Your job is live on Facebook and Instagram, the budget is running, and still nothing happens. Or leads do come in, but not the people you are looking for. Almost always the cause is not in the settings but in the ad itself: a job description with a photo is not yet an ad. Someone scrolling through their feed is not looking for a job and gives you a second at most.

This article is about that second. It explains how to create a text and an image the candidate recognises themselves in, why certain choices work psychologically, and where you set this up in Booston: the content editor of Meta job ads, AI help with writing, the application form and the A/B test. The result: an ad that not only stands out, but that the right candidate actually applies to or leaves their details on.

After this article you know how to turn a job into a message for a candidate, how to choose an image that works on a phone, how to lower the threshold to respond and how to test different angles against each other. You find the ad via Campaigns & AI → Meta job ads, behind the Content button of the job.

Before you start

• The Meta job ads module is on and your Facebook page and ad account are connected. How to publish, target and budget an ad is covered in Meta job ads. This article is about the content of that ad.
• If you want AI to help write, or to turn an image into a video, AI is on with the matching switches. How that works and what it costs is in Switching on AI, configuring it and tracking your costs.
• You have a role with access to Meta job ads. Who may access what is managed in Users: granting access, choosing roles and logging in through your ATS.
• Useful, not required: a Candidate audience analysis of the job. It tells you who realistically responds and what drives them, which is exactly what you need in this article.

Do not sell the job, sell what the candidate gets out of it

A job description starts from the employer: who we are looking for, what you must be able to do, what your responsibilities are. An ad has to start the other way around: with what changes for the candidate if they take this job. Not because the requirements do not matter, but because nobody stops scrolling on Instagram for a list of requirements.

Salary is certainly part of it, but it is rarely the only thing. Time, freedom, security, travel time, atmosphere, equipment, colleagues, development and work-life balance weigh at least as heavily for many candidates, and often more. The difference is in the question you ask yourself: not "what do we offer?", but "what is this candidate running into today, and what do we solve?"

• A truck driver may not be convinced by salary, but by: "Your weekends are yours again."
• A carpenter responds to: "Work with professional tools and materials you can be proud of."
• For someone who spends a long time on the road every day, "work at most 20 minutes from home" is more relevant than a paragraph about the organisation.
• For someone stuck in shift work, a fixed daytime schedule is a stronger argument than a list of benefits.
• For someone who has been in the same place for years, a course or a next step is the reason to respond.

The difference between a job property and a candidate benefit is often one sentence rewritten:

The right-hand column says the same thing, but speaks to the candidate's own world. They see their own Saturday, their own cab, their own van. That is the moment someone thinks: "this is about me."

Make sure people recognise themselves in the image

The image is the first thing someone sees, before they have read a single word. A nice photo is not enough. The photo has to make someone think, in a fraction of a second: "this is about work for someone like me."

Take a job for truck drivers. The ideal profile on paper may be a driver aged 20 to 25. But if a large part of the drivers you can actually reach are 35, 45 or 55, that group does not recognise itself in a photo of a twenty-something. An image of an experienced driver next to their truck then brings in more and better responses. Ads must match the people who are genuinely reachable and relevant for the job, not only a theoretical ideal profile.

That is something different from excluding candidates. Age, gender, origin or other personal characteristics are never used to keep people out, not in the image and not in the targeting. The starting point is recognition and representativeness, within the rules for labour market communication and Meta's rules for employment ads. More on that in Responsible advertising: the rules of recruitment and Meta.

What to look for when choosing or creating an image:

• Real employees over stock photos. Everyone recognises a stock photo as a stock photo, and then the image is instantly "advertising" instead of "work".
• A realistic work environment. The warehouse, the building site, the childcare group, the ward. Not a studio.
• Recognisable clothing, vehicles, machines and tools. A mechanic recognises the brand name on the workbench faster than your logo.
• Situations that genuinely belong to the job. A driver stands next to their truck or sits behind the wheel, not in a meeting room.
• Quickly clear which profession it is. Without text, someone should be able to guess what work it is about.
• Authenticity over perfection. A sharp phone photo of a real colleague beats a polished photo shoot nobody believes.

A driver next to a recognisable truck is almost always stronger than a generic portrait of a smiling person. And on a phone, portrait images work better than square: use the 4:5 ratio so the ad fills more of the screen. How to upload, crop and set the focus point of an image is in Images and files.

