HR marketing in 2026: how to hire through advertising, and not just through HH and Avito

Three months ago, one client came with a task: to hire 15 workers for production in a month. The HH.ru budget consumed 180,000 ₽, gave 9 responses, of which three went to work. CPL turned out to be 60,000 rubles per hired person. Then we launched VK, and the CPL dropped to 380 rubles per response, 2,900 rubles per hired person. The difference is 20 times.

This is not an anomaly - this is a structural story about the fact that the labor market is overheated, HH and Avito are still working, but no longer as the only channel. I’m figuring out how to build HR marketing in 2026 with real numbers.

1. Why are HH and Avito no longer enough?

Over two years, the CPL of vacancies on HH.ru has increased 2-3 times. Line staff - 500-2,000 rubles per response (previously 200-600 rubles). Specialists - 2,000-8,000 ₽. Managers and rare positions - 8,000-25,000 rubles. At the same time, the quality of responses decreases: candidates respond en masse to 15-20 vacancies at the same time, the conversion to a real interview is 10-20%.

Three reasons for overheating:

• Shortage of candidates for workers and services - demographics plus outflow
• Increasing competition for white collar jobs: IT, marketing, finance - every company is raising its range
• HH monetizes shortages by raising prices for placement and promotion

Avito Work holds up better in price - CPL 100-400 ₽ for line personnel - but the audience is specific and is not suitable for all positions. There are almost no IT or marketing specialists there.

The conclusion is simple: HH and Avito remain in the mix, but building the entire hiring funnel on them means paying the monopolist according to his price list.

2. HR funnel: from knowledge about the brand to the offer

HR marketing is a regular marketing funnel, only the target action is not a purchase, but going to work. Stages and conversions:

The final conversion from response to exit is 12-25% for line personnel, 20-40% for specialists. This means: to hire 10 people, you need 40-80 responses. With a CPL of 500 rubles for line personnel, the budget is 20,000-40,000 rubles to hire ten people. It's manageable.

The main mistake of HR teams is to optimize only for the number of responses, ignoring the further funnel. If the conversion from response to hire is low (5-8%), the problem is not in the advertisement - in the quality of the qualifications or job description.

3. Target in VK Ads and TG for hiring

The target for HR is a non-standard application, but with good economics. Mechanics: We show an ad to people who are potentially looking for a job or are open to a shift, although they are not visiting HH right now.

In my projects, VK Ads works best for line personnel and positions with a wide candidate pipeline. Settings:

• Audience of interest “work and career” + related (profession)
• Geo-radius 10-15 km from the work address (critical for factories and service)
• Format - lead form directly in VK, no link to the website
• In the ad: a specific salary in figures + one main advantage (flexible schedule / pay per day / corporate meals)
• Without abstractions like “friendly team”, no one reads this

Telegram for hiring works differently. Seeding in professional channels (channels by industry, profession, region) gives a good conversion - people in the niche have already been collected. TG Ads through your account is for specialists, not for workers. CPL 1,500-4,000 ₽ per specialist with the correct targeting of channels on the topic.

4. Hiring channels: CPL and labor costs

The mix depends on the type of position. For line personnel - VK + Avito + referral. For specialists - HH + TG + referral. For managers - HH + LinkedIn (if candidates from the Russian Federation are needed in international companies) + headhunting.

5. Career page and employer brand

80% of companies lose candidates on the career page - either because there is no page at all, or because there are three lines of text and a “send your resume” button. I tested it in several projects: adding a normal career page with a photo of the office, a description of the conditions and real quotes from employees raised the click-to-response conversion from 1.2% to 4.7%.

What should be on a career page:

• Specific conditions: salary (at least a range), schedule, work format
• Real photos of the workplace, not stock photos of smiling people
• 2-3 quotes or employee stories (text + photos)
• The hiring process: what happens after the response, how long it will take, who will communicate
• Current list of vacancies with description of tasks, not just job title

An employer brand takes a long time to build, but is cheap. The company's TG channel with content about the life of the team, real stories of employees in Zen - this is not content marketing for the sake of coverage, this is a reduction in the CPL of hiring at a distance.

