Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.
If you’re interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I’ve created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It’ll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.
Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment—it only takes a few minutes.
This episode is about Talent and Technology.
The recruitment marketing landscape has been about more than just job advertising for a long time. However, many employers are still missing out on the unique benefits search and social bring to the marketing mix by approaching these channels in the same way they approach job boards.
As AI reshapes these platforms and candidate behaviour evolves rapidly, there’s a widening gap between companies seeing dramatic results and those struggling with failed campaigns and wasted investment. The difference isn’t budget—it’s about building long-term strategies based on data and a strong understanding of each channel’s unique strengths and differences.
So what can employers do to ensure they are getting full value from their recruitment marketing budgets?
My guests this week are Kelsey Krater, Chief Platform Officer at Appcast, and Appcast’s Director of Digital Media, Alexandra Horwitt Anema. In our conversation, we talk about the unique strengths of search and social, how they are evolving and the critical importance of data in recruitment marketing.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Driving quality hires from recruitment marketing
• Why search and social aren’t job boards
• Search and intent
• Filling funnel gaps and building diversity
• A layered media approach
• Telling stories with social
• The danger of prioritising quick wins over long-term strategy
• Recent developments in search and social
• The critical importance of data
• Nurturing and remarketing
• Pipeline building over transactional thinking
• What does the future look like?
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00:00
Matt Alder
How are you using search and social in your recruitment marketing? Are you treating them just like job boards or do you have a strategy in place to fully realize the unique benefits and depth of data that they offer? Keep listening to find out what you could be missing out on and the massive impact AI is having on how we now think about recruitment marketing. Support for this podcast comes from Appcast. Appcast is changing the game when it comes to hiring. Using powerful tech, data driven insights and deep recruiting expertise, Appcast helps employers find qualified candidates quickly and efficiently. In fact, companies using Appcast see a 50% drop in cost per hire and fill roles faster. Whether you’re building a brand or filling mission critical roles, Appcast delivers results that move the needle. To learn more, go to Appcast.io. That’s Appcast.io. Hi there.
01:25
Matt Alder
Welcome to episode 724 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Recruiting Future is a podcast that helps talent acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing their strategic capability in foresight. Influence talent and technology. This episode is about technology. Many employers still utilize search engines and social media platforms just as additional channels for job distribution. If that’s what you’re doing, then you need to stop because you’re missing out on the unique capabilities these channels have to solve the biggest challenges around talent scarcity and improving the quality of hire. Success requires understanding that search and social are sophisticated marketing platforms that demand different approaches, longer time frames and strategic thinking about creative content and audience nurturing. My guests this week are Kelsey Krater, Chief Platform Officer at Appcast and Alexandra Horwit Anema, Director of Digital Media at Appcast.
02:36
Matt Alder
They both offer unique insights into how search and social can sit alongside job boards in highly effective long term recruitment marketing strategies. This is a must listen for any TA team struggling to hire the quality of talent and that their company needs. Hi Kelsey. Hi Alex. Welcome to the podcast. It is an absolute pleasure to be talking to both of you. Could you just introduce yourselves and tell us what you do? And Kelsey, you can go first.
03:08
Kelsey Krater
Absolutely. Thanks Matt. Excited to be here. My name is Kelsey Krater. I’m the Chief Platform Officer at Appcast. So I lead the teams responsible for building and evolving our platform. Our focus is really about supporting our customers with all of their recruitment marketing needs and so the key to this is we want to do it through automated data driven ad buying everywhere the job seeker lives online. So that’s the Core of it. And we’re focusing specifically on solutions that are trackable and defendable. And that’s because, you know, we know budgets are tight. It’s no longer about just driving volume, it’s about making every dollar count and while at the same time still delivering outcomes, which is ultimately hires. And so we’ve all seen it. Quality continues to be more important than ever. And we believe the key to quality is that data.
03:59
Kelsey Krater
And so we’ve seen it work really well in the job board space. It allows us to build media strategies in a more holistic way. And so we want to be sure we’re getting in front of the right candidate at the right job at the right time. And this is where we see search and social really coming in. They can be a key to this strategy and having that data is going to make it even more powerful. So excited to talk to you all. Bit more about that today.
