Offline recruitment advertising: a now hiring banner, vehicles, flyers

A banner on the factory fence: what to write so it works

The factory fence, the roadside wall of a warehouse, a shop's fence – people who live or commute nearby pass them every day. That is exactly the group from which production, warehouse, retail or workshop staff are recruited. A banner is also cheap: 3 × 1 m on 440 g strong banner is 3 m² × approx. €12 = approx. €36 net, and a larger 6 × 2 m on coated banner (12 m² × approx. €9) – approx. €110 net.

Most recruitment banners we see make the same mistake: too much text. A driver has 2–3 seconds. A good banner has:

• one key word – NOW HIRING or JOBS, in the largest font,
• one or two jobs, not a list of ten – forklift operator, warehouse operative,
• one specific benefit – pay from…, a permanent contract, single-shift work, staff transport,
• one contact – a large phone number or a QR code (only pedestrians scan a code; drivers will remember a number).

Phone number digits on a banner visible from the road – at least 20 cm high. Contrasting colours, and no smiling stock photo taking up half the banner. If the country where you are recruiting has rules on disclosing pay or on non-discriminatory job adverts, check the content with HR; we will print the approved version. Prices and material types are in our guide banner printing cost.

Branded vehicles as a job ad on the move

Company vehicles drive around the area all day and park outside shops and in car parks. Drivers wanted or Fitters wanted on the rear window or doors reaches people who already work in a similar trade – sometimes better than an online ad.

Two approaches:

1. Door magnets – 0.6 mm printed magnetic sheet, approx. €21–32 net/m². A pair of 60 × 40 cm magnets is just under 0.5 m², so the cost usually falls within the minimum order value (€24 net). You take them off when the post is filled. Note: a magnet only holds on flat steel bodywork – not on aluminium or plastic.
2. A rear window sticker in One Way Vision film or cut vinyl lettering – the driver can see through it normally.

If the vehicles are getting company graphics anyway, leave space in the design for a replaceable Jobs strip – more on vehicle graphics in our guide company vehicle wrap cost.

Flyers and posters in the area

A poster on a shop notice board, at a bus stop (where allowed), at the job centre, at a vocational school. A flyer through letterboxes in the towns and villages your staff commute from. These are old methods, but for manual jobs they still work, because they reach people who do not browse job portals.

As a guide: A2 posters, 10 pcs cost approx. €28 net, 100 pcs – approx. €85 net. A 4-page A5 leaflet, 1,000 pcs – approx. €90 net. A leaflet has room to describe the company, shifts, transport, benefits and show photos from the factory floor – useful at job fairs and schools.

On flyers and posters add a QR code to the form and a short note: call or scan. The code must be at least about 2–3 cm on a flyer and correspondingly larger on a poster read from further away.

A job fair stand

Job fairs, careers days at schools and universities, local fairs – a small stand is enough to stand out from tables with an A4 sheet. A typical set:

• 1–2 roller banners – an 85 × 200 cm roller banner from approx. €55 net, 100 × 200 cm from approx. €65 net,
• a folding promotional counter with graphic – from approx. €210 net,
• a branded cloth for an ordinary table,
• leaflets, small merchandise, something for collecting phone numbers.

On a recruitment roller banner, instead of a product slogan, write who you are looking for and what you offer. Photos of the real factory floor and the real team (with the consent of those pictured) work better than stock imagery. A roller banner with a replaceable cassette lets you change the graphic when the vacancies change – a new graphic alone costs a fraction of a complete set.

A QR code to the form and measuring applications

Without measuring, you do not know whether the banner brought in 10 candidates or none. The simplest method:

1. Prepare a short form – name, phone, job, where they commute from. Five fields, not twenty.
2. For each medium generate a separate link with a source tag (e.g. ?src=banner, ?src=van, ?src=flyer) and make a separate QR code from it.
3. For media with a phone number, ask during the call: how did you hear about the job? and note the answer.
4. After 4–6 weeks, compare the number of applications with the cost of each medium.

More on codes and tracking in our guides measuring offline advertising effectiveness and QR codes in print. A form with a dedicated recruitment page can be built by weblango.com – the IT company in our group.

Consistency with your employer brand

A now hiring banner made in a rush in a different colour from the rest of the company, with a different font and no logo, looks like an ad from someone random. Candidates then compare it with what they see on your website and social media.

A few simple rules: the same colours and logo as on the sign and vehicles, one photo style, the same number or form on all media. Our design studio can prepare a full set – banner, poster, magnet and roller banner – in one style (designing a simple banner approx. €42 net, adapting it to another format approx. €13 net). For the next recruitment drive you only change the job title. For factories and recruitment agencies, see more on the manufacturing plant and recruitment agency pages.