For career page SEO - basic SEO minimum it is used in exactly the same way: H1 with a keyword, meta description, unique content by position. The first positions in Yandex for the request “work in [company] [city]” provide free traffic for a period of 3-6 months.

6. Referral programs: bonus mathematics

The referral program is the most underrated recruiting channel. Logic: employees recommend people they know, the company pays a bonus upon successful hiring. Conversion from recommendation to hire is 40-60% versus 5-15% for cold channels. Candidates are “warm”: they know what awaits, have an internal referent, and are less likely to leave in the first months.

Mathematics:

• Bonus for a line employee: 10,000-20,000 rubles. With a conversion of 50% CPL = 20,000-40,000 ₽ per employee
• Bonus for a specialist: 30,000-50,000 ₽. CPL = 60,000-100,000 ₽ per employee
• Bonus for manager: 50,000-100,000 rubles. CPL = 100,000-200,000 ₽ per employee

At first glance it looks expensive. But compare with HH: with a CPL of 5,000 rubles per response and a conversion rate of 15% into hiring, the cost of a hired specialist through HH comes out to 33,000 rubles. The referral program produces better candidates, but loses in absolute cost. Conclusion: the referral program does not replace advertising channels, but complements them for positions where cultural fit is critical.

The main mistake in referral programs is to pay the bonus only after the trial period (3 months). Employees forget about it within three months. Better: 50% bonus after the candidate exits, 50% after passing the probationary period.

7. Zen and TG channel for HR branding

Companies open a TG channel, publish news and corporate press releases - and wonder why no one reads. HR branding requires a different strategy: content for potential employees, not for clients.

What works in the company's TG channel for recruitment:

• Stories of specific employees: who came, what they do, how they grew up
• Behind the scenes of the work process: how decisions are made, what a typical day looks like
• Honest posts about conditions: sure bets, growth, work format
• Job advertisements - but not as advertisements, but as stories about tasks

Zen for HR branding works through the SEO tail. The article “How the life of an engineer works at [company]” will receive traffic from Yandex for years. This is an investment, not a quick hire tool.

Read more about Zen and TG mechanics for content strategy in articles about SMM content plan and B2B marketing in Russia. The principles are the same, only the ICP is the candidate, not the buyer.

8. Case: production, 15 workers per month via VK, CPL 380 ₽

Production company, Moscow region. Objective: Hire 15 workers (line operators, movers, packers) in 30 days. Previous experience: only HH, CPL 1,200-1,800 ₽, conversion to hiring is low - people responded and did not come for an interview.

What we did:

• We created a career page on the website: photo of the workshop, description of shifts, specific salary figures + night coefficients
• We launched VK Ads: geo-circle 12 km from the plant, interest “work”, lead form with three questions (name, phone, ready to work with...)
• At the same time posted on Avito Working with the same texts
• Added a WhatsApp button for quick communication - many workers do not use email

Result in 30 days:

• VK Ads: 189 responses, CPL 380 ₽, 9 people hired
• Avito: 74 responses, CPL 210 ₽, 4 people hired
• HH (parallel): 31 responses, CPL 1,420 ₽, 2 people hired

Campaign budget: 87,400 ₽ versus 180,000 ₽ only for HH in the previous month with a lower result. In total, there were 15 hired employees with a total CPL (including HH) of about 5,800 rubles per hired person. This is a good result for production.

Key insight: the lead form in VK works better than going to the website. Workers do not want to fill out long forms - three fields in VK is the maximum. And the specific salary in the ad is critical: when they removed the number and wrote “competitive salary”, the CTR fell by 2.5 times.

Read more about the mechanics of VK Ads and working with audiences in article about factional CMO and guide to cold outreach in TG.

If you are building an HR marketing funnel from scratch or want to reduce the hiring CPL, write to Telegram @dipustovalov or through form on the website. Let's look at a specific situation.

Related materials: CPL calculator, CTR benchmarks in VK Ads, landing page template.