Facebook Threatens LinkedIn With Job Opening Features (techcrunch.com)

Facebook is looking to compete with LinkedIn by allowing business Pages to promote job listings. "The new Jobs features could give companies another reason to drive traffic to their Facebook Page beyond marketing their products in the News feed, while also allowing them to pay the social network to get their open position in front of more candidates," reports TechCrunch. A Facebook spokesperson said, "Based on behavior we've seen on Facebook, where many small businesses post about their job openings on their Page, we're running a test for Page admins to create job postings and receive applications from candidates." TechCrunch adds: A new Facebook option in the status update composer allows Pages to formally share a job opening with related details like job title, salary, or if it's full-time vs part-time. The special formatting could differentiate job postings from other content and attract eyeballs amongst the crowded News Feed. These job postings will also show up in a Jobs tab of the Page, creating a dedicated landing place where companies can send job seekers. Businesses would get the added benefit of potentially gaining new followers whether or not someone inquires about the open position, compared to a relatively static Careers page on company's website. Job postings will include an "Apply Now" button that launches a standard job application flow, but pre-populated with information from a user's public profile. That could help people quickly apply for multiple jobs without typing in redundant information. Submitted applications will be received by the Page as a Facebook Message. Businesses will also be able to pay to show their News Feed job postings to more people, directly competing with some of LinkedIn's ad offerings. Facebook's opportunity here combines its ubiquitous reach, personal data, and engagement.

Comments

Oh yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets give Farcebook even more personal data to mine and sell by uploading our resume to them. Hey what the hell, let's just use Farcebook to APPLY for jobs as well, so they can finally get our Social Security numbers and credit ratings as well!

But on the bright side, at least grandpa and grandma can get jobs working tier 1 helpdesk for Robert Half and earn a little extra income while spamming cat videos to their kids now!

Re:Oh yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

As the old quote goes: don't mix business with pleasure.

One privacy invading site threatens another

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me up when something important happens. Facebook and LinkedIn are both useless.

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[AuMatar]

Linkedin is useful as a self updating list of email addresses for former colleagues who may be helpful as references or have job openings in the future. Fat better than the old fashioned way where you had to keep in contact or ask mutual friends for contact info

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

^^^ Pretty much this. Every time I even touch my profile, old friends and acquaintances come out of the woodwork asking me if I'd want to work with them again.

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[Anonymous Coward]

except for shady agencies and crooked H1B outfits, what other self-respecting company would require bugging people for stupid references

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[AuMatar]

Most companies do. I get reference requests on former juniors every few months. I don't really understand it (I mean if they listed my name they know I'm going to give you a good review, otherwise they'd have given you someone else or lied), but a lot of companies put stock in them. Personally I only think they're useful if its a mutual acquaintance- if I know someone who worked with you I'd call them and trust the result. But many companies actually do call references, and some of those that don't will still ask for them.

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I had to tell them "Sorry, guys. The Foreign Legion was fun but one has to move on."

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[Salgak1]

It also seems to be a never-ending source for Keyword searches by lazy recruiters who never actually read the profiles, just like they never read our resumes. . .

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[__aaclcg7560]

Every time I even touch my profile, old friends and acquaintances come out of the woodwork asking me if I'd want to work with them again.

There's an option to turn off the automatic broadcasts while updating your profile. Turn it off, make your changes, and turn it on. No one will know that you touched your profile. I have to do that since my boss is linked to my profile and she contacts me immediately if I make any changes to my profile.

Re: One privacy invading site threatens another

[Xrikcus]

If they never test the system by actually asking, then people could trust listing your name even if you were likely to give a bad reference. They have to ask occasionally to keep people honest.

Mah Profile

[bmo]

Thus as it is has been inscribed in glowing green phosphor on Facebook since the dawn of the Age:

Stock doctor and witch broker at Database Corruption Incorporated
October 26, 1965 to present
Edit your work

Studied Database fuckery at Pimento University, Pimento CA
Past: Mianus Secondary School, Mianus CT

Lives in Norton, Vermont
From Archangel, Arkhangel'Skaya Oblast', Russia

---------------

What kind of recruiters will I attract?

--
BMO

Hopefully they will learn

[lucm]

I hope Facebook will learn from LinkedIn how to make a decent API. The Facebook APi is awful, almost as bad as the Twitter one.

I understand that when a company experiences explosive growth there is usually no time to design a perfect architecture, but some organizations like LinkedIn, Amazon and to some extent Google managed to do it. I guess Facebook is too busy spying on people.

The Facebook API is a tapestry of bad designs that are not even consistent across the various namespaces. The developer console looks like something that was designed by people who have never heard of UX principles, and the documentation is awful. I'd rather work with Yahoo CSV API than with Facebook "methods".

Re: Hopefully they will learn

[AuMatar]

As someone who worked there-it isn't designed. There are no central architectural design teams inside Facebook, each team does its own work to their own specs. So throw any hope of consistency out the window without a total culture reboot. The fact it's all graphql doesn't help (that's a decision that probably makes sense financially at scale due to saving space over Jason, but makes all queries a pain in the ass)

Re: Hopefully they will learn

[TTL0]

"There are no central architectural design teams inside Facebook, each team does its own work to their own specs."

I think the term is Agile.

I use the two sites for different purposes

[Elfich47]

I use facebook for non-business, non-work, non-professional reasons. I use Linked in for business, work and professional reasons.

I do not normally mix the two. The first being I don't want my boss or coworkers (with a couple of exceptions) knowing how I spend my weekends. Its none of their business.

Facebook is apparently trying to bring that separation between my private and work life. I won't participate in that. There are two many chances of something stupid being cross-posted between personal and professional sections of Facebook. Not going there.