Keep in mind how Meta is really used

Nobody opens Facebook or Instagram to look for a job. Your ad interrupts a feed full of photos of friends, videos, news and other ads. That means you have very little time to get attention, and that someone can withdraw that attention just as quickly.

That is why a good Meta ad works in four consecutive steps:

1. Stop. The image or the first line makes someone stop scrolling.
2. Recognition. The candidate immediately understands this is about work for someone like them.
3. Interest. One or a few benefits make the job attractive enough to read on.
4. Action. Responding is easy and logical, and the ad says what the next step is.

If one of the four drops out, the rest drops out too. A beautiful photo without recognition brings in likes but no leads. A strong benefit that only appears in the fifth line is not read. In practice this means:

• A strong first sentence. Only the first two lines of your text are visible before someone has to tap see more. That is where your key message goes, not "We are looking for".
• An instantly recognisable image. See the previous chapter.
• Little unnecessary text. Every sentence that does not contribute to stop, recognition, interest or action is removed.
• One central message. An ad with five arguments has none. Pick one and support it with at most two others.
• Clear hierarchy. Job and main benefit first, details after.
• Readable on mobile. Short lines, short words, space between the lines. Most candidates see your ad on a phone, often on the move.
• Quickly clear which job it is. If someone still does not know which profession it is after two seconds, they are already gone.

Write short, concrete and candidate-focused

A Meta ad does not have to contain a full job description. That is not the goal either. The ad has to create enough interest to get someone to the next step: the form or the job page. Every detail you can explain there does not need to be in the ad. How to write a full job description is in Job texts with AI.

What does need to be visible quickly:

• the job title, in the words the candidate uses themselves;
• the location or area;
• the salary, if it is attractive and you are allowed to mention it;
• the working hours or schedule;
• one to three distinctive benefits;
• a clear call to action.

Compare two openings for the same job. Weak:

"On behalf of our client we are looking for an enthusiastic truck driver who is responsible for various transport activities and has a flexible working attitude."

Stronger:

• 🚛 Driver wanted in Eindhoven
• 💰 Up to €3,800 per month
• 🕒 Daytime driving
• 🏠 Home every evening
• 📅 No Saturday shifts

The second version can be scanned in two seconds, even on a phone. Someone immediately sees the job, the place, the money, the hours and the biggest benefit, and can decide whether this is interesting without reading further. The first version demands reading, says nothing about what the candidate gains and uses words ("client", "flexible working attitude") that only the employer uses.

The three text fields in the content editor

In Booston's content editor the ad consists of three text fields on the Content & media tab. Each field has its own role and its own place in the feed:

Always write from the candidate's point of view, in the second person. Not "we are looking for an employee who", but "you". Not "the candidate has", but "you have". The text should sound like a colleague telling you something, not an organisation demanding something.

Start with the strongest argument

Not every benefit weighs the same, and which one weighs most differs per job. If the job pays €500 above market rate, that amount goes at the top. If the salary is average but nobody ever has to work evenings or weekends again, then that is your opening. If a company offers exceptionally good equipment, a company van, training or a lot of freedom, that takes centre stage, not the last line.

The question you ask yourself for every job:

"Why would someone who already has a job today want to change employer for this vacancy?"

The answer to that question is your first line. If you cannot answer the question, that is a sign the offer itself is not yet strong enough for an ad, and no text will help.

Writing and creating images with AI in Booston

You do not have to write the text from scratch yourself. With AI on, Booston helps in three places in the content editor. The principles from this article remain in charge: AI writes faster, but you decide the argument.

Generate with AI: three suggestions based on the job

Open the content of a job and click Generate with AI in the Text block. In the Generate Ad Copy with AI window you choose a tone and optionally add instructions.

1. For the tone, choose Professional, Casual, Enthusiastic or Urgent. For most hands-on jobs Casual works best: it sounds like a colleague, not a brochure.
2. Under Custom Instructions, type what AI should emphasise. This field is your main steering wheel: put the strongest argument from the previous chapter here.
3. Click Generate. You get three suggestions, each with a text, a headline and a description, and each from a different angle.
4. Pick the suggestion closest to your argument and click Apply Selected. The Text, Title and Description fields are filled in and you can simply edit them.

AI reads the job text, the location and the company information from Booston. What is not in the job, AI does not know either. If the job does not say there are no Saturday shifts, that argument only ends up in the ad if you add it under Custom Instructions.

