There have been developments for the digital job hunting market…
It’s no secret that job seekers are increasingly looking at roles through mobile devices while on the go. LinkedIn recently let slip that they’re clocking in at 1.45 daily million mobile job views, and receiving over 44,000 daily mobile job applications. They’re building on this by strengthening their mobile experience with updates to its specialised job searching app, targeting glitches and improving the functionality. It’s now easier than ever for job hunters to review their saved job searches, those previously viewed, and to find roles recommended by LinkedIn based on their profile data.
Facebook, meanwhile, are looking to rival LinkedIn as a one stop service for business this month as they began trialling a dedicated jobs tab for business pages. It’s not the first time Facebook have dabbled in the world of recruitment, and combined with the recent relaunch of Facebook for Business as Workplace, this represents a more determined effort to break into the business and recruitment market than ever before.
What are Facebook aiming to achieve with the jobs tab?
It’s been possible for a while for employers to create their own Jobs tabs with custom tabs and third-party developers, and Facebook acknowledges that this is following a pre-existing trend. A representative said to Josh Constantine of Techcrunch:
“Based on behaviour we’ve seen on Facebook, where many small businesses post about their job openings on their Page, we’re running a test for Page admins to create job postings and receive applications from candidates.”
The difference for this official new development is what it represents in terms of strategy, as Facebook looks to become a place to check with preferred employer brands for roles – sound familiar?
The jobs tab on a Facebook page will enable businesses to advertise opportunities in the same place they promote products and interact with many of their most invested followers. As well as increased exposure generating more like’s and followers for their business, showing these jobs to the people most taken with the employer brand will result in a lot more organic reach for roles as followers apply for jobs or share them with their friends and family. As with employer advocacy, these recommendations outside of traditional marketing are more authentic and persuasive for jobseekers.
What does this tab look like?
Technology media group TechCrunch demonstrated how the Facebook jobs tab appears:
The updated Page composer will allow Job posts to include standard details such as job title, the type of role, salary and other information. Published roles will be listed on the tab itself, and also appear in the News Feeds of followers of your business. It’s also been confirmed that they will be eligible for boosting through social PPC and will therefore soon could form an important part of your recruitment strategy.
The “Apply Now” button that appears alongside job roles will make applying easier by creating applications with information already filled in from the user’s profile. When a user submits their application, it will arrive in the form of a message on the company’s Facebook page.
How would the Facebook jobs tab compare to LinkedIn’s Job Search app?
The jobs tab will allow users looking at a company’s Facebook page to browse all available jobs. It’s also very likely that these jobs will be advertised on Facebook using the targeting tools available. With Facebook’s 1.79 billion monthly active users, attracting passive candidates seems to be a real possibility, especially as Facebook’s user’s login multiple times a day on average. Being received as a message could mean that we start seeing more specialised recruitment pages for larger companies, as they look to keep customer service functions on channels separate from recruitment.
LinkedIn’s Job Search is still more advanced, however, with the app matching candidates from credentials listed in their profile. LinkedIn know much more about its user’s professional backgrounds and requirements. With their 467 million members, its estimated users login on a twice monthly basis on average, and more when job hunting, so the app is likely to keep attracting active job seekers.
What does this mean for recruitment?
Any new way of advertising job vacancies is going to be a good thing for candidates and recruiters alike. It provides us with new tools and strategies to attract passive and active candidates to roles in unique ways.
As applying to roles through social media becomes easier and more convenient through automatically filled applications and integration onto potential candidates’ native platforms, prioritising social media as a method of recruiting may well be the way forward.