Troubleshooting Job Board Ads (Job Posts)

Troubleshooting Job Board Ads (Job Posts)

Uh-Oh. We're not getting as many candidates this week as last week from our job posts.
-- Every Recruiter Ever

Overview

There are three potential issues with a job post, and it is usually easy to figure out which of the three issues you are dealing with:

Technical - Something technical has broken, and something in your ad to apply funnel isn't working.
Content - People are losing interest or aren't interested in your job ads.
Budget - Your budget is not enough to buy enough views, clicks, and job applies. 

Here's a quick guide to troubleshooting job post problems to see which of these three issues you're dealing with:

A Decrease in Ad Views Indicates a Budget Problem

Getting few impressions means there is likely a budget issue. Contact your recruitment marketing agency and/or job board partners to determine the proper budget. 
2021 Note: This year, we project a rapid rise in recruitment advertising prices from job boards as the economy recovers. You may have to adjust your budget frequently to maintain a healthy candidate flow.

A Decrease in Clicks and Applies Indicates A Content Problem

This means that people are not interested enough in your job ad to click on it. Interest in your jobs is relative: what your ads say and what job posts competing for the same talent say all affect a job seeker's decision to click on your job ad.  If you notice that there is a significant week over week change in ad clicks and applies:
  1. Check what the competition is offering. Remember, your competition isn't who you compete with for sales. Your competition is who is trying to hire the same people. For example, if you are hiring cooks at $13/hour and an abundance of factory and warehouse jobs are available in the area at $19 or $20, people will click on your jobs less often. 
  2.  Make sure you highlight bonuses and benefits, and they matter to the people you hire. Advertising a 401K might not be as effective as a $2000 sign-on bonus (with appropriate time-on-the-job requirements). 
  3. Freshen up your ad copy and job title. Sometimes, content just goes stale, and people stop noticing. 
2021 Note: As competitor pay rates go up, your clicks and applies will go down until you adjust. Plan on updating your job ads frequently as the economy recovers. 

Zeros Indicate Potential Technical Problems

If you have 1000 ad clicks and zero applies... something is probably broken. If you had 25 applies last week and 0 this week, something is probably broken. 

In many cases, you can figure out the problem quickly by finding your job post and trying to apply just like a job seeker.  Before you try applying, remember to put your browser in incognito or private mode, so you have to deal with every step a new applicant does.

The most frequent technical problems we see in job posts are:
  1. Bad links: A wrong letter in a URL. Typos like myco.com instead of myco.net. These can lead to "not found" and "500 errors" on many career websites.
  2. Expired jobs:  A job has expired, but the ads on the job board are still up.
  3. Paused Spend: A job can be taken down for quality issues, or the "go" button wasn't pushed on the back-end. The campaign can show as active, but there's no actual spend. This can likely be the issue if a job has no traffic whatsoever.
  4. Bad API Calls. The job board is trying to send candidates to the wrong address when they do a native application.
What to do about technical problems: To fix them, you'll need to contact your recruitment advertising agency, career website, or ATS administrator, and in some cases, the job board where you found the problem. When you do reach out, sharing the URL where you found the job ad, and the URL where you were sent to apply will help get a technical problem fixed quickly.

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