Facebook Ads for Recruitment: Why Do They Perform Better than Job Boards?

Last updated on February 15, 2024

If you’ve been struggling to generate enough candidates for your open positions with job boards, Facebook Ads may be the solution you’ve been looking for. Why, you ask? Thanks to its precision targeting features, engagement opportunities, and cost-effectiveness, you don’t just find more candidates with Facebook Ads than with job boards. You find the right candidates, faster.

Let’s break it down!

The vast audience of Facebook

Facebook Ads for recruitment allow you to tap into the largest candidate pool in history with 2.89 billion daily users globally, and 285 million active users in North America alone. This broad exposure is particularly advantageous when you’re high-volume hiring or when looking to attract candidates with diverse skill sets and experiences.

While other platforms may offer professional profiles and job search chats, Facebook provides you with a unique advantage – unparalleled job visibility. Its vast audience ensures that your ads have the potential to reach a remarkably broad and varied spectrum of potential candidates, transcending the boundaries of traditional recruitment methods. 

In contrast to platforms that may cater specifically to professional networking, Facebook’s expansive user base includes individuals from various industries and backgrounds. This diversity is a key strength, as it makes it easier for you to showcase job opportunities to a wider audience.

It’s also important to note that Facebook ads automatically go out to Instagram as well. Facebook’s integration with Instagram provides an additional visual dimension to your recruitment strategy through creative and visually appealing job advertisements. The combination of Facebook and Instagram extends the reach of your recruitment efforts to Instagram users who prefer more visual content, so you can cater to different preferences within the vast user base.

Tapping into passive candidates

Passive candidates are often the crown jewels of recruitment because they are typically already employed, so they possess the skills and experience necessary for your open positions. Therefore, hiring them can have a substantial impact on your company. However, job boards primarily attract active job seekers who are looking for opportunities. This means that employers recruiting on job boards alone may miss out on a significant portion of potential candidates who are not actively browsing job postings but would consider a great opportunity. So the challenge lies in this: Where do you find them?

The answer is closer than you might think. It’s all about positioning your employer brand and open roles where these passive talents spend their digital time, making the perfect connection at the right moment Facebook users spend 3 hours per day on average engaging on the platform. And a whopping 81% of candidates want to see job opportunities on Facebook. So what could be more effective than getting your jobs in front of them there? By strategically placing your ads on Facebook, you can capture the attention of more passive candidates. Present them with appealing jobs they might not actively seek elsewhere!

Hyper-targeting candidates

One of the key limitations of traditional job boards lies in their reliance on generic job listings that lack the precision and specificity offered by Facebook Ads. While job boards present job opportunities to a broad net of potential applicants, this approach may lead to inefficiencies in reaching candidates with the exact skills and qualifications you need.

Unlike job boards, Facebook Ads provides a sophisticated approach to candidate outreach. Leveraging the platform’s robust targeting capabilities, you can tailor your advertisements to specific requisites. For example, if you’re hiring for a truck driver position, the ads will be configured according to Facebook’s algorithm to target individuals with relevant skills and interest in the industry.

This hyper-targeting capability minimizes the likelihood of your ads being viewed by candidates who may not be a good fit for the role. It ensures that your recruitment efforts are directed towards a qualified and interested audience, so you can optimize the use of resources and increase the chances of finding qualified candidates quickly.

Stellar candidate experience: A human touch in recruitment

Amidst the digital noise of standardized job descriptions and corporate logos, candidates yearn for a more personalized connection. Going beyond the transactional nature of traditional job boards, Facebook Ads presents a unique opportunity to infuse a human touch into the recruitment process through interactive content. The easiest way to craft an exceptional candidate experience.

Visual content, including images and videos, is a powerful tool for conveying the human side of a company through Facebook Ads. This visual storytelling capability is key to demonstrating your company’s culture, work environment, and the authentic experiences of your employees. With an outstanding visual narrative of the workplace, you can make the hiring company more relatable and appealing to potential candidates. In addition to attracting top talent, this also establishes a positive and lasting relationship with future employees and improves retention.

Cost-effective recruiting

While several job boards offer free postings, premium listings or additional visibility features often come at a cost. This can be a barrier when you have to carefully evaluate the return on investment for listings. You must weigh the benefits of increased visibility and access to a more targeted audience against the upfront costs to determine if the expense aligns with the overall recruitment strategy and goals. Moreover, allocating a significant portion of the budget to premium listings on job boards may limit your ability to diversify and invest in other effective recruitment methods. That’s why you should explore new and cost-effective solutions for recruiting the best workers.

