Are you struggling to hire entry-level workers? Don’t Sleep On TikTok Advertising
About a year ago we released an article about TikTok resumes, from the position of “we are going to have to give in eventually.” A gentle nudge, a passive acceptance of trends and emerging recruitment technologies.
Today, we recommend a more active approach.
It’s time to get on board with TikTok as a part of your recruitment marketing strategy. Why?
TikTok ads.
TikTok advertising allows you to segment your advertising to specific audiences that you no longer have access to on Meta platforms since the changes, especially to special category ads, from 2021 to now.
Using TikTok, you are able to run employment ads and target:
Demographics:
- Age
- Gender
While Meta has removed the ability to target men or women in employment advertising special categories—and understandably to reduce discrimination—TikTok still allows for this capability. This is very useful when you are looking to reach candidates for internships or for entry-level roles where less than 2 years of experience is needed.
As well as a more vast set of psychographics:
- Behaviors
- Interests
- Attitudes
- Aspirations
And fun fact: you only need to have a TikTok For Business account and are off the hook for running the account and creating engaging content for the platform all the time. That should remove at least some hesitations.
Proof of Concept
When you think about reaching for entry-level or high-volume roles, you are likely focusing on emerging high school students and new grads, and/or those under the age of 25. Where are they spending their time digitally? Not Facebook.
Facebook ads are reaching the moms of those you want to hire—you are not talking directly to your desired audience.
Don’t let the fact that these ads are on TikTok scare you off. No one has to dance. TikTok is about movement, engagement, and sound. That effect can be executed well without choreography and trending audio.
We are working with a client who was immediately reluctant to consider TikTok as a part of their digital advertising campaign strategy. But we felt strongly that they would need to push into this area in order to reach the correct demographic with their “now hiring” message. After several weeks of moving through our ad-testing methodology, the results started to become apparent to them. They could continue running ads that performed well by vanity metric standards but when they looked into the details, the ads were performing well—but with the wrong audience.
While the test did provide excellent information around the content that their target demographic was engaging with (video) they realized that continuing to expect the necessary results would be a futile attempt if they did not include TikTok moving forward.
The first week of testing has shown promising results, with more conversions in a few days than in the first 2 weeks of testing on Facebook combined. They went from a heavy-handed “no” to TikTok, to resignation that they needed to include it, to now feeling excitement about advertising on the platform. In fact, they are considering a social media plan for organic TikTok videos.
The numbers did the talking; what we knew months ago needed to be proven with data. And now we have a happy, TikTok-converted client.
