specific areas around shipyards or industrial estates. Targeting those areas yields more relevant applications than spreading your search evenly across a large region.

Test small regions separately. That way, you can quickly see which locations generate bookings and which ones just drain your budget. Use those insights to adjust your radius and fine-tune your budget.

How do you target the right role and audience?

Job targeting is all about combining job titles, skills and employer characteristics, supplemented by indicators of interest. On search platforms such as Google, you target search terms; on social media platforms, you target the profile and behavioural characteristics of latent jobseekers.

Think beyond the exact job title. A “maintenance engineer” sometimes refers to themselves as a “service technician” or “repair engineer”. Include variations, otherwise you’ll miss out on part of your target audience. Target audience data often reveals these alternative terms more accurately than your own assumptions.

Don’t forget people changing careers. For roles in the maritime sector where there is a shortage of candidates with the right profile, you should also approach professionals from related sectors. If you’d like to see what this approach achieves, take a look at our results by sector.

Which channel is best suited to which targeting strategy?

Not every channel targets audiences in the same way. This table helps you choose based on intent and profile, so that you can set your region and role settings on the right channel.

In the case of Google for Jobs, a well-structured job advertisement with clear details of the location and role improves discoverability (Google Search Central, 2024). Region and job title should therefore feature not only in your targeting, but also in the text itself.

6 steps to job-ad targeting without wasting your budget

These steps will help you narrow down the region and role so that your budget is spent only on suitable candidates.

1. Determine the actual range around the workplace, based on journey time, not on county boundaries.
2. Collect target audience data about where your profile is based and what job titles it uses.
3. Choose your channel based on intent: exploratory or latent, operational or commercial.
4. Take job variants and lateral entry into account in your job targeting.
5. Measure by region and channel which source generates leads and which one costs the budget.
6. Update weekly by reallocating the budget to areas that yield a return.

That final step makes all the difference. At FosFor, we discuss campaigns and figures during a weekly strategic meeting, ensuring that targeting is not a one-off exercise but an ongoing process of improvement. This enables us to fill vacancies within 3 to 8 weeks on average and to present only the 2 to 4 best candidates to the client each month.

“Precise targeting isn’t about advertising more economically, but more intelligently,” is how the FosFor team sums it up. “You stop paying for reach that ends up being wasted and invest that budget in the people who are actually likely to turn up.”

Frequently asked questions about targeting job vacancies by region and role

How wide should I make the geographical scope for a technical vacancy?

For operational roles, a radius of 20 to 40 kilometres often works best, as the commute is a major reason for rejection. Test smaller areas separately and only expand the radius where the target group is too small. This will help you keep your cost per application low.

How much will it cost if I don’t target my job vacancy?

Without targeting, you end up paying for clicks from candidates who are out of reach or unsuitable, which drives up your cost per hire and extends your time-to-hire. Moreover, every extra week a vacancy remains open costs you in productivity. Precise targeting measurably reduces both of these costs.

Which channel is the most cost-effective for blue-collar roles?

For passive jobseekers in engineering, industry and logistics, Meta often delivers high reach at a low cost per application through regional and interest-based targeting. For active jobseekers, Google (Search and Google for Jobs) performs very well. The right choice depends on your role and target audience data.

Can I also target people switching careers?

Yes. By targeting related roles and skills, you can reach professionals from other sectors, which is particularly beneficial in the tight maritime sector. Target audience data shows which related profiles are realistically likely to make the move to your role.

Would you like to know how precise targeting by region and role translates into faster recruitment and less wasted budget? Book a no-obligation strategy meeting or have a look first our current vacancies for top performers to see which profiles we work with.