Get Ready for the New Facebook Jobs Posts (Coming Soon)

It seems that everyone’s favourite social media behemoth is about to come crashing into the employment arena, clotheslining Workable on the way in, giving Monster the Rikishi Stinkface, before billionaire power strutting over to Linkedin and squaring up for the main event.

Yes that’s right, Facebook is entering the jobs business with an all new post format.

Jobs posts are already available in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, and have been introduced more recently to businesses based in New Zealand, Chile, Portugal, Hungary and the Czech Republic.  With a broader international roll out imminent, we can expect that Facebook is taking its foray into the jobs market seriously, so brace yourselves Australia.

Let’s have a look at the format and see what it’s all about…

The great thinkers amongst you might have already inferred that this new format offers a way for you to find and hire staff on Facebook.  You would be correct.

The post itself will appear on your news feed, but also there’s an additional “Jobs” bookmark which will appear on your business page from which users can see your published positions.

For pages in the currently supported regions (remember this is not available in Australia yet, but is being trialed in New Zealand), you can add an image, description of the position, describe all the required skills and experience, add an optional salary, and publish for 30 days after which the post will expire and must be refreshed.

From the applicant’s side, once they click on the “Apply Now” call to action, a form will open in which their personal information, imported from their profile, can be edited, and offers them a field in which to add their cover letter.

That’s right, Facebook automatically imports your personal contact details, past work experience and education information from your personal profile into the job application (just like lead form ads).  This can certainly save a bunch of time filling out the same information again and again, but will require that you publish your working history on your profile.

That smell is familiar? It smells like… more data for Facebook’s advertising platform.

And it sure is!  In a double edged sword of data collection, by encouraging you to keep your professional information up to date on the platform, not only are Facebook collecting valuable information to help companies promote their positions to the right people, but also makes this information available to advertisers of all creeds to target content to you based on your accurate employment history, education and location data.

Despite your waning right to privacy, which let’s face has already been flushed pretty far down the shitter, this is good news for businesses looking to reach a more targeted audience for their content. Smiley face.

In a way this feature ushers us into a new era of total social media acceptance by the masses, as the premillennial generation of users of data sharing skeptics are replaced by a hoard of younger, more attractive and technically capable lemmings offering up their data as readily as they suck the increasingly depleted oxygen out of our warming atmosphere.

While many put up little resistance to this amalgamation of data, there are still a sizeable chunk of users that see Facebook as more of a personal networking tool and would rather keep a separation between their private and professional lives.  The reality is that social media stalking has come so far, that if your profile contains something even resembling your real name and location, chances are that your prospective employer is already browsing through your goggle eyed, red bucket clutching photos from the full moon party.

Saying that, we imagine that some users will prefer to keep the two worlds separate, especially considering that many users have invested in networking on other tools.

New posting formats mean new ad formats, and we can expect that Facebook will be introducing jobs ads along with the international roll out.  This is great for brands looking to hire as they will benefit from the comprehensive Facebook ad platform, filled with awesome targeting and custom audience options which are unrivaled by other platforms.

In addition to all the psychographic targeting, you’ll get remarketing audiences, the option to connect to event tracking on your website, and perhaps even the option to create “dark posts” or unpublished ads to only show your open position to those in the right location, or with a relevant employment history.

We speculate that Facebook will allow you to unpublished or dark jobs posts too

Another reason to embrace this new feature is it’s seamless integration with your page.  This means that you can provide a space on your business page for users to find open positions, and users can opt-in to receive notifications of new openings at your brand.  What a great way to find passionate people!

From the job seekers side, they can get real-time notifications of awesome opportunities in the area, on a platform that they check into more than a
ny other.  Currently this feature is only available once you have submitted an application, which seems a bit counter intuitive. However, if you like the business page that is advertising, you will most likely get notifications of new positions show up in your news feed anyway.

There’s also a really simple jobs search page, accessible at: https://www.facebook.com/jobs

From here you can search based on a limited selection of industries, job type (part-time/full time/volunteer/freelance) and most importantly location.  In fact, if you visit now you can already see that jobs are being advertised in Australia, but currently only from international pages based in countries in which the feature is active.

Although Facebook are yet to announce the features roll out down under, they would be crazy to miss this opportunity as in Australia Facebook use is significantly higher than the worldwide average.

Do you have a hiring strategy on social media? Tell us in the comments, or get in touch for some tips on how you can get more out of jobs platforms such as Linkedin, and take your talent search to the next level using Facebook and Instagram too!