The truth is, that your dream candidate may not be actively searching for your hiring event. However, with nearly 3 billion active users there’s a good chance your ideal candidate has a Facebook account. That’s what makes Facebook such an effective recruiting tool. But, oftentimes at Work4, we speak with customers who are uncertain of how to promote their events. Each year thousands of job fairs, career expos, and hiring events are posted to the platform. But to be successful, it’s essential to promote enough interest in your event to garner the number of qualified candidates you need. The key to a successful hiring event promotion is to target those most likely to benefit from your event and pay careful consideration to timing. You don’t want to promote your event too early as candidates may forget that they signed up but you do want to ensure enough time for your ad to make it through Facebook’s approval screening, a process that can take 24 to 48 hours. Bill Quirk, Director of US Sales recommends that “You should advertise your hiring event 7-10 days in advance to stay top of mind for your candidates.”
There are currently 3 ways to advertise a hiring event on Facebook. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at each strategy.
Why Facebook?
Facebook advertising can be a powerful tool to help draw more job candidates to your recruitment events. The platform’s sophisticated targeting can help you get your event in front of candidates who are actively seeking employment as well as those who are passively contemplating a job change. As we make a return to in-person events, targeting can help you narrow down to users living within the local area of your venue.
As we get ready to dissect the different methods of marketing a hiring event Bill says, “There are three different ways to advertising hiring events, each with its own pros and cons. Weigh them carefully before starting your campaign.”
Facebook News Feed Lead Ads
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of promoting your hiring event on Facebook let’s get into the ways to do it. First on our list, is the Facebook Lead Generation ad. Simply put, Lead ads allow job fair promoters to collect information from prospects directly from the ads instead of sending traffic to a landing page. This falls in line with Facebook’s algorithm which prioritizes content that keeps users on the platform. These ads serve in the user’s feed based on targeting and can be shown to a wide array of potential candidates. When the leads ad is clicked, a pop-up serves the potential candidate a form. Facebook helps to simplify the process by pre-populating the user’s information (name & email) from their profile so all the user needs to do is hit submit. The added bonus of a news feed ad is that it creates an emailing or contact list for your company that can be used to send out reminder emails and texts during the days leading up to your event. The downside to this is that it will require you to manually nurture candidates a task that can be overwhelming if you have a high volume of prospective attendees.
Facebook Event Post With News Feed Ad
The first step to this strategy is to create an event from your company’s Facebook page. Creating an event on Facebook is a quick and straightforward process that allows you to share the date time and location of your event easily. Once a public event is created, your page followers will instantly be notified allowing you to capitalize on good initial awareness and impressions.
When any candidate clicks the ‘attending’ or ‘interested’ button on your event post, the event will show up in the news feeds of their friends and followers providing good organic reach. That means that it’s in your best interest to find a way to entice attendees to click one of those buttons! The number one benefit of creating an event post is that once a candidate shows interest by clicking “interested” or “going” Facebook does the heavy lifting of nurturing leads by sending reminders to candidates as the event gets closer.
The next step to the event page strategy is to promote your event. This is done with a paid Facebook ad. Promoting an internal Facebook event page can often yield high volume for a lower cost since it falls in line with Facebook’s above-mentioned prioritization of on-platform content. In the days leading up to your hiring event running a retargeting ad could give you a second chance at an audience that was on the fence. Especially if you can offer a bonus or benefit such as a free resume review or consultation.
Facebook Link Ad
The alternative to a Lead Generation ad is a Link ad. If you opt for a Link ad, your goal is still to acquire a lead. The difference is that this type of ad directs candidate traffic to a website, job board, or event listing outside of the Facebook platform. This is largely considered the traditional way of marketing an event. For all intents and purposes, you’re still acquiring a lead, and this ad will look almost indistinguishable in the news feed from the Facebook leads ad. However, redirecting to an off-platform landing page means a longer wait time, more touchpoints, and more information to digest before your prospect becomes a lead. An additional drawback is that driving traffic off the Facebook platform can mean that your ad will be shown to a lower volume of candidates. But, the outlook is not all bad, studies done by Wordstream show that Lead ads will generate a higher volume of candidates, while Link ads will generate a higher quality of candidates.
Promote Your Next Hiring Event
When done correctly, using social media to promote your next hiring event can dramatically increase candidate interest and attendance. If you’d like to get the most out of your next hiring fair contact Work4 today. We’ve successfully run over thirty thousand recruiting event campaigns. When you work with us you’ll gain access to our proprietary targeting strategies like our own candidate algorithm, retargeting and special audiences.
