You may have noticed that Facebook has also recently rolled out its job portal in Norway – www.facebook.com/jobs. In, for example, Facebook’s home country of the United States, it has been available for much longer. We have taken a closer look at the portal. Does it measure up?
It is not the first time Facebook has tried
Without going into detail this time, it is not the first time Facebook has tried solutions aimed at the job market. It hasn’t gone well so far. This time they apparently come with a somewhat more traditional integrated solution, although it also has its good and not so good “twisters”. We shouldn’t be so demanding of an application that is “free”, but even under that designation, the solution gets a big “yes” from us. The solution has a very simple feel to it. There is one thing in particular that drags the solution down considerably, especially from the perspective of those with the greatest recruitment needs and who have their own recruitment systems.
Background and the overall perspective
Before we go into the solution itself, we look a bit at the overall perspective. We have long been somewhat skeptical of such a venture on Facebook’s part, but have hoped that they would come up with a creative solution that would meet the target. This is to reach active seekers (those who are actively trying to look for a new job), at the same time that it would not be too fussy and avoid the typical challenges such free solutions often face (we will return to this). We also envisioned that the solution would be able to replace all the vacancy applications you had to implement or create. Thus, visitors could easily get a good overview of your vacancies when they visit your company profile on Facebook.
Although we can debate to what extent LinkedIn is a social media, it has been perceived and accepted as the most significant career portal/professional network in the social media atmosphere. You therefore expect to find a lot of work-related things there, but not from private life. When it comes to Facebook, it is probably somewhat more vulnerable. Here have a family, friends, and acquaintances. Perhaps one thus values presenting and being presented (from them) “life” outside of work to a greater extent. We asked ourselves whether such a dedicated application in Facebook would be too intrusive and whether it was undesirable for many to expose too much of their professional working life there as well (if that was what the solution was supposed to do). Not only that, but also with a lot of bad content.
The concern is based, among other things, on the fact that the solution is free and is poorly regulated. We have seen several free job portals – some still exist, while others are gone. The problem is that they quickly fill up with an awful lot of strange and often with more or less nonsensical content – at least if there are no regulations at all about what is posted and how often. “Posting wars” to end up at the top of the results list is not unusual either. Even on paid services such as finn.no, we see this happening constantly. Companies are therefore even willing to pay for one and the same advertisement both 2, 3 and 4 times, this in order to end up at the top of the list again during the application period. Understandable to some extent. This since one seems to fall terribly quickly down the list. This is also a challenge that you don’t have to worry about when it comes to targeted job advertisements in social and digital media (so we managed to sneak in some self-promotion too 😉 ).
There is, however, a void that can be filled by a job database in the social media atmosphere. LinkedIn is more for management and specialist positions. Low-threshold positions, which do not require specialist or management experience, are a void that a good solution from Facebook could fill. For example, you do not publish advertisements for shop assistants, or carpenters for that matter, on LinkedIn. The way Facebook’s solution now appears, the large traditional and idiosyncratic job databases should probably not feel too threatened. There are other social and digital media solutions that threaten more at present. in our opinion.
The application
When it comes to being a fussy application, so far it seems to be going well. Both the marketplace, Workplace and the job portal do not seem very intrusive – until you make the applications for it yourself. You can therefore start subscribing from the job database, after which you will be notified when something new of interest appears.
The other challenges, on the other hand, have not been resolved, so we believe this will be a happy mix of announcements from serious and non-serious players. The job search function is nothing to brag about either, except for one thing – you can search from a radius. That means you can apply for jobs within the distance you are willing to commute (maximum 150 km). At the same time, the annoying county and municipality border challenges in the search, which you can experience in traditional job databases, disappear (for example, if you live near a county border, you must search in both counties so as not to miss out on jobs). Having said this, if you try to search the whole of Norway in the Facebook solution, you will struggle. At least we didn’t get it at the time of writing. There is therefore not a high level of functionality or search criteria.
From a recruiter’s perspective
From an employer’s perspective, there are not many bright spots. It goes without saying that this solution is not optimal, and it can hardly compare with good targeted campaigns. If, on the other hand, you run a small company and have very limited budgets, then this could be the salvation if you are lucky. What may annoy many employers is that the solution does not allow you to refer candidates to an application management tool, so that you can gather everyone in one place. You must either handle your applicants within Facebook, or via email. We find it remarkable that they don’t have another solution for this. It should be very easy to put in a solution where you could refer candidates to another application page and thereby opt out of this question solution (which we will get to shortly). Hard to believe this hasn’t been considered, so the motivation for not doing it probably lies elsewhere. Possibly they see it as a threat to paid solutions, which can be linked anywhere.
The publication itself is simple. You enter a picture, description and define some questions the candidate can answer. In this sense, the solution can be compared somewhat with our use of lead ads (see example by clicking “register” on the following link https://www.facebook.com/258879260626/posts/10159953115640627). Although lead ad has a far more professional foundation and can be targeted. This is a step in the right direction, by making the application process for candidates easy. However, a truly loose solution is not suitable for all positions either, in our opinion.
This is what it looked like when we advertised for a sales and media consultant in Post Social (Click here)
Our conclusion
Our conclusion is that this is a somewhat half-hearted solution and that we had hoped for a little more – even from a free application. However, we were prepared for that to some extent and saw the solution in an early phase internationally. After all, Facebook also does not want to create free solutions that could affect their paid solutions in a negative direction. Although a job base, which primarily reaches active jobseekers anyway, would hardly be able to replace targeted solutions that include reaching the particularly important target group of passive jobseekers (those who are not actively looking for a new job, but are impressionable). You may well post your announcement, but you must be prepared to have to deal with applicants outside of your normal application management tool (if you have one). Also, don’t expect too much from the response for now.
Would you like to hear more about how, and why, to get assistance for your presence in social and digital media? Contact Post Social at post@postsocial.no or 66 98 00 88. If you have views or input, yes, we also want to hear from you. You can comment below. With over 20 years of experience with services/solutions aimed at the labor market, we have specialized in recruitment and employer branding via social and digital media. Here you can see a small excerpt of our customers per today https://staging.postsocial.no/oppadrag/.
