Social Media + Recruiting: Tips for a Successful Campaign
Launching a human resources initiative through social platforms is one of the most recent paid media trends for digital advertisers. Brands have long seen success driving purchases, appointments, and other conversions via social media. Now, organizations are embracing social platforms to help meet a wider variety of business goals, such as attracting top talent.
According to a recent report, the average person spends nearly two hours each day on social media. With such a large and diverse audience, it’s only natural for brands to leverage social media platforms for recruiting initiatives.
Due to social media’s expanding advertising capabilities, companies should consider using paid social as an innovative and creative way to find the best possible job applicants. Unlike ads in newspapers or on job search websites, social media enables advertisers to specifically target qualified audiences with very relevant job opportunities. These opportunities can be presented in a creative way, allowing companies to showcase their culture and demonstrate why individuals should want to work for them.
Recommendations For A Successful Campaign
As you work to incorporate social media into your recruitment plans, keep the following best practices in mind.
Determine the objectives that best align with business goals.
We recently helped a major convenience store chain launch a successful recruiting campaign on Facebook. In this scenario, the most effective objective was to maximize conversions, indicating to Facebook that ads should be optimized toward those most likely to convert within each of the brand’s audience segments. In a conversion campaign, it is important to implement a complete registration event pixel on the last page of the online application process to fully understand its impact. This allows you to best determine how influential your ad was in driving applications.
Other Facebook objectives that may be relevant to your recruiting campaign include reach or brand awareness. Depending on your goals, these can help you make a greater number of people aware of your open positions. Additionally, the traffic objective can help you maximize traffic to the job page of your website. Other platforms, such as LinkedIn, provide a wealth of options for objectives as well; those best fitted to a recruitment campaign include sponsored content.
Choose the right social media platforms.
Statistics show that 88% of 18 to 29 year olds use Facebook, making it the perfect platform to attract entry-level candidates or those with a few years of experience. If you are recruiting for more senior-level roles, LinkedIn may be a better platform, as 61% of LinkedIn users are 30 and older.
Once you’ve identified the right platform, leverage its targeting capabilities to reach qualified potential applicants who might not be actively searching for a job. Facebook’s targeting ranges from narrowing in on certain locations to specific behaviors, or a combination of both. We’ve seen success breaking audiences up by regions that were hiring, allowing us to customize ads for specific locations and helping our client to entice the best candidates. In the case of the convenience store chain, the campaign launched on Facebook, since our client had the strongest presence there and was recruiting for more entry-level roles. It will also be branching out to mobile-focused platforms, such as Snapchat and Instagram, as a result of the data and campaign insights we gathered.
Make mobile-friendly ads.
A 2016 study found that 80% of all social media time is spent on mobile phones. When creating a mobile-friendly advertisement, make sure to limit text – mobile is about speed, so potential applicants should be able to understand what is happening quickly. Also consider having a short application process. People are most likely applying on the go, so companies and advertisers need to take into consideration how many steps there are to complete an application. If there are fewer clicks, people are more likely to complete the application in full.
Target ads to the appropriate audience.
Social media allows advertisers to create granular target audiences, leading to more qualified conversions. It is important to reach those who are not only the most likely to apply, but also the most likely to complete the rest of the interview process and be qualified. Aligning creative to your industry and the role (such as representing the duties and responsibilities of a job), is most likely to attract people whose interests match up with the position. On Facebook, you can also choose certain behaviors to target, further increasing your likelihood of reaching interested prospects.
Learn From Your Past Campaigns
After a campaign has finished its flight, it is important to dissect the data and learn from it to optimize your ads moving forward. Determine the audience segments that performed the best, and which creative or copy proved most relevant. Gathering this data will allow you to better advertise not only open positions in the future, but also shed light on the audience segments that are interested in your company as a whole.
To learn more about incorporating social media into your recruiting strategy, reach out to Rise.