[notacoward]

I'm sure you feel good about the people you hired, but how do you know that there wasn't someone even better who didn't apply because of the narrow targeting of your ad? If somebody posted their job ad only in the AARP newsletter, would you feel that it had been made available to twenty-somethings? After all, they could read it.

[sliverstorm]

This all goes back to the numbers games in hiring. Targeting the listing is cheaper, and if you can identify a subgroup that contains most of the potential candidates for your opening, it might be sensible to target.

Sure, there might be some "big fish" in a group you didn't target, but so long as you are happy with the people you hired, didn't it pay off? Not every position needs to be filled with a rockstar-ninja-pirate-haXX0r. Maybe all you need is a person who can get the job done (imagine that!)

[petercooper]

I actually believe I choose the most widely disseminated approach. My Facebook ad was targeted to within 20 miles of my town and reached around 10,000 unique people according to Facebook. Only 18,000 people live in my town and it's a very rural area. Even our local paper's job ads page gets fewer readers, I bet.

Two of the people I hired actually didn't even see the ad themselves but had it shared to them by other people, so if older people were looking for a job in my field, I believe they would have had a good chance to see it too.

[mod]

If part of the job requirement was being very familiar with AARP, the AARP newsletter would probably be a great place to post the ad.

Right?

[untog]

But presumably using Facebook is also a core component of the actual job, given that it mentioned social media.