With Facebook Ads, you can maximize impact without breaking the bank. It’s like getting the VIP treatment without the VIP price tag. The cost of entry can be significantly lower, and precise targeting options are available without the need for premium features. 

On average, our customers have remarkably minimized their costs with the power of hyper-targeted Facebook Ads. For example, Home Instead reduced their $15 cost per lead to $1.80-$3.50, an approximately 88% saving in their cost per lead. That’s not just saving money – that’s smart recruiting on a budget.

Elevating employer branding

A positive impression today can mean a loyal employee tomorrow. But job boards may not provide sufficient space to showcase the company’s culture. This can be a huge disadvantage compared to platforms like Facebook, where you can use visual content and engaging posts to highlight the unique aspects of the workplace. 

On job boards, the information about a company is often confined to the basics of the job listing, such as the job title, responsibilities, and qualifications. While these details are essential, they may not capture the essence of what makes a workplace unique. This is where Facebook Ads for recruitment emerge as a strategic tool for elevating employer branding.

Using hiring ads on Facebook, you can leverage visual content and engaging posts to create a more immersive experience for potential candidates. This could include sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses of the workplace, employee testimonials, success stories, or highlighting company events and initiatives. Getting this vivid, engaging experience, your candidates immediately envision what it would be like working for your company. As they show interest, they explore further, which leads to more page visits, likes, and comments. This way you don’t just post jobs but curate a brand narrative that captivates potential candidates and generates more applicants. And the best part? You don’t have to be a recruitment marketing specialist to get the best results from Facebook Ads. When you subscribe to Boostpoint®, our dedicated Customer Success Managers create high-converting Facebook and Instagram ads for you so that you can capture the best workers, generate more applicants, and reduce your cost per hire.

Engaging mobile experience

The reason why mobile optimization is a critical factor in the success of recruitment strategies today is that job seekers increasingly rely on smartphones and tablets to explore career opportunities on the go. But one notable drawback with some traditional job boards is their limited mobile optimization. For candidates trying to access job listings on these platforms from their mobile devices, the experience may be suboptimal. Pages may load slowly, navigation could be cumbersome, and the overall user interface might not be as intuitive as on desktop versions.

This limitation becomes particularly significant when considering the shift in user behavior towards mobile-centric browsing. With a growing number of candidates preferring the convenience of mobile devices, any impediment in the mobile user experience on job boards can result in missed opportunities for potential candidates.

But with Facebook Ads, where mobile optimization is not just a feature but a fundamental aspect of the platform, you can provide your candidates with a seamless and visually appealing experience across a variety of devices, ensuring that users, whether on smartphones or tablets, encounter a consistently high-quality browsing experience. This contributes to a more engaging interaction with potential candidates. Recruiters leveraging Facebook Ads can connect with the workforce in a way that aligns with the preferences of modern users, facilitating smooth navigation, quick load times, and visually compelling content – all essential elements for capturing the attention and interest of mobile users.

Shorter time-to-hire

Whether your need to fill out a job is urgent or not, you’ve surely experienced that delays can be costly. The best candidates often fall through the cracks because job boards pose challenges with lengthy application processes. In contrast, the Facebook recruiting process is significantly shorter than that of job boards, offering you a more expedited and candidate-centric approach to reducing time-to-hire. 

The hallmark of Facebook Ads lies in their ability to establish an immediate connection with candidates. Through targeted messaging and captivating ad creatives, you can engage potential candidates the moment your ads pop up on their feeds. This instant connection is a catalyst for speeding up the recruitment journey so that you can attract the best fits, swiftly progress them through the hiring process, and shorten your time-to-hire.

Wrap Up

Advertising your jobs to the largest candidate pool ever, Facebook Ads can help you attract more workers to your open positions faster. The precision targeting feature of Facebook Ads ensures that your jobs attract the perfect fits while directing recruitment efforts towards a qualified and interested candidate pool. With cost-effective solutions, immersive employer branding, and a streamlined process, Facebook Ads redefine the recruitment landscape, offering a swift, engaging, and impactful approach for you to effortlessly build a dynamic pipeline.