“People at different stages of their lives are doing different things, and they’re all

using Google.”

Susan Wojcicki

It’s a rare group of businesses that are so integral to the fabric

of society that their names become commonly-used verbs.

For a time, Xerox managed it. FedEx is still used as a verb from

time to time. But since the dawn of the modern web, Google

has been the most obvious example.

It’s not just a powerful web platform, it’s an activity.

Of course, Google is also an extremely integral part of the

recruitment landscape. Nowadays, when businesses worry

about SEO (search engine optimization), they’re almost always

worrying about Google in particular. When you optimize your

career site or your job landing page for web searches, you’re

essentially trying to keep up with Google’s efforts to deliver

relevant content to its users. Given that, it’s a little strange that

more recruiters don’t utilize Google Ads to attract potential

job candidates.

Perhaps the problem is that recruiters find the platform

daunting. This would be more than understandable, given

that it is both different in kind and in some ways markedly more

complex than the types of social media advertising options

that many recruiters are familiar with.

18-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65+

Unknown

Demographics

ALL DEMOGRAPHICS >

0 5 10

Age Clicks Devices

DEVICES >

Mobile Phones Tablets Computers

Cost

Impressions

Clicks

Clicks

36

Impressions Avg. CPC

11.7K £0.62

Cost

£22.39

4

2

09 Jul 2018 7 Aug 2018

0

300

600

The amount of research and planning that can go into an

Google Ads campaign before you even start to construct your

advertisement can seem overwhelming from the outside, and

there is no automatic guarantee of a positive ROI.

On the other hand, maybe recruiters simply don’t realize that

Google Ads is an option, or think of it as a platform better

suited to traditional sales and marketing than recruitment

marketing. Over the course of the next 10 or so pages, we

hope to dispel this myth and the myth above by providing a

thorough breakdown of what Google Ads is, how it works, and

how it can be used in a recruitment marketing context. You’ll

gain insight into the different methods that can be leveraged

for attracting passive and active job candidates, and we’ll

walk you through some of the nuances of targeting your ads

to your employee personas and tracking your impressions,

clicks, and applications.

For many or most of you, Google is already an indispensable

tool in your daily job duties, with the power to connect you to

the knowledge, information, and resources that you need for

continued success.

In this eBook, we’ll show you how to turn that power on its

head, helping to ensure that potential job applicants are

connecting with you, your company, and your employer brand.

In this way, you’ll be able to expand your footprint beyond

social media and into other parts of the web, where you can

express your brand narrative in bold new terms. For some of

you, this will be unfamiliar territory, but that should only make

it more exciting!

What You’ll Learn

1. What is Google Ads?

2. How to Use Sponsored Search Results for Recruitment

3. Employer Branding with the Google Display Network

4. The Nitty Gritty: Tracking and Metrics

5. Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

6. Conclusion

1. What is Google Ads?

Okay, let’s start with the basics. What is Google Ads? Essentially,

Ads it Google’s advertising platform, through which businesses

can place two distinct types of ads. Actually, it’s three if you

count YouTube ads, which are run through Google’s system, but

we’ll leave those alone for now. The first type, for our purposes,

is sponsored posts within Google search results. If you’ve ever

performed a Google search (and we know you have!), you’ve

probably seen these sponsored results at the top and bottom

of the list.

Except for the “Sponsored” icon that appears alongside

them, they look like normal posts, featuring a headline, a URL,

and link description that gives users a sense of what they can

expect if they click.

Given all the talk about maximizing SEO out there, the value of

appearing in a Google search should be basically self-evident

from a business perspective. It increases the likelihood that users

will find your site, utilize whatever resources you provide, and

engage with your brand in a meaningful way. With any luck, this

will result in more people buying your products or (more relevantly

for us) entering your recruitment funnel. Most businesses try to

accomplish this through SEO best-practices, but Google Ads’

search ads offer you a chance to “skip the line,” so to speak.

The second option available to Google Ads users is the Google

Display Network (GDN). This refers to all of the sites across

the web that manage their advertising through Google,

most of which will feature a rotation of banner ads placed by

advertisers like yourself. These, too, you’ve no doubt seen as

you’ve browsed your favorite websites.

AD

Unlike search ads, GDN offers you the opportunity to utilize

images as well as text, meaning that you can show off your

employer brand in a unique, dynamic way that catches the

attention of your future applicants.

While the process of targeting, budgeting, and tracking is

fundamentally similar to what it is in search ads, the differences

in format mean that these display ads require a wholly distinct

mindset and approach.

