We want to help you build your recruiting toolkit! Read on for our step-by-step guide on how to use Facebook ads for an easy, low-cost, and targeted approach to recruitment.

When you think recruiting and social media, most people think of LinkedIn. While a great social media platform, it tends to be more limited to people already well established in their careers and does not include many people with clinical backgrounds, such as CNAs or nurses.

Facebook is the platform where most people spend most of their social media time. More than a billion people log into Facebook every day.

You can share your job openings on your facility’s Facebook page and encourage your employees to share, but this won’t accomplish much. Your organic reach on Facebook is limited to people who have liked your page and friends of your employees.

You need people who live near your facility. You need people with certain skills. This is where Facebook ads comes in.

Opportunities for Facebook Ads

Example 1: Your local college is holding a career fair. The cost to attend as an employer is prohibitively high for your organization, but you still want to get your message out about career opportunities in your facility. Something like this is a perfect example of when “geofencing” your job advertisements on Facebook. With geofencing, which is sometimes called location targeting or geotarrgeting, you create a digital “barrier” around a set location so that people with Facebook within that area will be pushed your ads. With geofencing, you can target the exact location of the event using the address and narrow it down to a small radius.

Example 2: Your facility is participating in WisCaregiver Careers and is now offering $500 bonuses to CNAs. You would like to advertise to people in the area that you are now a participating employer. This is a good opportunity for targeting people in your local area.

Example 3: It was recently announced that Kenosha Estates, a 97-bed skilled nursing facility, will be closing. This marks the fiftieth skilled nursing facility closure in Wisconsin since 2016. The facility will begin laying off its 65 employees in mid-April. If you are a provider in the greater Kenosha area, you know that there will be 65 people with long-term care experience in your area looking for work in the coming months. Again, another perfect example of geofencing. You can target the area around the facility that is closing.

Example 4: A local big chain hospital system has been consistently poaching employees from your facility. You are offering sign on bonuses, more schedule flexibility, and other benefits that would entice an employee. But how do you get the word out? Once again, the answer is geofencing. Create ads that specifically focus on the benefits that your facility has to offer and geofence the area around the local hospital system.

Types of Ads

So you know what jobs you have open, who you want to target, and what benefits you have to offer, so what are the next steps? Design your Facebook ad to be eye catching and get people to stop and look.

Always remember, less is more. The average Facebook user spends about 1.7 seconds looking at a post on their News Feed when viewing on a mobile device and 2.5 seconds on a desktop. You have a matter of seconds to make an impression on someone. Don’t clutter the ad with too many words, focus on the important content:

1. Who you are
2. Who you are looking for
3. What your facility has to offer
4. Where interested applicants should go

Image ads are the simplest way to get started. You can create one with just a few clicks by boosting an existing post with an image from your Facebook Page.

Image ads may be simple, but that doesn’t mean they have to be boring.

How To Create a Facebook Ad

Step 1: Create your post and turn on the button for “Boost Post” (it should turn blue) and click “Post” once you are ready to go live with your post.

Step 2: You will be taken to the Facebook Ad Manager and several sections will need to be filled out. The next few steps will walk you through each of the sections and how to customize to improve your marketing reach.

Step 3: For the “Button” section, you will likely want to have the button say “Apply Now” and then direct people to a webpage where there are additional details about the open position or an application.

Step 4: For the “Special Ad Category” section, you will need to select that it is an ad related to employment.

Step 5: For the “Audience” section, click the pencil icon in the corner of the “Audience Details” box to edit the size of your audience.

Step 6: Editing down your audience to a very narrow scope is the best way to save money on your ad placement.

Location: Sometimes called geofencing, geotargeting, or location targeting, this allows you to type in a specific address, city, county, or even the entire state and will push your Facebook ads to reach people based on the location. You can also add in multiple locations to run the same ad.

Gender/Age: Due to the ad being listed as a “Special Ad Category,” you will be unable to select specific genders or ages. This is to avoid gender/age discrimination in hiring practices.

Detailed Targeting: Again, because of the “Special Ad Category,” you are limited in what detailed targeting options are available. However, you can still target by interests. For instance, if you select “Health and Wellness,” your ad will be pushed specifically to people who have liked pages or marked that they were interested in events with a healthcare focus within the location settings described above.

Step 7: In the “Duration” section, you will decide how long you want your ad to run for. We would typically recommend a two week run time for ads; however, this is dependent on your budget for the ads.

Step 8: In the “Total Budget” section, you will decide how much you want to spend on the ad. Typically you can get it to as low as about $1/day. You can use the sliding payment scale to see how the budget will affect the number of people reached per day.

Step 9: In the next section, you can decide a few different things related to your ad. For the “Placements” section, you can choose if you want the ads to appear on other Facebook-owned platforms (such as Messenger and Instagram). If you are looking to recruit younger people for the position, we would recommend including Instagram.

“Meta Pixel” is a snippet of JavaScript code that allows you to track visitor activity on your website. For more information, please click HERE.

You can also now enter in your payment information.

Step 10: You’re all done! Click “Boost Post Now” to start running your ad.

It is important to analyze how your Facebook ads are performing to ensure that it is a good expense. To view how your ads have performed, visit the Facebook Ad Manager by clicking HERE. Below is an example of an ad from the WHCA/WiCAL Facebook page:

By clicking “View Results,” you can view a more detailed breakdown on the performance, such as cost per engagement.

If you are interested in learning more about using social media to recruit employees, please contact WHCA/WiCAL’s Director of Communications Allison Cramer.