Three reasons it happens
Wrong leads almost always trace to one of three things, and often to all three at once.
First, intent leaks through targeting. Search terms like "[industry] company" or "[role] software" overlap heavily with people searching for jobs. Without negative keywords, you're paying for job-seeker clicks on purpose. You just didn't realize it.
Second, the ad copy is inviting the wrong person. "Join a growing team." "Opportunities in X." "Be part of something." Those phrases land with applicants. Buyers scroll past. The copy has to name the buyer's problem. "Cut your CPL in half" speaks to a buyer. "Grow with us" speaks to an applicant.
Third, the optimization signal is training the machine wrong. When you optimize for "form submitted," the platform finds the cheapest, most form-friendly people it can. Job seekers are excellent at filling out forms. Buyers are pickier. If you're rewarding form fills, you're teaching the algorithm to bring you form-fillers.
Fix order
Start with negatives and exclusions today. Add the terms people use when they're looking for work: jobs, careers, hiring, salary, application, resume. That alone cuts the volume of wrong intent getting through.
This week: rewrite any copy that sounds like a job posting. The headline should qualify in the first five words. If a job seeker reads it and feels like it's for them, it's not specific enough.
The compound fix: start feeding qualified leads back to the platform every week. Tell it which form fills were real. Which ones became conversations, demos, customers. That feedback loop is the lever that matters most on B2B accounts over time. You're correcting the signal instead of just reducing the noise.