Because these two options are so different, we’ll be covering

the ins and outs of each one in separate sections below. In

this way, you should be able to gain a holistic overview of the

options that this platform affords to recruitment marketers.

Next page: How to Use Sponsored Search Results for Recruitment

2. How to Use Sponsored Search Results for Recruitment

To start with, let’s tackle Google’s sponsored search ads. Again,

these are more or less what they sound like: for appropriate

search queries, Google will display a result from your company

at the top (or bottom) of the page.

How does this work in a practical sense? Essentially, you

choose a set of search keywords that reflect your recruiting

goals (more on this in a minute), and then you set a budget

that includes the amount you’re willing to “bid” for each click.

When someone searches for one of your terms, Google picks

a few ads to display at the top of the search based on the

bids and relevance scores (more on that in a minute) of the

various advertisers who list that

search term. These ads are

structured to look just like normal

search results, except that

they are labeled as sponsored

posts. Notably, though you’re

constantly “bidding” for

individual searches, Google

doesn’t actually charge you until

someone interacts with your ad.

Now, we know what you’re thinking. “Sponsored ads in Google

search results? No one clicks on those!” This is a common

misconception. In point of fact, these sponsored posts often

receive a lot of attention. For searches relating to online retail,

for instance, people are actually more likely to click on the

sponsored results than the organic ones. This is an extreme

example, but it should give some indication that people are,

in fact, willing to click on these results. The trick, then, is to

make sure that your post is high quality and highly relevant to

your target audience.

Choosing the Right Search Terms

Let’s say you’ve decided to run a recruitment ad campaign

through Google Ads. What’s the first step you need to take?

Deciding on your search

terms. This, after all, is going to

determine who sees your ads.

This can be trickier for building

up a recruitment pipeline than

for traditional sales, but the

same principles apply. To begin

with, think about your employee

personas. What are their web

browsing habits? What search

Search recruitment

candidates

EMPLOYEEKEYWORD

R E L E V A N T

TERM

S

AD

S

PIPE

LIN

EG

QS

terms are they using regularly and which of those terms are

most relevant to your business? You can use Google’s free

Keyword Planner tool to visualize the relative search volumes

and competition levels for any given keyword, and in this way

you can figure out the best terms to use.

Crucially, active and passive job

seekers will likely encounter you

on this platform through fairly

different search terms. Thus, if

you’re hiring developers who are

fluent in Haskell, you might expect

active job seekers to search for

something like “developer jobs

Haskell,” while your passive job

candidates might be searching

more generally to resolve

questions they encounter

using that particular language

(“Haskell type errors,” e.g.). Since

Google determines which ads

to show in large part based on

the relevance of your ad to the

search term (also known as your Google Quality Score, or GQS),

it may be easier to reach active job candidates with posts

Current openings

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Team 6 December 3 minute read

linking straight to job ads. Passive candidates, on the other

hand, might be more inclined to click on a link that sends them

to some educational content, like a blog post or a whitepaper.

Once you’ve sat down and thought about your employee

personas and their search habits, it’s time to narrow down some

actual search terms. Again, you’ll want to research the relative

search volumes of the terms you’re picking, to make sure that

you’re setting yourself up to reach a sufficiently broad audience

(while also making sure that your bids aren’t competing with those

of too many other companies for the same space). You’ll also

have to decide whether you want to bid on “broad matches” (i.e.

search terms that Google identifies as fulfilling the same intention

on the users’ part as the search terms you’ve designated), or

“phrase matches” (in which you bid only on searches that utilize

the exact phrases you designate). Broad matches can help you

to get in front of a wider audience, but they contain a higher risk

that you’ll pay for ads that don’t reach your target personas.

Google’s default is to charge you for broad matches, and,

again, it does have its advantages. But if you don’t want to

rely on phrase matches, we recommend using “broad match

modifier” to gain more control over what search terms you’re

bidding on. In this way, you can be sure that you’re content is

being shown primarily to your target personas.

Constructing Your Ad

At this point, the only thing left to do is construct the ad itself.

This is an especially crucial part of the process because the

way your ad is put together will have a big impact on its GQR,

and therefore on your ability to reach your desired candidates.

Much like a normal search result, your ad will include a link

and a short link description. This description is one of the first

things Google uses to determine the relevance of your post.

If your metadescription actually uses the search term that

you’re bidding on, it’s more likely to rise to the top of the pile

(and, thus, to the top of the search results).

