
How to Utilise Meta's ‘Instant Experiences’ for Recruitment
You wouldn’t be wrong for thinking of LinkedIn as the go-to social for sourcing candidates. But with over 3 billion daily users, hard-to-beat cost per click and detailed targeting, Facebook, Instagram and the wider Meta display networks are great places to reach talent.
Another reason for this is the digital giant’s versatility in exploring different advert formats. From vertical Story adverts to Messenger chatbots and in-stream video, one can create advert experiences that follow users across the social ecosystem, no matter what platform or content they’re engaging with.
One of these unique ad formats is ‘Instant Experiences’, closely related to ‘Collection Ads’. Could it be just what you need to bring your roles to life across Facebook and Instagram?
What are ‘Instant Experiences’ on Meta?
Instant experiences are mobile-only fast loading microsites that go beyond the standard digital ad.
When a person taps your ad on a mobile device, your Instant Experience opens and they can engage with your content. Once they do, they’ll find themselves in a memorable and attention-grabbing experience that brings concepts to life as they scroll, swipe and tilt their way through video, animations, carousels and more.
Instant Experiences load up to 15x faster than standard mobile web
If you’re a recruiter looking to differentiate your roles in a competitive candidate attraction environment, or an employer looking to spread awareness of your employer brand, Facebook Instant Experiences could be an important part of your digital marketing strategy.
What do Instant Experiences include?
There are a range of modular options within Instant Experiences that you can use to bring your job adverts to life.
These include…
- Text boxes
- Buttons
- Photos
- Video
- Swipe through carousels
- Tilt to pan image & video
- Augmented reality (AR) filters
- Product feature
- Tagged products
You should bear in mind that while two videos can be on screen at the same time, this is not recommended as only one will play.
How do you create Instant Experiences on Facebook and Instagram?
- Create a new campaign in Meta Ads Manager.
- Choose one of the following recruitment-related objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement or Leads. Your choice of campaign objectives influence what Instant Experience pre-made templates will be on offer to you.
- Fill out your campaign details as needed, including assigning which ad account the Instant Experience will belong to, should you have access to more than one.
- When asked about Ad Creative, you can select ‘Collection’, ‘Single image or video’, or ‘Carousel’. This will determine what placements your advert will appear in.* If you select Single Image or Video or Carousel, then you’ll need to additionally select Instant Experience at the Destination level choices.
- Either create a new template or search for one made earlier.
- Name your experience and then begin the work of selecting and arranging the different components.
- As you arrange the modules, click within them to gain more options on placing photos, videos, text and more.
- Be sure to fill in all the required information for each component, such as links for buttons. Only when every field has been completed can you save your progress.
- Preview your Instant Experience on Facebook, Instagram, or send to wider stakeholders for approval with ‘Share’. Once you’ve made all edits, only then click ‘Finish’ to complete it, and again to confirm as it cannot be re-edited afterwards.
- Put in the Ad Creative to determine what messaging users will see to inspire them to click and engage on the initial feed. This is critical as without a compelling drive for engagement, candidates will miss out on the full experience.
*See here for the different formats that are available for each placement:

How can Instant Experiences be useful for job adverts?
Instant Experiences go beyond just a single compelling image or video – there’s the potential to bring a taste of your career site experience directly to Meta and the billions of daily users there. So build a little world and invite users in for a taste!
Tilt-to-pan
To bring potential work environments to life, you can take advantage of the ‘Tilt-to-pan’ feature. This allows the user to move their mobile device to explore scenes – angling their phone to ‘look around’ the excess width of a fixed height image.
This eye-catching and interactive way of advertising is a great way for advertisers to encourage viewers to interactively engage with spaces, such as looking around an office’s rooftop terrace, stunning drone shot views from above or a fun break out area.
AR experience
Together with Spark AR, particularly tech-savvy advertisers can create unique camera effects that can be imported into your Instant Experience to inspire people to interact with your brand. Currently this feature may only be available with video format adverts.
Show candidates something they won’t see anywhere else – but just be sure to test it thoroughly to ensure it works across a range of devices.
Not all Instant Experience features will be right for recruitment job adverts – product feature and tagged products for instance are aimed at retail consumers, and won’t be useful.
While some of these options might be beyond the reach of marketers without dedicated content creator support, it is a great way of attracting attention to your roles and making yourself stand out in a competitive candidate marketplace.
Why use Instant Experiences for job adverts?
As well as compelling microsite experiences, Instant Experiences offer tools not seen elsewhere in the meta advertising suite. That gives you unique ways to bring your employer brand and job opportunities to life in a way that’s refreshing to candidates oversaturated with typical job adverts.
Not to mention, Meta as a social giant offers a lot of distinct advantages. It’s popular across a variety of demographics, whereas other social media tends to attract a particular niche.
Despite competition, Meta still has a huge audience – 73% of the world’s active internet users access meta-owned services monthly.
While you may be losing some of that potential audience due to Instant Experiences excluding desktop devices, this still leaves a massive potential audience to advertise to on the platform.
It’s not uncommon to find baby boomer grandparents talking to their Gen Z grandchildren over Facebook, or even tagging them in job adverts. It’s this kind of intergenerational audience which can make it a fantastic platform to use, regardless of what demographic you are targeting.
Also, it’s easy for candidates to swipe right out of your ad and return to your feed, so there’s no danger of annoying users by being a detriment to their social media experience.
So, should you ‘Instantly Experience’ this channel?
Most talent attraction teams will have Meta adverts running already, so why not try adding to them? With Meta ad suite’s ease of use, you can generate unique and interesting content quickly.
As a result, you can either show specific roles in a less oversaturated format or grow awareness of your overall employer brand and what it offers.

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- Topics:
- Ongoing Candidate Attraction