04:23
Matt Alder
Fantastic. I am the director of digital media at Appcast and I have been working in this space for almost 20 years.
04:24
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
My name is Alexandra Horwood Anima. I am the director of digital media at Appcast and I have been working in this space for almost 20 years. My team kind of services all of the things outside of the job board programmatic side. So that is kind of the bulk of what my team does.
04:51
Kelsey Krater
So.
04:51
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
So that is kind of the bulk of what my team does. We kind of figure out how to fit square pegs into round holes.
04:56
Matt Alder
I suppose it kind of leads to my first question. So we sort of mentioned search and social. They are two areas that were never invented for recruitment, but they’ve been used in recruitment marketing for quite some time now. How have those two mediums or platforms, whatever want to call them? How have they changed in the last few years? Because I know there’s been a lot of, there’s been a lot going on in the digital marketing sphere.
05:18
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
Absolutely. On the search side, there’s been a little bit of a shift from kind of keyword based to more intent based targeting. So that’s something that we’ve really been trying to make sure that we keep up with. The keywords are still very important for what we do. But making sure that the intent aligns with those keywords is also very important. We’re also working with much smarter algorithms. The algorithms continue to get smarter every single year as well as all the AI integrations that are coming into play. So making sure that we are staying completely top of Mind with all of the changes that are happening on the social side, it’s really evolved from a brand building resource to a full funnel performance marketing resource.
05:54
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
So being able to get out in front of something that always existed one way and make sure that we’re using it to the full extent of its capabilities is. Is a big shift in what we’ve done over the past year.
06:06
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely. Just to go back to the search bit bad, just explain the intent bit for people who might not have come across that. That sort of phrase before.
06:14
Kelsey Krater
Sure.
06:14
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
So one of the things that we can do when it comes to our targeting is figure out how to use like intent based audiences. So people who are searching out jobs, for example, like that’s something that we can help shift our dollars over to. Besides just the keywords, we want to make sure that our keywords are aligned because those two parts of the targeting really work closely together. So it’s making sure that we are not leaving anyone out, but also being very inclusive of people who are more likely to fill out an application than ever before.
06:42
Matt Alder
What are the big advantages that they offer for recruitment marketing and where do they fit into the strategy for search?
06:49
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
It really is fantastic at capturing high intent candidates that are already looking. So it’s a really great space for conversion because we know that people are actively searching out jobs. Social is a little bit different as it reaches passive talent and it really does help build your employer brand. It drives awareness and interest, but it is less of a direct response model than what we’re doing on the search side. They both complement job boards. They help fill funnel gaps and diversify traffic sources and get our clients jobs in front of more and more eyeballs than ever before.
07:18
Kelsey Krater
Yeah, and I think that’s really key. It’s this holistic, layered media approach. And so they are essential as a piece of the puzzle. They don’t necessarily run in isolation. And so that’s where we start to really see the impact of the full media strategy.
07:34
Matt Alder
What do people get wrong when they’re using search or social?
07:37
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
What are the main things treating them like job boards? Search and social are very different from job boards. So like the posting and praying instead of targeting and testing is a huge differentiator. Underestimating the need for creative that is tailored to each platform and audience. Creative outside of job boards is incredibly important. So if that’s copy on the search side or really strong media on the social side, that’s incredibly important. Expecting quick wins without strategy. That is something that I speak to a lot. It is Very important to understand the use cases for these different platforms that they need a little bit longer to ramp up. So and also forgetting that these are marketing platforms and not just job distribution tools, that’s a really important part of a big picture strategy.
08:21
Matt Alder
Just expand a little bit on the creative side, particularly for social. What is what, you know, what does good creative look like or mean in this context? What do people need to think about?
08:30
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
Not all of our clients have it, but video is king. And that really comes down to kind of what I call like the TikTok ification of a lot of these social platforms. People don’t want to read as much anymore. They want to be served up content in a way that’s super digestible for them. Video can be a great way to do that. It tells a great story. It kind of gets more deeper into the weeds than you can with, you know, the line of copy that you’re allotted to be effective within the social space.
08:56
Matt Alder
Kelsey, your thoughts on that one?