For your this kind of post, you’ll

have space for up to three 30

character headlines and two 90

character descriptions, in addition

to your display link and some 15

character “paths” (non-URL links

to specific parts of your website).

Use this space to give your

prospective applicants a quick

idea of your EVP and employer

brand, and give them a direct call-to-action so that they know

what steps to take next. Because of the severe space constraints,

30 CARACTERHEADLINE390 characterdescriptions

15 character “paths” 2

DISPLAY LINK

full sentences might not be your friends. Consider using short

phrases will little in the way of cliche or filler, so that your ad stands

out enough to paint a quick picture of your business as a place

of employment. Again, make sure there is alignment between

your chosen keywords and the text of your ad. This way, you’ll get

your employer brand in front of more potential applicants, and

hopefully build up your talent pipeline in the process.

As to the links themselves: they should redirect to a landing

page that’s specific to whatever you’re posting on. Google

will crawl the text of this page as well, so the better optimized

it is for the search term the higher your quality score will be.

Since this is where Google makes its money off of you, there’s

also a real incentive to make this page as impactful as possible.

Just like the text of the ad, your landing page should have a

clear call-to-action, whether for an online job application, a

recruitment newsletter sign-up, or anything else that will help

you meet your recruitment goals.

There are a handful of formatting options available for these

ads (in some cases, for instance, you can add a phone number

to the listing), but the general rule of providing relevant, easy-

to-navigate content at each level will continue to apply in all

cases. By following this general rule, you can set yourself up

for continued success in attracting candidates on Google.

3. Employer Branding with the Google Display Network

Google search ads already have the potential to expose your

brand to a large audience, but they are far from being the final

word on Google’s advertising possibilities. Search ads can be

powerful, but, simply put, Google display ads are ubiquitous.

They appear on more than 2 million sites across the web, and

an estimated 90% of internet users are likely to encounter at

least some display ads as they go about their daily business.

Since these ads are often displayed as banners on other people’s

websites, you might worry that they will go largely unnoticed.

And while it’s true that they’re not always as visible as other

types of ads, this is actually an advantage in some ways.

Because advertisers pay by the click, rather than

by the impression, it’s possible to spread awareness

of your employer brand in a cost effective way.

After all, clicks may be the goal, but even those

who don’t click are seeing your messaging and

encountering your employer brand—meaning

that they might be more inclined to engage next

time they see an advertisement of yours.

The Basics

Okay, let’s get reoriented. From a design perspective, and

even from a strategic perspective, GDN ads are fairly

dissimilar from sponsored search results. From a logistical

perspective, however, they’re not too different. You’ll still use

the Google Ads platform to set a budget and designate a

target audience. These things will still reflect the realities of

your recruitment advertising budget and the nature of your

candidate personas, respectively. You’ll be able to track your

metrics and KPIs in more or less the same way using the same

portal as you would use for search ads. More than that, the

mindset (you might even say the philosophy) for these two

distinct types of ads will remain fairly similar: try to reach your

candidate personas where they already spend their time. The

goal and platform are the same, but the specifics are different.

Different how? We’re glad you asked.

Crafting Your Ad

One of the major practical differences between Google’s

sponsored search ads and its display network ads is that

instead of conveying your message and embodying your

employer brand with nothing but text, you’re able to use visual

content in addition to text and links. What does this mean for

you as a recruiter?

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JOIN US TODAY!

It means that it’s time to get creative! Ads with attractive or

eye-catching visuals tend to perform better than ads that rely

solely on text—so think of these ads as a chance to express your

visual brand in its most vibrant and interesting form. Remember,

your visual content should be reflective of the story you’re

trying to tell about your company as a place of employment.

This might mean showing pictures of your team engaged in

their daily work, or an image of one of your employees being

presented with an award (if your EVP is partially based around

gaining recognition in your field). This content should reflect

what you know about your candidate personas, but it should

also be a clear manifestation of your EVP.

Managing Your Placement

Just as Display Network ads have their own format that’s

distinct from that of the search ads, they also offer you a

different set of options for targeting your audience and placing

your ads. Here, Google gives you the option of:

z either targeting users by specified topics and interests,

z or managing your ad placement by specifying which

particular web domains you’d like your ads to appear on.

This second option might sound like it’s a lot

more work, but it gives you a level of control over

how you’re spending your ad budget that can

be crucial to recruiting success. Once you’ve

gotten a handle on your candidate personas

(both active and passive), spend some time

researching their web habits and picking out

five to 10 websites where either group would

be likely to spend their time, then concentrate

your efforts on those sites. As you track your progress, you

can determine which, if any, sites are not yielding the desired

results and switch them out.

