When & How to Leverage Social Media and Craigslist Ads

Advertisements on social media as well as Craigslist offer excellent avenues for diversifying your applicant sources beyond Indeed. Team Engine data from thousands of social media advertisements and hundreds of Craigslist advertisements in the last few months reaffirm these channels as worthwhile components of your recruiting funnel, especially for specific job types.

Read on for highlights on when and how to leverage these sources, as well as summary data on the frequency of applicants by job role.

Getting Started

Start by taking an honest assessment of what you’re willing to pay for a hire for this specific role at this specific point in time. For some roles, this will be $20 and for other roles it could be hundreds of dollars (or more!), which means spending a longer period of time testing each of these sources.

Applicants from these sources come in waves and vary dramatically role-to-role, so we suggest testing both sources for a specific job for at least two weeks. We’ve iterated on both social media and Craigslist ad formats over time, including targeting selections and posting structure, to help ensure that posting ads through Team Engine not only saves time vs. posting manually but is also more effective in generating applicants.

The concept of applicant quality varies by employer and role, but we’re seeing tons of applicants get hired from these sources, and we’re seeing employers make ad spending a regular part of their hiring process.

Applicants from Social Media Ads

Social media advertisements through Team Engine, which post on both Facebook and Instagram, recur weekly for between $50-$250/week.

A higher budget buys more ad “impressions” (or views) among the targeted audience. Increasing your social media advertising budget will increase applicant flow, but not necessarily by a consistent amount, i.e. spending twice the money will not net twice the applicants. We encourage starting with a $50 social media advertising budget for each role.

The job types that frequently receive applicants from social media ads (i.e. 70%+ of jobs of that type receive applicants) include the following:

• Diesel Mechanic
• Maintenance Tech
• Indoor Laborer
• Equipment Operator
• Office
• Driver (with CDL)
• General Mechanic
• Outdoor Laborer
• Manager
• Sales
• Driver (without CDL)
• Manufacturing

Job types that sometimes receive applicants from social media ads (i.e. 50-70% of jobs of that type receive applicants) include:

• Customer Service
• Construction
• Nursing

Retail jobs occasionally receive applicants from social media ads (i.e. <50% of the time).

Applicants from Craigslist Ads

Craigslist advertisements through Team Engine repost at the top of Craigslist’s job board weekly for $50/week in the relevant job category and geographic area.

The job types that frequently receive applicants from Craigslist ads (i.e. 70%+ of jobs of that type receive applicants) include:

• Maintenance Tech
• Office
• Indoor Laborer
• Manufacturing
• Construction
• Driver (without CDL)

Job types that sometimes receive applicants from Craigslist ads (i.e. 50-70% of jobs of that type receive applicants) include:

• Outdoor Laborer
• Equipment Operator

Job types that occasionally receive applicants from Craigslist ads (i.e. <50% of the time) include:

• Driver (with CDL)
• General Mechanic

‍