Facebook is rolling out a bevy of new job-related functionality. If your company has a Facebook page, you can now post job openings free of charge. For those seeking a job, you can see a slew of available gigs in your area.
Here’s a screengrab of a recent job we posted on our Facebook page.
This move from Facebook is being viewed as a straight right hand aimed directly toward the face of LinkedIn, which has established itself as the preferred social network of professionals and the primo place to post positions. Facebook hopes to challenge LinkedIn’s job-centric supremacy and divert companies’ recruiting advertising cash in their direction.
LinkedIn has cause to worry here. Right now, at least, posting a job to Facebook costs nothing for employers (LinkedIn charges a fee to post jobs), and applying to jobs is simple and seamless. When you see a job you’re interested in and click to apply, you go right to a form that’s pre-populated with data Facebook already knows about you.
After adding a personalized note or cover letter, your ‘application’ is delivered via Messenger.
Mallory Walker, one of our social media strategy experts here on staff, had this to say about Facebook’s new job posting functionality: “Facebook’s addition of job postings is going to add inexplicable value for all advertisers and companies. Facebook’s user-friendly interface, paired with multiple ways of promoting, advertising and hiring for positions, is the future of recruiting. Ultimately, Facebook is proving that no matter what your monetary limitations may be, they have the solution.”
Needless to say, Facebook continues to adapt and evolve in ways that make it less a social network, and more of an indispensable, inescapable facet of modern life. As Mallory stated above, this new focus on making job openings easier to promote will no doubt have a profound effect on the way recruiting and job searching is conducted in this country moving forward.
So far, the sweet spot for Facebook job postings seems to be trending toward part-time, hourly-type gigs at small businesses. But on a network fast approaching 2 billion regular users, you can certainly find just about anyone or anything. Now, you can add a new job to that list.
