A Modern Take on Recruitment

Sunshine and lazy lake days are on the horizon, and our partners at the Catawba Island Club (CIC) have been busy preparing for the upcoming summer season. CIC needed to fill a bunch of summer positions to account for the increased activity on the island. But in a region filled with other seasonal companies, including Cedar Point, they were competing with other Catawba businesses for summer hires. Our Performance Marketing and Social Media teams were ready to jump in to help. 
 

The search for summer jobs 

With college students heading home for the break and high schoolers searching for a way to spend their summers, they’re the perfect demographic to hire for the positions, but CIC needed help getting in front of them. Originally, CIC planned on sponsored Facebook ads, but hiring discrimination limits the ability to target individuals by certain characteristics such as age.   

To avoid wasting ad spend on individuals likely uninterested in a temporary, seasonal position, our team suggested utilizing TikTok instead due to its younger demographic. With their approval, we ran a split test on both TikTok and Facebook with the same budget for both platforms. 
 

A targeted platform 

While hiring campaigns prevent age discrimination by targeting a specific age group, TikTok’s popularity among younger groups led us to believe we would hit our target market of 18-24 years olds. The primary focus of the ad was to show that CIC is a great place to work with friends and make lifelong summer memories.  

After running the ads for roughly three weeks, we dove deep into the analytics. Surface-level metrics like cost-per-click and click-through rate showed that Facebook saw more clicks and engagement; however, demographics aligned with our predictions.  

On Facebook, 18-24-year-olds only made up for a total of 5% of the audience impressions. Meaning only 5% of our desired audience saw our hiring ad since we couldn't narrow in on an age in the ad setup.  

However, TikTok was another story. Out of the 296,805 impressions, 75% were by our desired audience of 18-24-year-olds. 
 

The payoff 

So, although initial reporting makes Facebook appear to be the better platform to move more ad spend into for future summer hiring campaigns, a deeper look into the demographics reporting makes TikTok a more desirable platform to use in this scenario. Split testing is a valuable strategy to see what platforms align with your campaign goals and make future decisions. Overall, by using TikTok, CIC successfully filled all their summer positions ahead of the season.  

We’re proud our Performance Marketing and Social Media Teams’ combined expertise and insider knowledge could lead to such a successful campaign. If you’re looking to launch a hiring campaign but are lost when it comes to where to start, let us know. We’d love to help.