Facebook Ads for Recruiting: What, Why and How

You probably know a thing or two about using Facebook to build your employment brand. But have you considered adding Facebook ads to your recruiting arsenal? Thanks to rich targeting options, the network’s ads can help find qualified and even passive candidates.

Be Cost Efficient

While you pay to post your listing for a general audience on a job board, targeted Facebook ads show up for a specific audience that you select, which means more bang for your bank. And if you select network’s CPC pricing model, you’ll only pay when people actually click on your ad.

Attract Relevant Candidates

When you blast your job listing to the whole world, you’re going get a stack of under-qualified candidates, plus a handful that just aren’t a good fit. That’s a pain point because whether qualified or not, reviewing job candidates takes a big chunk of time. With Facebook targeting you can adjust ads to appear only for those who attended certain schools, work in certain industries or live in certain regions. Since those outside these stipulations will never actually see the ads, they never have the opportunity to click the ad and fill  out an application.

Reach Passive Candidates

Passive candidates are highly sought after, but since this group isn’t out there browsing the job bards, chances are you’re not going to grab their attention with a traditional job listing. Facebook isn’t a job board (at least not in the traditional sense), so ads present a new opportunity to get openings in front of this hard-to-reach audience.

Sponsored Stories

Sponsored Stories are ads based on some form of Facebook engagement. For example, say Charlie likes your company’s career page on Facebook. With Sponsored Stories, you can pay to share that “like” action among Charlie’s Facebook friends. So when his friends are browsing the News Feed, they’ll see a story that says “Charlie likes Company A’s Career page.” Since his Facebook friends likely include coworkers and classmates, this gets your employment community in front of like-minded individuals.

Suggested Posts

Suggested Posts let brands advertise specific posts to users who have no previous interactions or connections with that brand. The ads appear in the News Feed and look much like organic content, minus the “Suggested Post” disclosure tag. This is an opportunity to share content that might interest your targeted candidates, for example photos of a quirky workplace gathering, an employee endorsement or an exciting company milestone.

Facebook Exchange

Facebook Exchange lets advertisers retarget those who have previously been on your website. For recruiters, this presents an opportunity to render job ads for (and thus reengage) Facebook users who have already looked at the jobs page on your company’s website.

How to Target Facebook Ads for Recruiting

Basic targeting options include location, age, gender and interests. As you can see below, as you narrow down your audience according to demographics and interests, Facebook will estimate your audience size.

To dig deeper, select Advanced Targeting Options, where you’ll be able to target according to language, education (including level, institution and graduation date), as well as workplace.

Have you used Facebook or other social ads to recruit candidates? What were your results?

About The Author

Esteban Gomez is a marketing consultant with interviewstream. He loves learning and has a passion for traveling, having visited many countries including China, Colombia, Italy, and Peru.