You may have already gotten a sense in the preceding

paragraphs of why this particular ad format might be useful

for going after passive candidates (namely that you don’t

have to pay for what could prove to be valuable impressions).

Again, these passive job seekers might not click on your content

the first time they see it, but if you’re successfully conveying your

employer brand and your employee value proposition (EVP)

with your ads, even these candidates will begin to associate

your brand with your business’ unique culture, mission, and

values. The key here is to make sure that your messaging for

these two groups is properly segmented.

z For active job seekers, you’ll want your ads to link directly

to landing pages for individual job postings;

z For passive job seekers, you might be better off linking to

a blog, or a newsletter sign-up—something that entices

them into the top level of your recruitment funnel.

Next page: The Nitty Gritty: Tracking and Metrics

4. The Nitty Gritty: Tracking and Metrics

This is where it really gets fun.

Once you’ve got your campaign up and running, Google Ads

offers a wide variety of metrics that you can define and track

in order to measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

These can be whatever KPIs are most valuable to your

business, whether that means cost-per-click, cost-per-apply,

advertising ROI, or any of a host of other possible metrics.

By monitoring these as you run your campaign, you can be

sure that you’re getting enough out of your ad campaign to

justify the cost, and you can make adjustments as needed to

improve your recruiting efforts. Though Google does offer a lot

of mission critical data through its performance tracking, it can

come at somewhat of a high level of complexity. Once you’ve

found a way to cut through that complexity, however, it can

be an invaluable tool as you continue to drive up applications

and grow your talent pool.

So, ask yourself: what are the most

important metrics for your recruiting

efforts? If you’re just trying to grow

your talent pipeline, you might be

looking to track your click-rate and

conversion-rate on ads that link users to a newsletter or

e-mail sign up, as well as tracking the number of impressions

you’re receiving. If you’re trying to increase your apply rate,

you might be more interested in simply tracking the number

of applications you’ve received via your ads.

As you continue to use the platform over time, you might keep

tabs on your cost per click for each ad that you’re running, to

see if it’s trending up or down over time. If it’s on the rise (or

was high to begin with) for certain ads, you may want to revisit

them or even take them out of rotation. After all, once your

recruitment-specific KPIs have been defined, you can easily

assess which of your ads are best supporting your goals and

focus more of your budget on those, potentially improving

your ROI in the process.

Of course, tracking your progress

and success is a vital part of

any recruitment marketing

campaign, but with Google

Ads it is especially crucial. As

you might have figured out by

reading about the platform

above, success on Google Ads

tends to be a function of trial

18-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65+

Unknown

Demographics

ALL DEMOGRAPHICS >

0 5 10

Age Clicks Devices

DEVICES >

Mobile Phones Tablets Computers

Cost

Impressions

Clicks

Clicks

36

Impressions Avg. CPC

11.7K £0.62

Cost

£22.39

4

2

09 Jul 2018 7 Aug 2018

0

300

600

and error. These ads can be tricky to get right on the first

try, and they can easily become costly corporate albatrosses.

One of the best ways to ensure that this doesn’t happen is

to enable Google’s conversion tracking functionality on your

website. By embedding a few lines of code into the web

pages on your site that signal conversions (the “thank you”

page after an application is submitted or after someone has

signed up for a recruitment newsletter, for example), Google

can help you figure out which ads and which individual clicks

are driving the most helpful traffic and creating the kinds of

conversions that you’re looking for.

With these capabilities in place, it’ll be much easier to determine

your Google Ads ROI and address any issues that may crop

up. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to implement this kind

of tracking, and the result is often less efficient recruitment

advertising efforts.

Next page: Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

5. Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

Now that we’ve covered the two different types of Google

Ads advertisements, it’s time to give a quick rundown of some

of the strategies and best practices that you might employ in

order to maximize the exposure and impact of your employer

brand across the web. Some of these will be more relevant

to one form of advertisement than the other, but all should

help guide you as you get deeper into the weeds with this

unique platform. As you go through, you might find that we’re

really just expanding on ideas that have already appeared

throughout this guide, but in each case we think the specifics

bear a little extra elaboration.

