9 Tips: getting the perfect job ad in front of the ideal candidate

Let’s face it: a lot of advertising budget in recruitment marketing is wasted on the wrong ad campaigns right now. A lot of spend goes into showing the wrong people the wrong job ads. These mistakes are weighing on your recruitment results. Let’s change that.

Why getting the right person for the right job is crucial

There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t be chasing mismatches when it comes to recruitment. For one: it completely misses the point of recruitment. Of course, you want to make the right hire.

But apart from wanting to achieve your obvious end goal, there are some tangible and practical reasons you should match the right person with the right job: 

1. Minimising turnover. In case of a mismatch, people are way more likely to leave their new jobs. 
2. Increasing ROAS. A high turnover also means you need to hire more often, leading to a lower return on ad spend.
3. Faster ramp-up time. Better matches mean new employees can get used to their new position way more quickly.
4. Positive employer brand. Better matches means your reputation as a good employer grows. With easier talent attraction in the future as a result.

These are just a handful of examples of why getting the right person for the right job is crucial, though. There’s a lot more to be said about this, but it’s not our main focus, right now.

Here at Wonderkind, we want to enable everyone to do the job they love, every day. In order to do so, you’ll need a proper understanding of what’s possible in recruitment marketing right now.

How to reach the unreachables on social media

A commonly made mistake we encounter is that recruitment marketers spend ±85% of their recruitment budgets on job boards. Which is a very hefty investment for targeting just 10% of the market actively seeking jobs.

The problem is this:

Most recruitment marketers don’t know how to use social media for recruitment purposes. While this is where they can reach most of the job market’s passive job seekers. It’s where they can get an amazing amount of eyeballs on their job ads and brand.

The answer to getting the right job in front of the ideal candidate, then, is to combine job board multiposting with social media advertising. The latter shouldn’t be too hard, when you use the right recruitment marketing automation tool.

Making sure you pick the best candidate

Consider this: you’re now making full use of social media for your recruitment marketing campaigns. You’re getting the right type of applications in. Things are looking up, right?

The thing is: you’re still going to need to pick the best candidate for the job. And that’s easier said than done. Even for the most seasoned talent acquisition experts. 

The role of effective interviewing processes

Effective interviewing helps recruiters pick the best candidate by asking good questions and listening carefully. It helps them understand candidates better beyond just their resumes.

By using structured techniques, recruiters can compare candidates fairly and choose the ones who fit the job role and the company best. Some helpful interviewing techniques:  

• Behavioural interviewing
• Competency-based interviews
• Job simulations
• Practical assessments

These types of techniques can help ensure your interviewing process is fair and unbiased.

Considering both skills and cultural fit

Of course, you need someone with the right skills. But it’s also very important to evaluate a candidate’s cultural fit. Job interviews provide an opportunity to assess a candidate's cultural fit within the organisation. 

Recruiters can gauge whether candidates share the company's values, beliefs, and work ethic, which are crucial for maintaining a positive organisational culture. Better cultural fit means people feel happier working at their new jobs. 

But enough about picking the best candidate, let’s get back to the topic at hand. 

9 practical tips for putting the right ad in front of the right person

Below you’ll find 9 practical tips that’ll help you ace your next recruitment marketing campaign. Follow these tips and you’re bound to reach those unreachables we mentioned earlier. Let’s dive in.

1. Define your ideal candidate early

It’s common knowledge in any field of marketing that you should know your audience. If you’re marketing a job, this is no different. You need to know exactly who you’re looking for, in order to create job ads that resonate. 

We suggest you start out by creating an ideal candidate profile. To create one, you should first:

1. Define the job itself and its responsibilities
2. Take company culture into consideration
3. Analyse current top performing employees
4. Define both the job’s hard and soft skills
5. Write a well-thought out job description

It would also be a great idea to turn the above into an ideal candidate profile template. This lets you easily fill out such profiles with every new job you’re hiring for.  

2. Use catchy and relevant headlines

Similar to any other marketing campaign, when you’re running job ads, you’re in the business of capturing attention. Especially when recruiting on social media platforms, you’re vying for attention with content built to distract.

Think long and hard about the type of headline you want to include in your job ad. It should be clear, concise, catchy and relevant to your ideal candidates. Not necessarily the easiest of tasks. Do make sure you get creative. It’ll help you stand out from the crowd.

