Is Facebook’s New Job Posting Feature Really All That?

Facebook is rolling out a feature that will allow us to create and publish job postings directly to our company pages; the feature also allows jobseekers to apply directly to the posting without leaving the social network. That’s a pretty cool free addition! Thank you, Facebook.

Understandably, there’s already been a lot of talk about what this means for LinkedIn, but in my opinion, a jobs tab or even promoted job posts won’t be the death of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is killing itself without Facebook’s help thanks to the fact that it has a low user base and sells user data to recruiters, which led to spam. Not to mention, they removed the great networking features as they evolved into a job board, training portal, and blogging platform.

Facebook on the other hand has a buzzing user base, with over 1 billion people checking in daily, and even though they too sell our data, promoted posts are easy to ignore and, of course, Facebook keeps giving us features for free, so we stay and we play.

I’ve been wondering if recruiter spam could kill Facebook, but in my experience training and speaking to recruiters all around the globe, most recruiters still think of Facebook as a ‘personal’ network. The majority of recruiters still resist using Facebook for hiring, so time will tell how this new feature will impact that thinking.

Taking a realistic look at this feature.

Facebook organic reach for brand pages and posts is low, really low.

And this is quite intentional because this is how Facebook makes its money, which is great for we regular users who are given free features all the time because of their profits. We don’t pay so we tolerate promoted posts, and that makes paying marketers happy.

But it also means that recruiters who think that simply adding their new opening to Facebook’s job posting tool will magically reach a huge number of perfect jobseekers are sadly mistaken. As is the case with all other posts, you’ll need to put some work in to make the most of them.

Luckily, there is plenty of great information out there offering advice for improving the reach of your page and posts, including this piece from Social Media Examiner, 26 Tips for Better Facebook Page Engagement.

The suggestions they make which really resonate here are:

· Boost your posts to increase visibility: it’s more cost effective than LinkedIn.
· Post when people are online, which will take research
· Respond to everyone (I see so many LinkedIn company page comments being ignored so…)
· Use Facebook Live video to show behind the scenes.

(Thankfully) It’s a manual process

It’s not rolled out here in the UK, but Audra Knight, Recruitment Operations Manager at Tenable, has written this great post featuring the steps you’ll need to take to add and promote a job using the new job posting tool.

As she points out, be selective – you may not want to share all of your jobs. Audra wisely recommends using a genuine photo of your team to stand out, and I couldn’t agree more. Keep it real.

She goes on to explain that Facebook suggests choosing hourly or entry-level jobs (personally I disagree but try it and see what works), and Audra also gives a great explanation of the targeting options.

I agree with her that the inability to use a ‘saved custom audience’ (this allows you to save targeting specifics and easily reuse them rather than having to insert them manually each time) is a big downside for recruiters who are already have too much on their plate; it would certainly deter me from promoting a job post this way.

Furthermore, as she explains, “Due to many concerns around discriminatory hiring practices, Facebook has disabled the ability to target candidate groups by age, gender, or other protected classes.”

I guess this is open to abuse like any form of recruitment, but if we are honest, the entire talent acquisition process is about ruling people out until we find the perfect person so, I’d probably be inclined to go into the backend of the advertising system and create a highly targeted custom audience and create a (video) job post rather than use this new tool.

The data Facebook has gathered from our use of the platform is staggering, and even without ‘job titles’ and complete bios, it’s possible to target advertisements based on peoples interests and page likes.

Again, steal ideas from the marketers who have been using the platform for years. You could target the people on your current database or your Linkedin connections (remember they frequent Facebook more often than LinkedIn!). Check out how in one of these two posts:

If you really want to rock job posts on Facebook, use video

The vast majority of recruiters don’t have a marketing background; I sure don’t! But video is the way forward if you want to stand out, and you can do that now, without your jobs tab.

Grab your marketers and your hiring manager and create a short punchy genuine video about the role – make it all about the candidate and don’t forget a call to action. And, perhaps most important, be sure to add subtitles to the video as most videos on Facebook auto-play without sound.

Time will tell how the Facebook jobs tab will impact LinkedIn, Facebook’s user base, or the industry as a whole so for now, I am sitting on the fence.