How to Use Facebook’s New Job Post Tool to Staff Up Faster

Staffing up is tough right now.

We’ve got the lowest unemployment in 10 years in the U.S., and record number of job openings. Basically, all the good employees have jobs. That makes hiring hard. How do you get people to apply for your jobs when they already have them, and probably aren’t even looking?

Well, while potential applicants may not be scouring the internet for jobs, they probably are on Facebook quite often. And if you use Facebook’s new job posting tool right, you can reach applicants there who aren’t even on the job market and attract them to your store.

Here’s a guide to doing it.

How to Create a Facebook Job Post Step-by-Step

Before we get started, here’s a quick tutorial to show you exactly how to create your first Facebook job posting, step-by-step.

1. Navigate to your company’s Facebook page.
2. In the left sidebar, you’ll see “Jobs.” Click that.
3. Now just above the feed toward the center of the page you’ll see a button that says, “Publish Job Post.” Click that button.

At this point a whole dashboard will pop up. We’ll walk you through using that in the upcoming sections. But first, we’ll show you how to get the information you need to make a great job post.

First rule: You’ve got to beat the cute puppies

If you spend any time on Facebook, you know that cute rules the feed.

Puppies, babies, and koalas do great. So do the latest political controversies. So how do you get something as uncute and uncontroversial as a job post to get some attention?

First, you’ve got to target your posts to the right audience. Using a combination of Facebook’s ad tools and some research techniques I’ll show you, you’ll be able to put your job postings in front of the people who are most likely to be interested in applying.

Second, you need to reach those people with a message they’ll pay attention to. Again, using research, we’ll create job posts that focus on exactly what your audience will be interested in.

How to Find the Best Audience for your Job Posts

First, set up Google Alerts to send you useful information to target your ads.

1. Go to the Google Alerts page.
2. Set alerts like this: [position you’re hiring for] layoffs, [your industry] bankruptcy, [competitor] bankruptcy, [competitor] closing, [competitor] layoffs. The idea is to set alerts that will tell you when companies in your industry are closing or laying off and about to release a bunch of potential employees onto the market.
3. See which companies have employees who are ready for a change.

Go to Glassdoor.com and search for the positions you need to fill. After searching, you’ll see other companies hiring for the same position in the left sidebar.

Take note of companies with lower than average ratings and a lot of negative reviews. This is a pretty good indicator that employees there are unhappy, and may be considering a change.

So how do you target the employees at these companies? We’ll get to that, but before we use the targeting features, we’ll need to create a job post.

Creating a Job Post that Gets Your Audience’s Attention

This part is key. If we can put a job post in front of our potential employees that’s made to appeal to exactly what they want, our ad will perform better, and we’ll get more applications at a better price.

Here’s how to do that.

Take the name of each company you found through your research in the previous section and search for them on Glassdoor by entering the company name and selecting “Company,” before you search.

Now, look at the reviews of that company and see what people have listed as “Cons” of working there.

Are there any that you can respond directly to? Let’s say that a lot of employees are complaining about lack of paid time off and being micromanaged, and you offer better than average PTO, and management gives employees a lot of say in their jobs. That’s information that will get your audience’s attention.

You’ll also want to do some research internally. Ask current employees what they like most about the company, the equipment you use, the workspace, location, their co-workers, and the work culture.

Now combine all of these pros with the information your employees gave, and put that in your Facebook job posting.

I recommend that you take a photo of your own from your workplace and use that. People can typically detect stock photos, and tend to ignore them.

Now, this is where you take your research and use it. Specifically in the introduction and details section.

Rather than including qualifications and requirements, I’ve limited the ad to information that will attract potential applicants.

The Advantages of the Facebook Boost

Once the ad is created, click “Publish Job Post.”

Now it should appear in your Facebook feed, although it may be subject to review first. Once it appears in your feed, you’ll see the option to “boost” it.

If you really want to show up in the Facebook feed, you’re going to have to pay for it. The good news is that it can be inexpensive compared to typical costs of posting a job, and you can set the maximum you’re willing to pay.

Also, boosting your post lets you get the most out of the research you did into other companies, by letting you target your ad to the right people.

To boost your post, click “Jobs” in the left sidebar. You should now see the job you created. Once Facebook has approved it, there will be the option to “Boost Post” in the lower right corner.

Click that, and you’ll see detailed options to choose the location where the ad is shown, “Detailed Targeting,” and “Budget and Duration.”

Detailed targeting is where you can target people who work at specific companies. To do that, click the text field in detailed targeting, then select “Work” and “Employers.” Now you’ll be able to enter the name of specific companies.

You could then click “Narrow,” and add more parameters, such as the specific position you’re hiring for. This way the ads would only be shown to people who work at the companies you targeted and in the position you targeted.

Now you’ve got highly targeted ad content being shown to the people most likely to be interested in them.

It’s powerful stuff, and should help you get an edge in hiring!

Author: Paul Peters is content marketer and job ad writer with Betterteam. Before Betterteam he spent 6 years building an education startup, where he was involved with many aspects of the business, including hiring. He lives in Whitefish, Montana.