How to get the best out of your recruitment ads on social media
1. Choose the right images
You’re operating in a visual medium so need an image that’s eye catching, bright and colourful. It should say, ‘this is our team’ and resonate with your ideal audience.
If you can use images of real people in your real workplace, doing real work – that’s the trifecta. Where employee photos are used, we often see more engagement on the advert because people recognize the individual and it starts a conversation and sharing.
If you can’t get any of your real staff on camera, a stock image from somewhere like Getty Images will be an adequate substitute. Remember that recruitment ads are about people, not products. As tempting as it may be to use corporate stock images of your latest whiz bang product, resist. Feature a human.
2. Design for a mobile view
90% of job seekers use their mobile to start the job search. So, when putting together your digital job ad to get maximum effect in a mobile newsfeed, remember that often users are scrolling at lunch time or on the bus.
- Screens are small and images can quickly look complicated and “too much” easily. Keep it simple.
- Unless the power of your company brand alone will drive candidate excitement, consider whether you need your logo as part of the actual advert artwork.
- Mobile view cuts off a lot of text, so you need short and punchy copy. Tell readers why they want to work for you in under 150 characters and make it compelling. You have to motivate them to click on ‘see more’.
- Video/animated (slideshow) images/rolls are more eye-catching when people are scrolling through their feed than a static single image.
- Facebook is a fan of the 80/20 rule: more images, less text. Make the words count and remember that text is even smaller on a mobile phone so consider how things like your logo will appear on a mobile screen.
3. Your advert has their attention, now what?
In our experience, Facebook mobile referrals have really short session durations (from 7-18 seconds on average). Here’s how a typical job hunter behaves once they’ve seen one of our ads on social media or Google that captures their attention:
They click the ad to ‘read more’ and are taken to our client’s careers page/website. Firstly, they view the position description or full job advert. Then they go to the ‘benefits’ or ‘why work for us’ page. Next stop, the ‘vacancies’ page to see what other openings there are. Finally, if they are still with us, they head back to the original job page to apply.
An ad can drive traffic to a careers page to read more, but it won’t make people stay there – or apply. 67% of candidates will research a company before deciding to go ahead, so the more there is on your website that is of value to the candidate, the better. Having a well-rounded careers site with sections such as ‘about us’, ‘what we offer’ and ‘why work for us’ gives you the best chance of converting clicks to applications.
(This is particularly important if you are on a ‘pay per click’ pricing model! A great advert might get you 100 click throughs but if only 1 application results, that isn’t an ideal use of your budget.)
4. Your careers page/website needs to be mobile friendly too
Bearing in mind what we just discussed above, use your own mobile to check out the page where you expect candidates to apply. Is it an engaging and interesting experience? Would you spend your lunch break researching a prospective new job on that site?
A careers page needs to be well designed and attractive; just like the digital advert that delivered your candidate there. Especially the top half of the page – ‘above the fold’ in technical terms. The first thing you see when you arrive on the landing page; that’s where employers need to grab candidates and make them want to scroll down to read the rest.
Big Splash are specialists in creating social media and digital job advertisements, as well as amazing careers websites. Need some help getting your vacancies filled? Give us a call.