Every generation uses AI credit. What a generation costs and where you see it is in Switching on AI, configuring it and tracking your costs, under Ad Copy Generation.

The audience analysis as preparation

Before generating, run a Candidate audience analysis on the job. The outcome gives you exactly the building blocks for your instruction to AI: the Primary motivators for your opening, the Likely objections you take away in the text, the Conversion hooks as the angle, and under Language & tone for Meta the words to use and avoid. Put those literally in Custom Instructions. That way AI writes from the candidate instead of from the job.

Generate Video from Image: motion without a video production

If you have chosen an image under Media Type, the Generate Video from Image button appears next to it. Booston turns the still photo into a short video, which on Facebook and Instagram almost always draws more attention than a photo.

• Local Effects adds motion to the photo without AI: Zoom, Pan, Fade, Ken Burns, Parallax, Reveal or Split. Free and fast, and enough for most ads.
• AI-Powered lets AI design the motion: Cinematic, Dynamic or Gentle, with your own description of the motion under Custom Prompt. This uses AI credit per video.
• Under Duration you choose the length in seconds. Keep it short: the first three seconds decide whether someone keeps watching.
• With Text Overlay you put a short text in the picture, with its own colour, background and position. Use it for the job and the strongest argument, not for a sentence.

Click Generate Video and then Use Video: the video replaces the image in the ad.

Carousel: one argument per card

If you set Ad Type to Carousel Ad, the ad consists of two to ten cards the candidate can swipe through. Do not use them for ten photos of the same thing, but give each card one argument: the first card the job and the place, the second the salary, the third the schedule, the fourth the colleagues or the equipment. Each card has its own Headline, Description, Link and image. Keep each card's headline under 40 characters and the description under 30, otherwise it gets cut off.

Make it instantly clear on the image that this is a job

An attractive photo alone is not enough. Someone has to understand quickly that this is an ad about work, otherwise the photo of the truck is read as a post from a transport company and the candidate scrolls on. A few words on the image solve that: the job and the strongest argument, nothing more.

The text on the image and the text in the Text field say the same thing, but the image says it in three words and the text explains it. That way someone who only looks at the image still gets the message.

Use branding for recognition

Consistent branding makes someone who sees your ad for the third time think: "that company again", and that works in your favour. Trust grows with repetition. Think of:

• your logo, small and always in the same place;
• your brand colours in the text on the image;
• one or two typefaces;
• a fixed visual style, for example always real colleagues at the workplace;
• recurring photography: the same kind of images, the same light;
• recurring layouts, so you do not redesign new ads every time.

Not every ad has to be completely different. On the contrary: if you advertise several jobs, visual consistency makes the brand more and more recognisable. You build an employer brand in the feed without needing a separate campaign for it.

But branding never becomes more important than the job itself. The candidate first has to understand: "what kind of job is this and why would it interest me?" Then comes the brand. An ad that mainly shows the logo and puts the job in a corner has the order reversed.

Lower the threshold to respond

Most people who see your ad are not actively looking. For them Apply now feels like a big step: it sounds like CVs, cover letters and an interview they had not actually planned. A lower threshold brings in more responses, and you do the selection afterwards.

This matters most for a lead ad on Meta. The candidate stays in Facebook or Instagram, the form is already largely filled in and no CV is needed. Say that in the ad too: "responding takes a minute, no CV needed." Whoever does not know how easy it is assumes it is hard.

The last line of your Text is the place for this call to action. The headline of the form's intro screen, on the Form tab under Intro, repeats the promise too: not "Application form" but "Leave your details, we will call you within one working day."

Align the ad and the application process

A strong ad is worth little if the step after it is full of friction. If the ad says "respond within one minute" and the form then asks for a CV, a motivation and ten questions, the candidate drops out and you have paid for that click. The promise in the ad and the process behind it must say the same thing.

You set up that process on the Form and Follow up tabs of the content editor:

• Only necessary questions. Name, e-mail address and phone number are already filled in by Facebook. On top of that you can ask at most three questions of your own under Questions. Only ask what you need to decide whether to call: C licence, availability, place of residence.
• Short forms. Every extra question costs leads. What you can ask in the first phone call does not belong in the form.
• Clear next steps. On the thank-you screen under Thank you you say what happens now and when: "We will call you tomorrow between 9 and 12."
• Fast follow-up. A candidate who responded on impulse still remembers the ad after an hour and no longer after three days. With Thank you button link set to WhatsApp the candidate starts the conversation themselves, right after submitting. How to set that up is in Sending candidates straight to WhatsApp after a Meta application.
• Mobile-friendly. The Meta form already is. If you send the candidate to your own site afterwards, check the job page on a phone.
• Expectations that hold. Promise nothing in the ad that the form or the conversation after it does not deliver.

