Tap the words ‘jobs’ and ‘Facebook’ into Google and see what happens. You will find internal careers at the company and that’s it. How come there is no general careers section on Facebook? Why isn’t there a job board built into the world’s largest social network? You’re not the only one to wonder why this may be.
When Eduardo Saverin, tax refugee and co-founder of Facebook, left and set up Joboozle which is a social network focused on jobs, he didn’t please Mark Zuckerberg. Zuck emailed Eduardo stating he was disappointed and that Facebook would probably do something with jobs.
This indicates that launching a career section on Facebook was definitely on the cards back in the day at ‘The Facebook’. Sure Facebook is a place for friends and family but they all have jobs as well.
What happened? Not much. Instead, you had another network called LinkedIn taking the big slice of professional networking and to this day they are dominating the career and social networking space.
So does that mean you can’t find a job on Facebook? Well, there have been a few attempts at cracking this, here are some:
BranchOut
Earlier this year the professional networking app BranchOut was branded a serious contender to LinkedIn. Their user figures grew astronomically to 25 million users and they were apparently signing up 3 users per second. With that rate of sign-ups and the fact that Facebook already has almost 1 billion users, it looked plausible that this app could be a contender to LinkedIn.
A few months later we learn that BranchOut has actually lost members instead. Whether the figures were there to attract more investors or users we don’t know. Some call BranchOut a giant Ponzi scheme, with user-friendly badges.
BeKnown
Monster launched its professional networking tool on Facebook last year called BeKnown. Well, it WasKnown last year but it hasn’t been in the news since. Social Bakers report that BeKnown has 240,000 active users per month and it’s the 481st most popular app on Facebook. So it doesn’t look like a serious contender at this stage. See what one user thinks at How To Find Graduate Jobs on Facebook’s BeKnown.
Company Facebook Pages
Yes, there are a few applications that allow Page owners to list jobs on a separate tab. This can be useful when you already know what company you want to work for and you have ‘liked’ the Page already. But that doesn’t help anyone looking for a ‘Java programmer job’ at any company in Manchester. Going the company route is similar to clicking on the website of a business, then clicking to see current vacancies.
Facebook Social Jobs Partnership
Here’s the most promising initiative of them all, the Social Jobs Partnership is Facebook’s own job listing pilot. This was run as a not-for-profit scheme matching jobseekers positions at local authorities around the US. This is still getting started and Facebook state: “This initiative provides resources to help Americans use technology to find jobs”. Sounds a bit like LinkedIn to me actually.
The future
With Facebook’s disappointing IPO the other month, one can expect them to bring out new features and a proper career section could be one of these. Recruiters and employers are chomping at the bits to be able to search through profiles and contact users for opportunities – surely a lucrative revenue stream for Zuck & co.
What do you think; will Facebook be a place for most people’s social job search one day?
