Now that we’ve covered how to create job ads that actually capture passive candidates' attention in the previous section, let’s talk about how to take that messaging and actually get it in front of the right people.
Before we go further, let’s clarify one thing: posting a job ad and sponsoring a job ad on social media are two very different actions.
- Posting means publishing a job ad to your own company feed or page. It’s organic. Limited reach. And usually only seen by people who already follow you (if the social media algorithm even shows it).
- Sponsoring means paying to promote that ad through the platform’s job ad system. It’s how you reach people outside your network—and it’s essential for sourcing passive candidates.
Posting on social media isn’t about blasting out a generic announcement—it’s about pairing smart distribution with targeting precision.
You can’t just drop a job post on your Facebook Page and expect passive candidates to flood in.
That’s like taping your job to a streetlight and hoping the right person walks by. Technically possible. Practically useless.
If you want to use social media to attract the right talent, you need to understand two things:
- Where your candidates actually spend time
- How targeting works on social platforms—and how recruitment is very different from consumer marketing
- From there, only then should you start posting your job ads on social media to reach that passive talent
Let’s break it down.
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TL;DR
- Everyone is on social media. Your candidates are too.
- Different platforms = different demographics. Know where your audience lives.
- You can’t target job ads like consumer ads—EEO and compliance rules apply.
- To reach the right candidates, you need smart targeting and campaign feedback loops.
- Hireline handles all of this automatically, across platforms.
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First: Yes, Your Candidates Are on Social Media
Let’s address a common misconception right up front.
"My candidates aren’t on social media."
They are.
- Over 72% of U.S. adults use social media daily (Pew Research)
- That includes skilled trades, nurses, logistics workers, retail, and restaurant talent
The question isn’t whether they’re there. It’s whether your ad is reaching them the right way.
Which Platform Should You Use?
Here’s a quick cheat sheet on where your talent lives and subsequently where you might want to post job ads:
- TikTok: Gen Z hourly workers (retail, food service, warehouse)
- Instagram: Younger millennials, early-career creative/tech, retail
- Facebook: Older millennials, Gen X, skilled trades, healthcare, logistics
- YouTube: Universal reach, great for blue-collar, tech, and mid-career pros
Pro Tip: It’s not just who you target—it’s where they are, and when they’re receptive.
Posting vs Advertising
Just posting your job on your company’s social feed is not enough. That only reaches your existing followers (if you’re lucky).
If you want reach, you need to run a paid job ad using that platform’s recruitment tools.
This gives you:
- Geo-targeting by city, zip, or radius
- Platform-based audience tools
- Analytics to track impressions, clicks, and more
But Recruitment Targeting Isn’t Like Consumer Targeting
Due to EEO compliance, you can’t target ads based on protected characteristics (like age, gender, race, etc.) the way you can for product marketing.
So how do you still reach the right people?
The Secret: Lookalike Audiences + Feedback Loops
Most social platforms let you build lookalike audiences based on seed data. That seed could be:
- Recent hires from your ATS
- Past applicants
- Candidate lead lists
Once seeded, the platform finds people with similar behaviors and attributes (professionally, not personally).
Then, as people engage with your ad, you need a system to:
- Track who converts
- Tag quality leads
- Feed that data back into the platform to train the targeting algorithm
This feedback loop is how you go from "pretty good reach" to dialed-in targeting.
When you feed back signals about which leads are high-quality (or low-quality), the social media platform uses that input to continually refine who it shows your ad to. It’s not a one-and-done process—it’s machine learning in motion. Just like Netflix gets better at recommending shows the more you watch, social platforms get better at showing your job ad to people who are more likely to convert.
That’s why building in feedback signals—positive or negative—is critical to making the most of your ad budget.
Don’t Forget About Frequency
Every social platform gives you a frequency score—this tells you how many times the same person has seen your ad.
Why it matters:
- If your job ad frequency hits 5+, and you’re still spending budget to hit that person again and again, you're burning dollars.
- The first few impressions are powerful. After that, you're just background noise.
Plug: Hireline automatically monitors and caps frequency across channels to maximize your spend and avoid fatigue.
So, What About Conversions?
Targeting means nothing if you don’t have a way to capture leads.
That means routing candidate leads and capturing contact info with:
- A fast, low-friction form
- A clean mobile-first landing page
- Ideally, a backend connection to your ATS
You can build this manually (Zapier, custom workflows, integrations)
With all of this in mind, once you understand where your candidates spend time, how to set up proper targeting, and how to think about frequency and conversion, you’re ready to post your first job ad on the platform that fits your hiring needs.
Just remember: hitting "boost" isn’t enough. Posting job ads on social media the right way takes real planning, testing, and optimization.
Plug: Hireline Handles All of This For You
- We pick the best platforms for your audience
- Build and test job ad creative
- Seed the targeting algorithm using our data partners
- Run feedback loops based on lead quality
- Control frequency across ad channels
- Automatically route leads to your team or ATS
You get clean leads. We handle the rest.
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Next up in The Passive Talent Pipeline Series: Engaging Passive Talent — The 24-Hour Rule and Messaging Systems That Work