The confirmation e-mail the candidate receives after the form is edited under Email templates. Make sure that e-mail repeats the promise too: who calls, when, and what the candidate can expect.

Use proof instead of marketing claims alone

Everyone promises "good benefits", "a great team" and "growth opportunities". Because everyone promises it, nobody believes it any more. A concrete number or fact is more credible than an adjective, and it is shorter too.

Specific is stronger for two reasons. Someone can test a number against their own situation: "€3,400 is €300 more than I earn now." And a specific fact proves you really know the offer, while a general term suggests you are hiding something. The same rule applies to the job text itself; which phrasings platforms reject is in Writing a job text: what are the guidelines and rules?.

Test different angles

You rarely know in advance which message works best. What you as an employer consider the strongest argument is not necessarily what the candidate responds to. The same job can be advertised from very different arguments, for example for a driver:

A/B Testing in Booston

Booston can run those variants side by side and split the budget. Go to Campaigns & AI → Meta job ads → A/B Testing and click Create A/B Test.

1. Under Test Name, enter what you are testing, for example Driver Eindhoven: salary vs. weekend.
2. Under Job, choose the job.
3. Under Test Duration, set the number of days. Give a test at least a week; shorter and the differences are chance.
4. Under Winning Metric, choose what decides the winner: Cost Per Lead (CPL), Click-Through Rate (CTR), Reach or Leads. For recruitment, Cost Per Lead (CPL) is usually the right choice.
5. Under Variants, pick a content template per variant, or create one on the spot with Create new template. Split the budget in percentages across the variants; together it must be 100%.
6. Click Create.

During and after the test you see per variant the budget share, the number of leads, the cost per lead, the CTR, the reach and the views. Change only one thing per variant: the same photo with a different opening, or the same text with a different image. If you change everything at once, you will not know afterwards what made the difference.

If A/B Testing is not switched on, you test manually: publish variant A, note the Avg. cost per lead under Cost & Performance after a week, and then swap the text or the image. Slower, but it works.

Prevent ad fatigue

An ad that works well does not stay that way by itself. The same audience sees the same creative more and more often, and after a few weeks nobody looks at it any more. You see it in the numbers: under Cost & Performance, the frequency under Reach rises while the leads fall and the cost per lead goes up.

So vary periodically, and vary with a plan:

• Photography. A different colleague, a different place, a different time of day.
• Opening line. The same message, phrased differently: from statement to question.
• Main USP. Switch from salary to free time to equipment, as in the A/B test.
• Graphic layout. Text on the image left instead of right, a different label colour.
• Video versus image. A photo that has run for three weeks gets a second life with Generate Video from Image.
• Employee content. A colleague explaining in two sentences why they stayed.
• Different angles. The same job from a different moment in the candidate's day.

Keep what works: the logo in the same place, the same colours, the same tone. The brand identity stays recognisable, the creative changes.

Think from the latent job seeker

This is the fundamental difference with a job board. On a job board someone searches actively: they have already decided they want to leave, type in a job title and compare. A text that starts with "We are looking for" is fine there, because the reader is looking too.

On Instagram or Facebook that is not the case. The candidate has not decided to leave. They may be quite content, or they have been grumbling for months without doing anything about it. Your ad therefore has to do more than give information: it has to create a reason to think about a move. You do that by naming their situation first, and only then your offer.

The left column describes a job. The right column describes a recognisable frustration and solves it in the same breath. That is why a question works so well as an opening on social media: the candidate answers it in their head ("yes, still every Saturday"), and with that has already told themselves this is about them.

This is also why on Meta you do not make one ad for "all drivers", but put several side by side, each for a different frustration. The audience is not one person.

Responsible advertising: the rules of recruitment and Meta

A recruitment ad may not contain discriminatory selection criteria or exclusionary communication. In the Netherlands that follows from equal treatment legislation, and Meta enforces it on top of that through its separate category for employment ads.