Optimize Your Cost per Click

Google Ads sometimes gets a bad rap because it’s perceived as

being too expensive, but if you’re cautious about managing your

cost per click that doesn’t have to be the case. Now, because

Google Ads is already used by a number of large companies

(who are able to leverage large recruitment advertising budgets),

some of the more popular keywords can cost several dollars per

click, which many smaller businesses may not be able to afford.

One way to circumvent this issue is to choose less competitive

keywords, but sometimes there’s only so much wiggle room for

your search terms. To determine

how much you can really afford

to spend per click, you’ll need

to consider the expected ROI of

each visitor to your landing page.

Again, this is a little more complex

in recruitment than it would be in

traditional sales, but if you have

a sense of how much each hire

is worth to you, compared with

how many applicants per hire you usually get and how many

applications you get per click, then you can determine the

maximum price you can pay per click before your expected ROI

turns negative. Once you’ve got this number in mind, it’s time to

start taking additional steps to keep your cost per click down

while still reaching an impactful number of users. What steps,

exactly? Taking extreme care with how you’re defining your

search terms and targeting your audience; and making sure

your content is as relevant to the search terms (and the needs

of the searchers) as possible. Speaking of which:

Don’t Neglect Your Landing Pages

Getting a handle on your optimum cost per click is a good way

to make sure that your budget and your recruitment goals are

$

appropriately aligned. But, again, the amount that you bid on

each search or display ad is not the only determining factor in

who sees your ads. Google is also interested in showing people

content that they’re likely to find helpful. How do they do that?

By checking the relevance not just of the contents of your ad,

but of the landing page that the ad redirects to. This means

that even if your bid for a particular search term is relatively high,

Google can still penalize you for linking to a landing page that’s

not relevant to the search term. How do you avoid this fate?

Current openings

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Inside Sales Representative

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Got any questions? I’m happy to

help.

First of all, you should make sure that the text of the landing page

includes the appropriate keywords, and that, in general, it speaks

to the search term. This means that if you’re targeting active

job seekers (with, say, “developer jobs Python” as your search

term), your landing page should include the words “developer,”

“job,” and “Python,” in addition to being fairly explicit about the

fact that you are, in fact, offering a job for developers working in

Python. Not only will this help Google to show your ads to more

people, it will help prospective recruits to orient themselves after

they’ve been redirected, so that they don’t get confused about

what steps to take next and drop out of the application process.

For passive job seekers, who might, for instance, be trying to

find information to solve a coding problem, make sure that your

landing page contains the information that they need—plus a

way to enter your recruitment funnel!

Utilize Remarketing Campaigns

In addition to offering you fairly granular options about where

your content is being displayed, Google also offers a robust

set of targeting options for delineating the audience to which

your content will be shown. One of the most powerful tools

that Google Ads offers for targeting is remarketing, in which

your ads are only shown users who have already visited your

website or interacted with your brand in some way. Because

these people have already displayed the first signs of interest

in your brand, they’re much more likely to be receptive to your

messaging in the future. Again, if you adopt this strategy you

can tailor your content accordingly: if you’re a tech startup,

for instance, your second touch recruitment campaign might

assume some familiarity with your employer brand and

leverage that familiarity into something bold, like a link to a

coding challenge or an invitation to contribute to a piece of

open source software.

Next page: Conclusion

6. Conclusion

So far, the power of Google shows no signs of diminishing.

And the more powerful Google is as a means of connecting

people to the content they need and want, the more powerful

Google Ads can be as a tool for getting impressions, leads, and

conversions at all stages of the recruitment process. Because

Google Ads offers such a wide array of possible formats and

placement options, businesses that utilize it for recruitment

marketing have a lot of latitude and room for creativity as they

craft and refine their campaigns—creativity which prospective

candidates will reward with their attention and interest.

Remember, as you develop your Google Ads strategy it will be

important to segment your active and passive candidates into

distinct audiences with distinct targeted messaging. Google

gives users the control to do this on an extremely granular level,

and while that level of control can seem daunting, it’s also a

key value added proposition. Make sure that you’re creating

content that Google will deem to be high quality and highly

relevant to the users that are being targeted (i.e. make sure

you have a landing page that relates to your keywords, etc.).

In this way, you’ll keep your cost per click down and thereby

improve your recruitment advertising ROI.

We know that recruitment marketing campaigns often

center on social media, but Google Ads can be an important

complement to those efforts (especially if you can incorporate

some remarketing into your strategy), and thus an important

part of any employer branding strategy.

Hopefully, this guide has given you the tools and know-how

to dive into Google’s platform, and the confidence to do so

with creativity, inspiration, and style!

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