6 Best Practices for Sourcing Job Applicants on Facebook

As the leading social networking site in the world, with around 2.93 billion monthly active users globally, Facebook has a massive audience with diverse backgrounds, experience levels, and skills, as well as a powerful audience targeting engine for social advertising. Facebook users are also among the most active social media users – on an average, they spend around 38 minutes per day on the platform.

For many roles, Facebook can be a particularly effective talent sourcing channel. For example, truck drivers. According to a 2019 survey by Truckers News, 63% of truck drivers use Facebook, which is by far their social media platform of choice. They also use Facebook frequently to get information about the trucking industry.

Furthermore, the social media behemoth provides a native Facebook for Jobs feature, which enables employers to target active job seekers by posting jobs organically (for free) on the platform.

Overall, when it comes to candidate sourcing, Facebook is a very effective channel to reach a wider audience, comprising both active and passive candidates. Yet, it is surprisingly underutilized by employers and agencies as compared to job boards.

So how can you use Facebook effectively to source the most qualified candidates for your jobs?

Here are 7 best practices to follow:

1. Use Facebook’s sophisticated targeting capabilities

One of the most powerful aspects of advertising jobs on Facebook is that it allows for interest-based targeting of candidates. You can target candidates based on their interests, as partially evidenced by the content they like or influencers they are following.

You can also select an audience for each of your job ads based on a wide variety of demographic factors, such as education, job title, location, and others. The more accurate and specific you are in defining your target audience, the more effective your job ads will be.

It is critical that you update the locations you are targeting, especially for jobs where employees are required to be on site. For example, if you’re looking for a chef.

This is true both for sponsored job ads and organic postings on the Facebook jobs marketplace. (When job seekers go to the Facebook jobs marketplace, they will only view jobs near a certain location.

2. Make sure your content is engaging and relevant 

Great content that is both engaging and relevant to your target audience is critical for your job ad success.

Facebook is all about engagement – the platform allows you to include attractive images that showcase your unique work culture. It could be of a brainstorming session on your terrace, a recent pizza lunch, or a corporate getaway. The idea is to entice your audience while also offering them a sneak peek into what it’s like to work with you. Don’t forget to crop your images to the right size though – around 940 x 788 for a standard post, or 1200 x 628 for a sidebar ad.

Finally, make sure the copy accompanying your image is just as attractive, simple, and short. Try not to exceed 4 – 5 lines of strong content – advertising your job position as well as your company as an employer – and end with a clear call to action or a (unbroken please!) link to the right landing page (or the job application).

3. Leverage lookalike audiences

Another powerful capability that Facebook offers is the ability to create and target lookalike audiences. Once you have an ideal candidate profile (one you created based on your current high-performing employees, or by conducting focus group interviews with the hiring managers), Facebook’s algorithms can use the details of this profile and create a lookalike audience of (similar) candidates, for your job ads.

You can further refine your lookalike audiences based on applications received, interviews completed, and more, thereby continuously improving the quality of your sourcing efforts.

4. Use remarketing to reach candidates that have interacted with your brand before

Sometimes, highly qualified candidates fall out of the recruitment funnel before completing their applications. Maybe the application process wasn’t great or was interrupted, or maybe they just needed more time to research you as an employer.

Whatever the reason, even though they didn’t convert the first time, they were interested enough to visit your career site in the first place. Maybe all you need to do is reach out at a more convenient time.

Facebook’s remarketing (or retargeting) feature enables you to do just that by displaying your Facebook ads to candidates that visited your career site, but didn’t complete the application process. Furthermore, you can even upload a list of candidates from your ATS or CRM and target them with personalized messages in your job ads.

5. Simplify your job application process

The better you make your job application experience, the more successful your recruitment marketing efforts will be – in attracting and converting great talent cost-effectively.

The most attractive ads can end up not converting into applications / hires, if you have a lengthy, complicated, and frustrating job application process. Your goal should be to record only (absolutely) necessary data, not understand a candidate’s entire life story in one go! Limit all required information to a minimum and keep forms short.

The best thing you can do is to leverage Facebook’s in-built application form, when posting your jobs on the Facebook for Jobs marketplace. This allows candidates to fill in and submit their job applications without having to leave Facebook, leading to higher conversion rates.

6. Track the right metrics

This one is perhaps a no-brainer. But this list would be far from complete without it!

To ensure effectiveness and a great ROI, it is critical to keep an eye on the metrics that matter. If you are not receiving sufficient clicks or applications, or your costs are higher than usual (or when compared to your industry benchmarks), you should take another look at your job ad content and targeting, and make necessary changes.

You can also compare your Facebook ad performance with other sourcing channels, such as job boards, and allocate budgets appropriately for maximum ROI. (Read more: Top Recruitment Advertising Metrics You Should Track for Hiring Success)

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There is no doubt that Facebook is – and will remain – a powerful tool for effective and intelligent recruitment for years to come.

Given the pace at which the Facebook platform rolls out new features, and the stability of its massive user base, recruiters are likely to benefit from several new opportunities to rapidly connect with qualified candidates, ultimately leading to greater hiring volumes, reduced time to hire, and lower costs.

If you would like to learn more about using Facebook as a means to source amazing candidates and how programmatic job advertising can augment your current recruitment marketing efforts, schedule a call with us today!