MASH × AVL

Can you recruit engineers who aren’t even looking for a job?

Eight technical vacancies. A highly competitive engineering market. And candidates who already have jobs and aren’t actively searching for new ones.

We spent eight and a half months figuring out how to reach them through paid social, what actually gets their attention, and where the channel reaches its limits.

• 8 vacancies
• 173 applications
• 181 creatives tested

• Client: AVL — mobility technology
• Market: Czech Republic (Mladá Boleslav)
• Period: Aug 2025 – Apr 2026
• Channel: Meta Ads + 22 landing pages
• Mash did: HR marketing strategy, Meta Ads, creatives, landing pages, tracking

Meet AVL. The engineers behind some serious engineering.

AVL is an Austrian mobility technology company working across automotive engineering, simulation, testing and powertrain development.

Its Czech office in Mladá Boleslav recruits technical specialists in a region where companies like Škoda, Bosch and Continental are competing for much of the same talent.

AVL already had a strong employer brand, established recruitment processes and clear standards for how it communicated with candidates.

What it didn’t have was a tested paid advertising channel for recruitment in the Czech market.

Finding engineers is hard. Finding engineers who aren’t looking for a job? Even harder.

AVL needed candidates for roles ranging from working students to highly specialized engineers.

Many of the experienced professionals were already employed and weren’t actively searching job boards. Some specializations had only a small pool of potential candidates in the region.

We had to reach those people, get them interested in a specific role and make applying straightforward, all while working within AVL’s corporate approval processes.

We made every vacancy its own campaign story.

We created dedicated landing pages for individual roles, using AVL’s branding and qualifying questions relevant to each position.

We tested Czech, English and German communication. Czech consistently performed better for local recruitment, so it became the default language across ads and landing pages.

We also found that straightforward creatives worked best: a clear job title, specific responsibilities and enough context for an engineer to recognize a relevant opportunity.

Behind the scenes, we built the tracking setup and adjusted the campaigns as new vacancies and feedback came in.

And no, 181 creatives weren’t part of some grand artistic vision.

Recruiting for a niche engineering role in one region means you’re often showing ads to the same small group of people. Creatives wore out. Some vacancies attracted applications quickly; others barely moved.

We also spent part of the early project figuring out why Meta wasn’t recording applications that were actually coming through the landing pages. We fixed the tracking before relying on that data for optimization.

And one position, Technical Legislation Specialist, proved particularly difficult. People clicked, but applications were scarce. We concluded that Meta had limited potential for that specific role.

Sometimes a useful result is knowing where a channel reaches its limits.

A recruitment channel with results. And some useful limits.

• 28 campaigns
• 181 creatives
• 173 applications
• 597 Kč avg. cost per application

Between August 2025 and April 2026, we ran 28 campaigns, tested 181 creatives and generated 173 applications across eight vacancies, at an average cost of 597 Kč per application.

Some positions attracted candidates consistently. Others required extensive testing, and the Technical Legislation Specialist role showed us that Meta wasn’t equally effective for every type of hire.

Along the way, we built 22 dedicated landing pages, fixed conversion tracking and established a repeatable approach to recruitment campaigns.

The campaigns were eventually paused when the volume of applications exceeded the HR team’s processing capacity. By then, AVL had a tested channel it could return to when needed.

Results: August 5, 2025 – April 19, 2026. Applications do not represent confirmed hires.

CREDITS

• MASH: HR marketing strategy, Meta Ads, creative production, recruitment landing pages, conversion tracking and campaign optimization.
• AVL: Employer branding, vacancy requirements, internal approvals and candidate evaluation.