3. Skip the lengthy forms and resume uploads

At Wonderkind, we firmly oppose old-school recruitment practices and hiring processes that require candidates to upload a plethora of documents. I mean, we get it. That’s the way it’s always been done.

But it’s 2024. You should try to make the recruitment process as frictionless as possible. Especially when you’re running job ads on social media, make sure you skip the lengthy forms and resume uploads. Don’t make your candidates jump through endless hoops.

4. Highlight benefits and growth opportunities

Your job ads should take both transparency as well as the future into consideration. Consider adding salary ranges to your visual creatives. Some countries even require job ads or job descriptions to mention these. 

But also make sure to include growth opportunities in your job advertisements. Candidates will convert more easily if they feel the vacancy caters to their future needs, instead of just their current ones. Take the long-term recruitment marketing approach.

5. Optimise for social algorithms

We’re talking social media here. There are algorithms to consider, too. If you want your job ads to be top performers on the social media platforms you're running them on, you need to be aware of how these algorithms work.

How do you go about this?

First of all, you need to understand each social media platform’s unique algorithm. Instagram isn’t LinkedIn. Next, make sure to:

• Use eye-catching visuals such as images or videos
• Keep your posts concise and clear so they’re easily scannable
• Include relevant hashtags as per the target platform’s best practices
• Encourage engagement and sharing with CTAs to increase the job ad’s visibility

Which brings us to our next tip on how to get the most out of your job ads.

6. Include compelling CTAs

This is more last-mile type of stuff. It’s not enough to create the best possible job advertisement for the ideal candidate. Your job ad’s simply not going to achieve what you want it to if you don’t include the right call to action.

Your call to action is what’s going to turn impressions into applicants. Pay it the attention it deserves. Make your CTAs semantically relevant (not just ‘Click here’), short, snappy and persuasive. 

Starting out your copywriting with a verb in the imperative is best practice, by the way. So think of writing something like “Start your dream job as a [job title] today”. And don’t forget to use bold and contrasting colours in your visual CTAs. Those help them stand out, too.

7. Use Wonderkind for programmatic ads

Looking to run job ads on social media, at scale? Look no further. With Wonderkind’s programmatic job advertising software, you’ll have 1000s of striking job ads up and running in no time. 

This wonderful piece of talent attraction technology lets you instantly turn your XMLs into visually stunning social media job ads. These are bound to help you attract the top talent you’re looking for.

8. Use visually appealing images and multimedia

For us, this is a given, really, and we’ve already referred to it in the above. But it does bear repeating, nonetheless. You should take care to use visually appealing images, videos and other assets in your job ads. 

Especially on social media platforms. People scrolling through their feeds on these platforms are looking to be entertained. The content they’re browsing is algorithmically pushed to them, based on their specific interests.

If you want to create thumbstopping job ads, the visual material you use needs to be on par with what they’re already being served. And make sure your visuals aren’t just eye-catching, but that they have some potential entertainment value, too. 

Also, try memes. Engagement and conversion rates for memes are generally a lot higher than other content types. Why not use this to your advantage? 

9. Encourage employee referrals on social media

Encouraging employees to share job openings on social media can help reach passive candidates, people who might not actively search for jobs. These referrals add credibility to your company and often result in higher-quality candidates who fit well with your culture.

It's a cost-effective and efficient way to recruit, as referrals can speed up the hiring process and reduce recruitment expenses.

Also, involving employees in the hiring process boosts their engagement and shows that their input is valued. Basically, employee referrals on social media complement job ads and help identify top talent effectively.

Why RMAs, job boards and staffing firms should implement these tips

The above tips are especially important for recruitment marketing agencies (RMAs), job boards, and staffing firms. These types of companies often have a lot of vacancies to fill.

Meaning they’re always on the lookout for optimisation of their job advertisements. At least, they should be. If you work at an RMA, job board or a staffing firm, implement these 9 tips. And please, reach out to us and let us know the results.

We’re more than happy to update our list based on your feedback and insights.

How Wonderkind can help you improve your social job ads today

In the meantime, if you haven’t yet, we’d love for you to give Wonderkind’s talent attraction technology a spin. If you want to run 1000s of job ads at scale on social media platforms, we’d dare say it’s the best piece of tech out there.

Basically, it lets you automate talent attraction on social media. This saves time, fills positions, and gets more eyeballs on your brand. What are you waiting for? Book a 15 min. free demo with one of our talent attraction experts, today.