08:57
Kelsey Krater
Yeah, I think just emphasizing the time, that’s what I’m learning as I’m working more closely with Alex and team and we have data to back it up and just the time it takes to get to the optimal performance people are looking for. This isn’t get it out there and you start to get applies right away. It’s really sort of an art we have to optimize and the data that you have behind it and if you can use that in a real time feedback, that’s going to be super impactful. And so really time it’s not going to start rolling in applies right away. But that’s Alex’s point. It goes beyond just the technology. You have to understand your audience, you need to understand your goals and how you expect those different medias to drive the outcomes.
09:37
Kelsey Krater
And so understanding that holistically again and that layered approach is really critical.
09:42
Matt Alder
So I mean, let’s dig into the data aspect of this a little bit more. You know, what kind of data are you seeing? What can you track? What does it tell you? How does it all fit together?
09:52
Kelsey Krater
Totally. So when we first expanded so when Appcast brought in search and social into our toolkit, there was this general understanding that it works, it was driving better outcomes for customers. However, there wasn’t necessarily data behind it to prove that out to really have a case study. And so the team dug into just that. We wanted to see it in the data ourselves to be able like, okay, this is legit, let’s see what we can go do and make it even more powerful. So what we did is we took cohorts of customers who ran programmatic alone for 12 months and then post 12 months there would be multi channel approach. So adding in things like search and social and the data was super compelling.
10:35
Kelsey Krater
So what we saw is that pre post adding multichannel search and social, we saw roughly 20% lift in overall volume. So you not specific to any certain jobs, but the overall program saw 20% lift. The key though is that it came in at an increase of 12% on the CPA. So you’re getting that incremental volume at that lower cost or that investment, that lower investment, if you will. When we isolated search and social, what we saw, search alone drove upwards of 20% in applicant volume specifically and social delivered upwards of 55%. So again, total volume. When you think about that, you’re thinking, oh wow, social has this bigger lift. I think it’s important to keep in mind how we use the social channel. It’s an awareness tactic. We’re reaching a broader audience and so that lift makes sense.
11:28
Kelsey Krater
Search, on the other hand, as Alex pointed out, we’re focused on high intent. We want to get the hard to fill. So those are a bit more targeted. However, in both cases you’re still, you know, seeing the lift, but if you break that out, I think it’s important. Again, time we touched on, time it takes to see the optimization. And so what we did is looked at three month increments and so 0 to 3, 4 to 6, so on and so forth. And what we saw is that first zero to three there was a slight bump, however, not significant. And so this just reinforces the time it takes to really optimize and see that whether it’s search, get the keywords right, get the, you know, get Google’s algorithm working, or social, getting the creative out there and flowing time is critical.
12:16
Kelsey Krater
What I think was most interesting to me was the how it impacted job boards. And so what we did is we looked specifically at the job board. So right, were running job boards alone in the beginning. We added in these additional channels and that channel in isolation, we saw an 8% lift in total volume with an 8% decrease in CPA. And so that was really exciting, compelling and really what set us off to go build these new solutions where we have the data, because the data is going to only help us drive better outcomes, find better quality, be able to feedback the system so that we can continue to drive improved results. But super exciting stuff and we’re starting to play with how do we bring that down to the customer level. How do we make this more meaningful at that stage?
13:08
Matt Alder
So, yeah, 100%. I think what’s interesting there as well, I suppose it goes back to what Alex was saying a second ago about the importance of having a strategy, because this is a long term play. It’s something that people need to look over the course of six months, year longer than that. And obviously that’s coming across in the data as well, isn’t it?
13:24
Kelsey Krater
Yeah, absolutely.
13:25
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
The importance of a full funnel strategy to cover all of those angles as opposed to playing like pardon my lunch, but like whack a mole with different job groups is incredibly powerful because then you’re set up for success from the beginning. You don’t have any kind of holes in that big picture strategy. So that’s what we’re trying to help develop for our clients. Is that really holistic view from the beginning?
13:45
Matt Alder
Absolutely. And I suppose a part of this is the ability to nurture and remarket to people, particularly on social, isn’t it? Talk to that a little bit.
