Mission Employment: How to Design a “Hire Me” Campaign on Facebook

Nowadays it is harder than ever to stand out in the job hunt.  If you don’t have the right connections, your resume is one of many similar-looking pieces of paper in an endless stack. So how can you stand out and make employers take notice? A creative way to set yourself apart from the pack is to design a “Hire Me” campaign on Facebook.

Step 1: Create a Facebook page for your campaign

To do so, go to the “Pages” tab on the left hand side. If you run your mouse over it “more” will pop up; click on that. Click on the “Create a Page” button and you will be given options as to the type of page you wish to create. You can choose between several categories, however for our purposes, local business or place, brand or product, or artist, band or public figure could all work depending on the angle you take. An added bonus, Facebook business pages are searchable on Google.

Step 2: Add colorful and creative professional content

Treat the page as an expanded resume.  Don’t leave out the traditional resume elements such as past work experience and skills but take the opportunity to add as much life and personality as you can. There are many ways to illustrate why you are the perfect candidate for your dream job.  If graphic design is your forte, include an album of your portfolio materials or design a logo for your profile. Include a YouTube video introducing yourself to provide a bit more personality. Include links to your blog or website.

Here is an example of creative video content that is really effective. It is funny, shows personality and most importantly, is memorable. Matthew Epstein created a “Hire Me” campaign in an effort to land his dream job with Google.  Although Google did not end up hiring him, he still landed a great job because other companies had noticed his creative efforts.  Even if you don’t end up getting the job you were planning for, you may get an equally desirable job in the process.

Step 3: You have access to targeted ad creation, use it

Facebook makes it very easy to design ads for specific targets.  For a full explanation of how it all works and how to get started, click here.  A total success story in favor of using these ads is the “Hire Me” campaign of Marian Schembari.  She used the article, “Use Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down” as a guideline for her strategy. Schembari created hyper-targeted ads to get the attention of several big publishers.  According to Schembari’s website, “at least one person from every publisher [she] focused on emailed [her] to tell [her] they passed [her] resume on to HR, wanted to meet, or even just to say they liked [her] idea.”

There are many ways of approaching a “Hire Me” campaign but a lot of success stories have used Facebook because of its user-friendliness and wide reach.  If your Facebook page is your home base, other social media platforms can be very effective in drawing attention to it. For example, creating a corresponding Twitter handle to drive traffic to your page.  Get creative, get innovative and good luck. Your dream job is waiting for you.