Challenge:

• Hired is a marketplace that matches tech talent with the world’s most innovative companies. Talented technical candidates are in high demand and competition for coveted positions is fiercer than ever.
  
• One such position is software engineer. These tech pros are a specific focus for Hired, and are described by the company’s Growth Marketing Manager, Chase Gladden, as “the rock stars of the tech world.”

Solution:

• As a leading destination for job hunters, and an unparalleled source for accurate professional data, LinkedIn is a very natural fit for Hired’s efforts to identify and reach new candidates. They’ve developed a sturdy strategy in this regard, but saw an opportunity to level-up with the platform’s new ad, Conversation Ads.
  
• With Conversation Ads, prospects are able to follow multiple paths and take different actions based on how they answer questions — in this case, about the next step in their career journeys.
• “Whereas we’d seen success with Message Ads already, this new format enables us to actually really engage someone in a number of different ways,” says Gladden.

Results:

• By turning ad engagements on LinkedIn from one-sided messages to two-sided conversations, Hired saw a big uptick in quality candidates entering the system.
  
• “The clickthrough rate was almost five times higher than what we’d seen previously, which goes to show the level of engagement is pretty wild when you’re able to provide multiple opportunities to click,” Gladden explains.

Conversations and conversions

• The open-ended nature of Conversation Ads enables Gladden’s marketing team, in collaboration with agency partners at B2Linked, to guide interacting members toward the right outcome. Hired used simple yes-or-no questions to filter through different professional roles (i.e., “Do you match any of these roles?”) and direct people to the right spot, whether it’s a sign-up page, resource page, etc.
  
• “You are making the ad more engaging to them,” says Gladden. “You’re also providing more opportunities to click off. So you don’t have just one exit, you have multiple exits that are potentially more personalized to them.”

Getting to “yes”

• Citing the classic sales book Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury, Gladden says one reason the Conversation Ads format is effective is because it helps get past a member’s objections (their “nos”) and zero in on what they really need (their “yes”) — all in an automated and scalable fashion.

The importance of trusted data

• One aspect of LinkedIn that has been vital to Hired’s efforts is the accurate, up-to-date data for potential candidates available through the platform.
  
• “LinkedIn is a valuable B2B data source.” Gladden opines. “The data points it has for an individual tend to be tied directly to their career and as a result, we’re able to translate that value into our own customer acquisition efforts.”

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