What that means in practice:

• No age, gender, origin, religion, disability or other protected ground in the text, neither as a requirement nor as a preference. "Young and dynamic team" and "wanted: young driver" are both wrong.
• Recognition is not exclusion. A photo of an experienced driver of 50 is recognition for the audience you realistically reach. A text saying you are looking for a driver of 50 is exclusion. The image may be representative; the text and the targeting exclude nobody.
• Meta restricts targeting for jobs: no age, no gender and a minimum radius around a place. Which options you do have is in Meta targeting for employment campaigns.
• Realistic promises. No "earn up to €5,000" if that is only achievable with every allowance in the best month; Meta rejects this as misleading, and so does the candidate.

The goal is not to say less, but to communicate relevantly and authentically with the people who can genuinely do the job. Whoever sticks to the rules almost automatically writes better ads: concrete about the work, honest about the offer, and focused on what the candidate can do instead of who they are.

Checklist before publishing

Go through this list before you click Publish. Every "no" is a reason to look in the content editor one more time.

Text

• Is it clear within a few seconds which job is being offered?
• Is the main candidate benefit in the first line?
• Are salary, location and working hours mentioned when they are relevant?
• Is the text scannable on a phone: short lines, space, at most five points?
• Is the text written from the candidate ("you") instead of from the employer ("we are looking for")?
• Is the call to action clear and low-threshold?

Image

• Does the audience recognise itself in the person and the situation?
• Does the image really match the profession: clothing, vehicle, tools, environment?
• Is it clear within one second that this is about work or a job?
• Is the branding recognisable but not dominant?
• Is the text on the image short and readable at a glance?
• Does the image feel authentic, and is it portrait (4:5) for the phone?

Conversion

• Does the form match the promise in the ad?
• Is responding easy: at most three questions of your own, no CV?
• Are only necessary details asked for?
• Is it clear on the thank-you screen and in the confirmation e-mail what happens after the application and when?

Optimisation

• Are different USPs being tested, as an A/B test or one after the other?
• Are several creatives being tested: at least two images, or an image and a video?
• Is candidate quality looked at as well, not only the cost per lead?
• Are successful ads refreshed periodically before the frequency climbs?

Frequently asked questions

Should the salary be in the ad?

If it is attractive and you are allowed to mention it: yes, it is the most-read word in a job ad. If it is average, open with another argument and mention the salary in Description or on the job page. Never mention an amount that is only achievable in the best case.

May I use emoji?

Yes, as a bullet marker at the start of a line they work well: they make the text scannable. As decoration in the middle of a sentence they distract. One emoji per line is enough.

How long may the text be?

As short as possible. Only the first two lines are visible without tapping, so that is where the message goes. Below that, at most five short lines with facts and a call to action. Anything that needs more explanation belongs on the job page.

Does a video always work better than a photo?

Usually, but not always. A video draws more attention in the feed; a strong photo with a short text on it can make it clear faster what work it is about. Test it: the same ad as a photo and as a video via Generate Video from Image.

Do I have to make a separate creative for every job?

No. Put your fixed style in the Content Template, deviate per type of job in the Job group template and only adjust per job what is really different: the strongest argument and the image. That keeps the branding consistent and a new job takes you minutes instead of hours.

Coming soon

• AI writes the ad automatically. In the Content Template or per Job group template you choose AI instead of Templates once, set a tone, a length and your own instructions, and after that the content of every job is written automatically as soon as you open or publish it, per language. Next to Professional, Casual, Enthusiastic and Urgent comes the tone Based on company info, which follows the style of your own company information, and the length gets a variant without a limit that carries over all concrete information from the job.
• Regenerate and steer. Automatically written content gets a Regenerate button that writes a new version with the same settings. If you have edited something yourself, Booston asks for confirmation first before your change is overwritten.
• The audience analysis as context. If there is a Candidate audience analysis for the job, AI automatically uses its motivators, objections and tone in the ad text. You can see on the content that the analysis was used and open it from the ad.
• An ad preview that looks exactly like Facebook. The preview on the right of the content editor becomes a faithful rendering of the feed, including where long text is cut off.
• Candidates who do not fit get their own closing screen right away. For an answer to a form question you can indicate that it disqualifies someone, for example without a C licence. That candidate does not complete the form and sees a fitting message.

As soon as this goes live, we will update this article.

Need help?

Stuck, or not sure which message fits your job? E-mail support@booston.io or call 085 0044 215 and mention:

• the name of your environment;
• what you want to achieve;
• the message you see, if there is an error message.

Would you rather walk through the settings together? Book a free 30-minute online demo — we will go through it with you. Job Done!