Facebook seems to be gradually getting into the habit of shocking and surprising its users and the market at regular intervals. The buzz around promoted posts, their usage and how facebook had played smart with them had just not died down, when they are here with another thing, that though isn’t a shocker, but not the most obvious move either.
Just a week ago, Facebook introduced a job-board – Social Jobs Partnership app that shall help the users of the most popular SNS (Social Networking Site) in their search for dream jobs.
With this, they have forayed into the world of online recruiting. The job-board aggregates job openings from companies like Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Jobvite, DirectEmployers and Monster.com. The page not just enables its users to search for jobs filtering them on the basis of location, skills, industry etc, but lets them apply for it through the site.
Though as of now, Facebook doesn’t talk about making money on this, but given the fact that around 50% of the employers in US were already into using the site for recruitment and saw success too, the whole thing might soon be monetized. However, what is more interesting is to surmise, if this app is of any danger to LinkedIn, the ultimate social networking site for professionals.
LinkedIn has a user base of roughly 187million, compared to of over a billion for Facebook. Statistics indicate that a chunk of employers are already using Facebook for hiring, and with the job-board application, the numbers will most likely increase.
This surely does ring a bell for LinkedIn, but all is not over yet and won’t be anytime soon, for various reasons. LinkedIn’s users are majorly college-educated, mature and professional users who are really not keen on bringing work and fun together. Many a users don’t intend to add people from their work groups to their Facebook friend lists, for they see it as a casual medium, meant to share things that are on the lighter side.
Also, the initial reviews of the app have not really been encouraging. It has been deemed to be merely a functional application. The results have been found to be more germane to the users, back in US, when compared to users in other geographical areas. Though, the app already listed over 1.7million jobs on day 1, just being an aggregator doesn’t sound that cool, neither does promise potential enough to dethrone LinkedIn.
Further, the young lot, which is more active on Facebook, doesn’t comprise of ideal candidates for full-time, high-level salaried openings. Hence job-board might be of good use for freelancing opportunities, hourly positions or entry-level stuff. This might have two sides to it. A group may opine that having a hold in the entry level market is a good start and might be a stepping stone to moving up the stream. While the others see this as another BranchOut like thing in the making, which has not really been successful.
To add to all of this, LinkedIn by now adorns a hard-earned and well-deserved reputation of being a trustworthy portal for interacting with and attracting talented individuals.
Nevertheless, despite all that’s being said, done and speculated LinkedIn’s stock plummeted by 2% on the day, the new app was announced.
Having said that, whatever the outcome may be, one thing that’s succinct from the episode, is that recruitment is going to be decidedly and purely social in nature anon.
