When Facebook decided to create a jobs marketplace about 18 months ago, they scored another home run. Recruiting through social media is one of the most important and transformative trends in the past decade for this industry. These platforms offer a faster process: Not only do they provide recruiters an opportunity to reach large numbers of potential candidates, but they also enable extraordinarily easy ways for candidates to share their experience.
It’s somewhat surprising that Facebook took this long to develop their platform – but this step has definitely shaken the foundations of the contemporary job search realm. This year, the digital giant turned 15 years old and hit 2.3 billion users per month, providing a massive pool of job seekers and businesses with their new recruitment feature. As expected, it has had an enormous impact on recruiter’s results and will likely continue to change the recruiting landscape for years to come. Let’s take a look at Jobs on Facebook and look at what we can expect from it in the future.
The beginnings
With the permanent goal of connecting businesses and people, on February 2018, Facebook officially released its job website after realizing that one in four people in the US searched or found a job using their social media network. Moreover, one of the main reasons that made Facebook take a leap into the recruiting sphere was that the social media networks specializing in employment searches, like Linkedin, were not structured for blue-collar job seekers.
During the first phase, Facebook started with 13 modules that allowed job seekers to create applications, have direct contact with the employer through the Messenger application, and subscribe to alerts, among other features. Furthermore, businesses could create detailed job posts from their own company page, choose from different display options, schedule interviews, and boost their posts to reach the most suited candidates.
Where are they today?
Today, Facebook’s job website continues to expand its modules, aiming to effectively connect a variety of job postings with job seekers. Beyond improving its infrastructure and algorithm, the platform is working around people’s needs to help them move forward in their careers, providing education options and mentorships when possible to improve job skills in candidates.
Another important feature that Jobs on Facebook provides both jobseekers and talent acquisition professionals is a robust set of mobile tools. These tools are perfect for small companies that don’t have an ATS and allow the hiring manager to check on posts they have made, track applications, contact prospects, and even schedule interviews through the Messenger app.
Facebook isn’t forgetting the mid and large size enterprises, however, that have different compliance requirements, ATSes, and mandatory workflows that include assessments and background check information. These companies can use third-party software to add their ATS’s jobs to Facebook and create an experience that joins the best of both worlds.
It’s only been a year and a half since Facebook started to implement their own recruitment solution. Raising the bar for big competitors like Indeed, the platform has cashed in on its unbeatable, gigantic database. What’s next? It looks like they will take some time to improve the algorithms to better match people with appropriate jobs, and we are likely to see the gradual implementation of growing technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. And we can’t wait to see their job advertising API, which should allow larger employers to boost their jobs programmatically. For now, we can only wait to see what incredible new ideas they will turn into realities.
About the author: Othamar Gama Filho, is the CEO at Talentify, a recruitment marketing automation platform.
