LinkedIn job ads don't work for remote roles. Here's why.

Big title. I know. Clickbait? Maybe. But I wanted to share our experience with posting LinkedIn job ads (paid/boosted job postings) for two reasons:

1. Transparently show our (horrible) results after piloting two ads for €160, so you don't have to do the same. ??
2. Learn from those who may know better (seriously, if you have it figured out, share your experience in the comments or write me a DM) ????

Step 1: Setting up our job ads

We generally don't use job boards (only our own) or general postings for the open positions in our network. But after hearing some positive comments about promoted LinkedIn job postings we thought we may as well give it a shot.

We created two ads, one for a Mid-Senior Frontend, and one for a Mid-Senior Backend Developer role (see image below). They now show as 'paused' now because we stopped the paid campaigns. LI also erased the number of 'apply clicks', which were visible when the ads were still active.

But we ran into several problems from the get go ??

• While these role were open remotely to candidates from several European countries (all European countries +/-2hrs around UK to be exact), LI only allowed us to select one country when we selected the 'remote' option. We chose Spain.
• We set the daily budget to €5 per position to start our test. LI said that would result in 25-30 applicants, but they recommended a daily budget of €12, also yielding 25-30 applicants. Confusing? Yes. We stuck to €5. (See our actual application numbers further below)
• We didn't want candidates to apply through LinkedIn, because that would be yet another channel to monitor, so we chose the option to redirect to our own job postings that funnel directly into our ATS. Choosing this option meant we essentially lost reliable tracking (their numbers didn't match ours) and other features only available to direct LI applications.
• Since my account is the one connected to our credit card, I had to set up the jobs and I was the contact visible on the job ads. I couldn't set that to my colleagues Shilpa and Sofia who are in charge of screening and interviewing. This resulted in me receiving all sorts of requests (read on to find out what exactly).

Step 2: Running our campaigns: The stats ????

• In total, we ran both campaigns for 16 days.
• We received 87 applications for the Frontend, and 56 applications for the Backend role directly in our ATS.
• I received 3 InMails from developers with links to their CV or website.
• I received 30 connection requests from developers (most without a personalised message or any other comment).

Sounds like good results? Hold on.

(Side note: I also received about 30 connection requests from agencies, outsourcing, recruiting and staffing companies from all over the place but mostly from India and Eastern Europe. In addition, I got about 10 emails from these types of companies as well. These came so quickly after I started the campaigns, there could some kind of automation behind this)

Here are the issues (stats are for applicants in ATS):

1. Skill fit:

For the frontend role 78% of applicants didn't even fit the general/basic skills required for frontend development. For the backend role 56% didn't have general fit. Even worse, for either role 0% of applicants matched enough relevant criteria to consider them strong enough to process further for these roles. Specifically the required tech stack wasn't matching well enough. Only upside: We can keep them in mind for possible future openings with other partners/clients.

2. Location fit:

For Frontend, only 40% of applications were from Europe, for Backend it was even less, only 23%. While we love to give opportunity and visibility to strong candidates outside of Europe, fact of the matter is that most of our clients are still only looking in specific countries and often only in the EU. Our criteria "Spain (Remote)" only resulted in 4 profiles from Spain (that's less than 3%), the rest were from all over the place.

Most concerning: Of the people who roughly fit the skill description, NONE were from the locations we could hire from. Location is what we call a 'deal-breaker'. Companies (should) know exactly where they can and can't hire from, and candidates outside of these locations are rarely considered for the role.

We also noticed these patterns:

• Lots of junior candidates, not matching the required expertise of 3+ years, especially for the frontend role.
• Most senior backend profiles that could potentially be interesting for other companies are from non-EU countries, especially from Turkey.
• Most candidates are from Asia, Africa, South America.

3. Candidate processing issues:

• Candidates reached out on too many channels, making it hard to monitor them effectively. Overall it was very time consuming and created lots of noise. LinkedIn inbox, connection request inbox and my personal Email were full.
• Total screening & processing time of 143 candidates in ATS only (not counting other channels): at least 5hrs. We don't use automated screenings, but use systems & templates to reply to candidates as automatically as possible.
• Candidate experience: For those who applied via our ATS the process was straightforward and they received a thank you & then rejection email quickly. For everyone else, we took quite a while to go through them, filter and respond. Not ideal experience for them in addition to the extra work for us.

Step 3: Wrapping up - How do we stop this?

When we started the ads, we were aware that we may create a lot of noise. But we wanted to keep going until we found at least one matching candidate to get an idea of our candidate lead cost. However, after 14 days and 140€ we decided to stop the adverts. So we encountered the next problem:

How do we stop the advertising campaign without taking down the free job post?

Remember how we had set a daily budget of €5? Well, we couldn't remove the budget, set it to zero or even decrease it. LinkedIn only allowed us to set a higher daily budget. Seriously?...

Well, okay then. We managed to hack it by changing from daily budget to total budget. But we couldn't set it to what we had already spend to stop the ads immediately. LI made us spend another 10% on top of our total spend up to that point for each role. Also, the phrasing 'resume' is misleading. The system wouldn't let us save changes, so whenever we cancelled we were back to spending €5 per role per day.

Final thoughts and questions:

??We posted during the holiday season (Christmas and New Year), and thought we got a lot of responses given the time of year, but just not the right ones. Would this have been different during a 'normal' time of year?

??We are NOT in-house recruiters, but work on roles for our partner/client companies. We cannot reveal the name of the company in the job advert, but describe them as closely as possible. We reveal the client later in direct conversation with the candidate. Was no client name a turnoff for the right candidates?

?? Our budget was 'experimental' and lower than what LI recommended. Would we have gotten matches with a higher budget? What is the minimum spend you should expect per qualified candidate on a sponsored job post?

My preliminary conclusions

??Job ads could result in finding the needle in the haystack, but they create a lot of noise and tons of extra work for HR and recruiting.

??Relying on job postings and ads alone will never get you the best talent.

?? Our main approach to finding top talent is to directly & personally reach out to candidates we identify in our direct and extended networks. This may seem very "old-school", but using the right tech and automation whenever possible, it has yielded the best results for us and is optimised for time spent.

What are your experiences with sponsoring job postings on LinkedIn? Hacks you'd like to share with others? Share them in the comments or drop me a message.