13:55
Kelsey Krater
This is a space we’ve been exploring more and more. Tom Chevalier as part of the labs, has created a solution called extend. So we really started to learn and understand the impact of this with numbers. And so what we’ve realized is that matching, nurturing, remarketing, they’re no longer nice to haves. It’s really essential to everything we do and it’s something we’re building within our core platform for that exact reason. The idea is that, you know, we know candidates fall off the apply flow or some channels. We are specifically targeting leads and many times those leads might sit in an Excel spreadsheet for recruiters to look at and they might not get the love that they need. But with technology we can make remarketing work.
14:37
Kelsey Krater
We can ensure that we’re engaging, nurturing, using better matching, finding the job seeker when it matters, and getting the right job in front of them at the right time. So we can convert. Not just convert, but ideally quality. So always coming back to quality. And again, we really feel like this is starting to become core to everything we do across all media channels.
14:59
Matt Alder
Yeah. And I suppose it’s reflecting the fact that particularly on social, people aren’t necessarily ready to apply for a job right now. Is there any sort of data on kind of how long these sort of, you know, nurturing, remarketing things take or is it very much a case by case basis?
15:13
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
It is very much a case by case basis. And the important Thing to continue to consider is that especially with more passive channels, it is a slow build of trust, not just an instant buy. A lot of the people who are in these audiences may never have heard before as an employer. So really taking the time to again nurture that trust and bring them into the funnel is a very important part of the big picture process.
15:34
Matt Alder
This is a no brainer as well because particularly where people are struggling to find talent or I think also one of the things that I’ve heard from a lot of TA leaders in the last 12 months is the need to find new pools of talent to go and look elsewhere for talent. And this obviously both of these channels, but again social in particular really offer the opportunity to do that, don’t they?
15:55
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
It is a great resource. It’s where people spend. I think the average now is over three hours a day on social. So getting in front of people where they spend their time.
16:04
Matt Alder
Absolutely. So as a bit of a final question already, just to sum things up, we’ve seen a lot of change in the last few years. AI in particular in these channels is probably now driving change quicker than ever. Barely a day goes by without Meta announcing something else that they’re going to do with AI and advertising. We look at search and you know, what’s happening with you know, Gemini and Google and LLMs and all that kind of stuff. Two parts to this question. How do you think things are going to evolve in the future? But also how do our mindsets, our recruitment, marketing, TA mindsets need to evolve to really kind of match the opportunity?
16:44
Kelsey Krater
Yeah, great question. Yes, everything is changing fast. We’re all trying to keep up with all the evolutions of AI. I think quality will continue to be the focus, whether it’s quality being impacted by AI agents helping people apply or maybe how we use it in creative. So there’s different lenses to that. Understanding your data I think is going to be critical. Data is not there just to tell the story, but how do we use that data in real time to make better decisions, inform the AI and we can think about it specifically to media buying or simply just like how you engage with that talent. I think again I mentioned this, but the way people are applying is changing where they spend their time online, how they actually engage with the job and apply specifically AI agents.
17:32
Kelsey Krater
And so we’re seeing the market respond and shift pretty quickly and ultimately we all need to adapt. We need to facilitate the smarter remarketing. How do we simplify those nurture capabilities? How do we re engage at the right moment matching. We need to do better with matching jobs to the talent and how do we improve the job seeker experience? I think that’s been a struggle in this industry for a while, all with a lens of driving quality outcomes. And so this is a big area of focus for Appcast. How do we bring all of these things together at our core and help drive this change for our customers?
18:07
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
And on top of what Kelsey said, I think there are a couple other things too that brands are going to have to learn to behave more like consumer marketers in this capacity. So focusing on the experience of the advertising funnel, not just the apply rate, is going to be a really important part of how we move forward. And as far as mindset shifting, again, it’s thinking pipeline building versus just transactional hiring. It’s making sure that we’re using these platforms to the best of our ability. Because I very much believe that search and social will not be an optional part of your recruitment marketing strategy moving forward. There’d be like core pillars of how you build your strategy, especially with Gen Z coming into the workforce force and just changes in how people are using digital media in general.
18:50
Matt Alder
Definitely interesting times. Alex, Kelsey, thank you very much for talking to me.
18:55
Alexandra Horwitt Anema
Thanks so much Matt.
18:56
Kelsey Krater
Thanks for having us.
18:58
Matt Alder
You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
19:35
Kelsey Krater
This is my show, Sam.
