How to Recruit on Facebook in 9 Easy Steps

Facebook is the largest social networking website in the world and the second most visited website on the World Wide Web (behind Google). It has also quickly become a strategic recruiting and business tool for companies large and small alike. Posting a job and learning how to recruit on Facebook is simple. Facebook allows you to recruit or post jobs for free, which makes it a cost-effective tool that reaches thousands of targeted viewers.

If you are new to Facebook recruiting, we have laid out instructions on how to get started so that you can make a new hire. Developing a recruitment strategy and posting an ad on Facebook is part of what is needed to get your position noticed by millions of viewers.

Knowing what tactics to employ in your overall approach is what will give you the edge in recruiting on Facebook. Although Facebook is a world-class social medium and recruitment tool, it can be easy to go unnoticed and unheard on this platform.

1. Build Your Website & Facebook Career Pages

Regardless of your company’s size, as part of your overall recruitment strategy, you should develop a simple career page on your website to include as part of your overall Facebook recruiting strategy. It is the perfect landing zone for candidates, passive or otherwise, to locate opportunities within your organization.

Your company’s dedicated Facebook careers page should be presented with a content strategy with a direct focus on recruiting for positions and interacting with top talent. It is a place where job seekers can come, knowing that they will not be sold to or solicited in any way.

As we speak more to later, making mention of your corporate brand, its mission, culture, and primary service or product line, as well as the job opportunity, can help build a more complete picture for job seekers. Here is an example of AT&T’s page:

AT&T has several visuals throughout its page, including a cover image, logo, and photo showing its workers in action. (Source: AT&T’s Careers page)

There are many options to share your company’s story. These include photos, videos, posts, and events.

2. Include Storytelling and Images

Everyone wants to better understand who your company is and what it stands for. The storyline of your company’s history can garner interest from users. Highlight the unique strengths of your organization’s story.

For example, is your company several hundred-years-old? Was it the first of its kind? Did it begin a new industry trend? Did a first-generation American build your company? Is this an organization that is primarily governed by women-owners? Anything, and we mean anything, can be an important (and intriguing) differentiating factor that draws candidates to, not just the job opportunity, your company brand overall.

Additionally, images are powerful additions to any social medium platform. The fact is that not all viewers or job seekers take time to read all the text on job posts. Photos of staff and customers having fun can draw in job seekers and engage them to a degree where they do take time to read the storyline.

Marriott utilizes all types of images and interview clips of its employees fulfilling customer promises, as well as advertising for new jobs with employees commenting on those opportunities.

3. Utilize ‘Facebook Groups’

Making wise use of Facebook Groups can be another secret weapon for employers. Within Facebook, there are literally thousands of job search group sites spanning the entire platform. The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that Facebook Groups are similar to mini-job boards inside of Facebook. Both recruiters and job seekers most commonly comprise of the “groups,” and viewers can post, comment, and share job opportunities with their network and friends.

4. Maximize ‘Facebook Live’

Facebook’s “Live” feature offers another platform in which to share, or announce, new positions, and other business-related announcements that companies wish to get to share with the world-at-large. Setting up this feature is easy, and you can begin using it right away.

5. Activate ‘Jobs on Facebook’

Although Jobs on Facebook is currently only active in the United States and Canada, according to SHRM, this is Facebook’s most direct, job hosting platform it has. This is set up to gather open vacancies from employers to share with job seekers.

Much of the time, larger companies will use Jobs on Facebook for high-volume recruiting (such as for healthcare-related, retail associate, and customer service opportunities) or positions (such as Amazon distribution center roles).

If you’re interested in posting jobs on multiple boards at once, consider ZipRecruiter. It posts directly to Facebook along with more than 100 other job sites. It also saves your job applicant data, so you don’t have to filter through applications from multiple job boards. Start posting jobs free today.

Visit ZipRecruiter

6. Integrate Facebook With Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

Facebook has done a wonderful job of partnering with ATS vendors to better equip larger employers that typically have an ATS. This allows them to post jobs within the ATS and have them automatically uploaded into Facebook Jobs.

There are two ways that employers can utilize their ATS to upload to Facebook. The first is referred to as “native apply” and the second is called “redirect.”

Native apply refers to Facebook’s Jobs XML Feed, which allows ATS providers to publish jobs on behalf of their customers, who are employers, directly to Facebook. The redirect option refers to the process of redirecting job seekers to the employer’s career site from Facebook where they can apply for the job opportunity directly.

7. Build an Employer Brand on Facebook

As you have probably deduced by now, successfully recruiting on Facebook should not be managed as an afterthought to your other recruitment efforts. If your company wants to see great success with Facebook, then recruiting strategies, as we have offered, must be employed to some extent to compete with the overall competition from other corporate Facebook users.

Curating your company brand image to best match the confines of Facebook does not take a lot of effort. All that we are referring to is the practice of speaking directly to the audience that utilizes Facebook to view job postings, as well as view brands and companies that they enjoy following. Understanding your Facebook customer, or viewer is essential. Facebook Analytics helps with this very need. It provides a more complete understanding of your business relating to your website, Facebook applications, and Facebook Page.

8. Target Audience Advertising

As we have noted with Facebook Analytics, how you choose to connect with viewers will largely determine how successful your company is at attracting job seekers and hiring top talent. Content, photos, and storytelling are all important. The recommendation here is that you do not have a flat advertising narrative that overlaps from ad to ad. Make it unique, and once you get interest or posts from interested, qualified parties, engage with them immediately.

The good news is that Facebook can assist you in this endeavor, as, in almost all of the strategies noted above. It allows employers and job posters to target an audience for each recruitment ad based on a variety of criteria, including location, years of experience, career interests, and desired pay.

9. Create a Facebook Job Post

Posting job ads on Facebook is a great way to get the word out about jobs you have posted on job boards like Indeed. Since Facebook job postings are free, you can create them at your leisure and then invite applicants to apply via your ATS so that all of your applicant data and activity are in a single location. Learn more about writing a job posting in our article on how to write and post a job.

Check out our quick step-by-step guide on how to post a job on Facebook.

How Facebook Helps You Find Talent

Facebook gathers information about its users’ education and experience. When candidates apply, their employment data automatically populates into your job posting file. Any assistant with access to your business page will be able to see and make notes on the job candidate’s application, as well as share it with others via email, for example.

In fact, the users of Facebook tend to mirror the demographics of workers in general, with most being anywhere from the ages of 18 to 65. That makes it a great place to attract working-age individuals. However, Facebook user data is skewed slightly by gender. In the younger age groups, there are slightly more males, whereas in older age groups, there are slightly more females.

Facebook Users by Age & Gender

Facebook users by gender and age groups. (Source: Statista.com)

Bottom Line

Learning how to recruit on Facebook is pivotal for businesses to ensure they aren’t missing out on quality talent. There are numerous strategies you can employ, but your focus should be on attracting and engaging job seekers. As you begin to implement recruiting tools, be sure your career page, Facebook page, and the content therein all present a united front that embodies your company’s brand identity.