HOW IS THE COST OF YOUR ADVERT CALCULATED?

A recruitment advert can cost anything from a few hundred pounds, running into thousands of pounds. The main factors that determine the cost of an advert are as follows:

As a rule, national and specialist trade publications will cost more than local, more general media. The cost of advertising on the Internet on job search sites is the least expensive of all. To keep costs down, think carefully about where your advert is going to be placed and the readership of that media. Try to avoid placing adverts in more than one publication. In addition, the Council has negotiated discounted rates for the publications that it regularly uses for recruitment advertising. The Recruitment Team can recommend the most appropriate media for your advert.

Most publications quote their costs in “single column centimetres”. These are known as SCCs. Production charges are also calculated in this way. The cost that you will be quoted from the Recruitment Team for your advert will be the total cost of the advert, but the more SCCs used, the bigger the advert, therefore the higher the cost.

Many publications offer a choice of a black and white advert (known as “mono”) or a colour advert. A colour advert will be more eye-catching, particularly in publications where a large number of jobs are advertised each week. The prices charged for colour reflect this.

The Council has its own house style for adverts. However, for hard to fill jobs, it may be necessary to produce an advert that is more creative, to make it attractive to applicants. The Recruitment Team can advise on the use of these adverts and arrange for a full briefing to be taken from the Council's advertising agency. These creative adverts will usually be larger and more colourful than the normal adverts and therefore the cost will be higher. In addition, there will be additional charges such as design costs and the use of images.

Our advertising agency will allow us to make one set of amendments to an advert prior to setting it in its final format at no extra charge. Any subsequent amendments to the advert will incur a fee per set of amendments. Therefore to keep costs to a minimum you should ensure that you check the proof from the Recruitment Team carefully and make any necessary amendments all in one go.

Copywriting

There is a charge for adverts that are copywritten by the advertising agency. To save money it is worth keeping old advert copy so that it can be tweaked for future recruitment. Alternatively liase with the Recruitment Team to see if a similar role has been advertised previously, from which wording can be taken.