Recruit Millennials with Facebook Ads—You Know You Want to!

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 An important part of blogging is keeping up with trends. When it comes to HR trends for 2013, millennials in the workplace, social recruiting, and mobile are about as hot as it gets. A blog post that incorporates all three topics simply cannot fail! So, without further adieu:

Three tips for using Facebook Ads to recruit millennials.

But wait! What about mobile?

Well that’s a very good question and a perfect lead in to…

Tip #1

Use Facebook Ads to Make Your Recruiting Mobile

Millennials have grown up with mobile smartphones, e-readers, and tablets (iPads). They use these devices to organize their lives, stay social, and to search for and apply to jobs. In fact, about 77 percent of millennials will be using their smartphones to look for work.

I don’t know if you’ve tried LinkedIn’s mobile app, but I have, and I can tell you without hesitation that it’s not fun. Most job boards and company career sites are also extremely difficult to navigate via mobile. That makes reaching mobile candidates pretty darn tricky, but fear not! Facebook Ads are incredibly mobile-friendly.

Using Facebook Ads to promote your job posts will not only make those posts easy to access via mobile, but Facebook promotes those ads directly in mobile users ‘News Feeds’ so they get prime real estate.

Tip #2

Know Your Target

A millennial refers to people born between 1979 and 1999. This generation is coming of age and entering the workplace en masse, hence their hot-topic status amongst recruiters.

Millennials are usually depicted as hipsters with a love of vintage, bacon, fancy coffee, thick rimmed glasses, and skinny jeans. They are also very aware of these stereotypes and enjoy them, in an ironic kind of way!

Even more important than understanding millennial culture is knowing what they look for in an employer, and what they want most out of their careers.

According to both PWC and Achievers’ comprehensive surveys of millennials in the workforce, the top things that this generation values when it comes to their workplace are:

  • Challenge
  • Opportunity for Growth
  • Flexibility

You need to keep these values in mind whenever creating content, and job posts geared towards millennials.

This blog post provides a more detailed description of what millennials want from employers. 

Tip #3

Apply Your Knowledge

Facebook Ads are extremely effective for targeting specific demographics, and they just keep getting better. When recruiting with Facebook, you can capitalize on this by using the social network’s ads to target the candidates you want with the kind of content that appeals to them the most.

Facebook’s Graph contains a massive amount of personal information on its users, so you can use Facebook Ads to target potential hires based on their specific skill set, demographics, and interests. With that in mind, you can set up your ads to specifically reach out to millennials. And since you can be certain that your Ads are only reaching millennials, you can use what you know about this demographic to expertly tailor them for maximum results.

For example, you could run an ad that highlights your company’s flexible telecommuting policy and use an image of a Buddy Holly look-a-like happily working away.

There you have it. Three easy tips for recruiting millennials with Facebook. Happy social recruiting!

By Ryan St. Germaine