Re:I use the two sites for different purposes

[misnohmer]

Bingo (though for me I don't use facebook at all, people who I want knowing how I spend my weekends already do). Whenever I interview anyone, I always google them first. I have to say, never, ever did someone's facebook page make the candidate look more suited for the job. At best, facebook content was neutral. I'm sure hiring for social media, comedians or other public entertainment venues it may be useful to blend the two, but for most jobs it can only hurt the candidate.

Re:I use the two sites for different purposes

[NoSalt]

I agree 100%. The last thing I want is for some potential employer or business associate to see me with my shirt off in my son's wading pool wearing a big hat with zinc-oxide on my nose. Some things just don't mix well.

Work/life balance

[Kernel Kurtz]

LinkedIn consists of people putting their best professional face forward. Facebook consists of people freely sharing their personal lives.

Mix them at your own peril.

Re: Work/life balance

[Anonymous Coward]

that's a trash.
linkdin is a spying invasive bullshit, full of useless boasting, "recruiters" residing someplace in pakistan, and now owned by the Microshit Corp, outsourcing 60% of their jobs to stupid jungles in india.

Re:Work/life balance

[Anonymous Coward]

if i did this as an employer, all applicants using facebook to apply would automatically be rejected. but then, i would very much rather have an old-fashioned hard copy letter and cv. we do not do online applications at all, even for 'tech' openings.

Re: Work/life balance

[Anonymous Coward]

If I was looking for someone to flip burgers or scrape shit off the bathroom floor, I'd look on Facebook.
If I'm looking for a professional, I'd go to LinkdIn.

Re:Work/life balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, my first thought is, applying for jobs through Facebook will help no one but HR teams more easily dismiss applications and make the hiring process faster/cheaper. Very few people are going to have a 100% HR friendly Facebook page. Something you like, some comment you typed, some picture you're in are all it takes for you to be dismissed.

Re:Work/life balance

[Anonymous Coward]

i am actually expecting a few rather non-funny outcomes:
- Job application storms: "2 millions People applied to the Job. please respond timely"
- lawsuits based on - lets call it "enhanced employee selection criteria" like "loose morals, interesting hobbies, tindr+whipplr account"
- either people becoming more respectful with their postings (not gonna happen) or lower recruiting standards since people level in on facebook level.
- General breaches of confidentiality with all the resulting analysis (e.g. who needs to be bribed to get into X, who does our sales agent have to sleep with, etc.)

this is not a good idea. at all.

Filtering

[manu0601]

Job postings will include an "Apply Now" button that launches a standard job application flow, but pre-populated with information from a user's public profile. That could help people quickly apply for multiple jobs without typing in redundant information.

That will probably deter some companies from posting jobs opening on Facebook: If applying is as easy as a click, you quickly get thousands of CVs and you wonder how you could even filter the stream to find interesting ones.

Re:Filtering

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to worry. Facebook's algorithms can also tell them which ones to hire and save them the trouble of going through every CV.

Re:Filtering

[Anonymous Coward]

I use FB to weed out racists and other undesirables from my job applications. Of course, it's not always possible but you'd be surprised how many people have a public profile.

I can see how this can be used the other way around too, e.g. to weed out people with certain "ethnic affinities", as FB likes to call it.

FB does a lot of tracking, but everyone is in full control over what they put on their profile, and what pages they like.

F*ck LinkedIN

[Anonymous Coward]

Task:

Find one person that isn't a consummate professional and passionate about their job."

FB should

[Hall]

Facebook should go for it. Linkedin is just turning into a Facebook for older people anyway. I see selfie picture posts, "Click 'like' if you agree" posts, even ran across this one, copied and modified from a similar FB shared post from a couple of months ago (on FB, it was a Harley-Davidson though): "A guy looked at the Corvette the other day and said I wonder how many people could have been fed for the cost of that car. I replied I am not sure, it fed a lot of families in Kentucky who built it..."

who uses linikedin to find a job?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm being serious here. Linkedin was OK for a while, but now it has devolved into a spam factory. Copious amount of emails for work anniversaries, "skill" endorsements, profile changes, and to what end? I thought it was all about networking with my business contacts, but now its just bottom barrel recruiters trying to phish out some resumes.

Inevitable in more ways than one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, business partners often want to know about each other to determine trustworthiness. One of those measures is their public personal persona (and associated activities). Why do CRM systems now have auto social media scraping to generate personal profiles? To get a sense of who someone is.

In east asian countries, professional business social networks like LinkedIn have poor penetration, but you see facebook and it's clones subsuming that role as a layer on top of the base personal social network. Using that to assist in user profiling for job applicants is already happening under the surface, so this is cutting middleman recruiters out of the picture and allows direct recruiting. Most local general recruiters can fight the strength of major global network. Some limited vertical recruiters might survive, but it's like living in a tiger's mouth.

Considering the chinese government is effectively building the government version of Klout, complete with credit scores and educational record, this is the dark end path of information ubiquity.

I think you meant to say

[melted]

"Freely share the public version of their personal lives". Kind of like Clinton: one position for Goldman Sachs, another for the voting public.

Re:I think you meant to say

[__aaclcg7560]

Kind of like Clinton: one position for Goldman Sachs, another for the voting public.

Different audiences want to hear different things. That's what good speakers do.

Like-farmers and scammers rejoice!

[tflf]

What could possibly go wrong posting jobs on a social-interaction site where most posts need to be fact-checked? Given the current state of Facebook, there may be 1 real job for every 10,000 help-wanted Facebook postings. By the way, that noise you hear are the like-farmers and scammers cheering.

great idea

[slashmydots]

Yes, please let all the stupid people associate their Facebook account with thousands of pics of them drunk off their ass with their job app so I can not hire them.