Facebook Introduces Job Search Feature: Posing Itself As A Huge Threat To LinkedIn

Facebook - LinkedIn

The social giant Facebook is rolling out a feature that allows job seekers to connect with their hiring employers without ever leaving its platform. In one way or another, this is where Facebook starts to become the new LinkedIn.

The feature is an update that allows Business Pages to post job listings the way they typically post status updates. A new Jobs tab on Pages allows interested parties to see an aggregated listing of all available position within a hiring company, assuming that the company has posted them on Facebook.

With the feature, users can link, share and even comment in a way Facebook is known for.

For job seekers, they have the option to apply for the available position by using the "Apply Now" button. This will instantly send their application form through Facebook Messenger. To speed up the process for both parties, Facebook will pre-fill the applying user's name and profile picture.

The idea for the feature came when Facebook found that small businesses were having troubles in hiring new recruits. Many people are wanting a better or high-paying jobs, even if they're already satisfied with their current employer.

This is where the Microsoft owned LinkedIn, the already popular social media for professionals, has failed to see. The platform is better known to be the medium for high-skilled jobs.

Facebook jobs

Besides the monetization potential for Facebook, the job seeking feature is a win-win solution for job seekers and also hiring companies. Closing to two billion users, Facebook is plainly the platform with most users, comparable to Google. While LinkedIn might be the leader in the social employment business, its 467 million user count is dwarfed by Facebook's.

Its sheer size alone is already a huge advantage over LinkedIn.

With Facebook's ability to tag friends and targeting methods, it's highlighting things that LinkedIn can't really offer on its platform. What's more, Facebook users come back every day for a variety of reasons, and it isn't as dull as LinkedIn.

This feature can really hurt LinkedIn which has most of its revenue coming from job listings. It can also affect LinkedIn's growth prospects.

Facebook jobs

While Facebook has a huge advantage if compared to LinkedIn, it has one problem that LinkedIn is not clearly having.

Facebook is known as a social platform that is more casual and friendly. For some job seekers, this can pose a problem since their future employer can easily do background checks by visiting their social media profile.

To its defense. Facebook's VP of Ads and Business Platform Andrew"“Boz" Bosworth said that Facebook's research has shown an "overwhelming enthusiasm" for the feature. While social background checks may scare a lot of job seekers from applying jobs at big companies, Boz said that the feature aims for "casual job seekers … they're just looking for every opportunity they can get."

Facebook's opportunity to compete with LinkedIn is to show jobs to people that LinkedIn has not reached (or can't).

"Two-thirds of job seekers are already employed," said Boz. "They're not spending their days and nights out there canvassing for jobs. They're open to a job if a job comes."

The feature launches on February 16th, 2017, initially for U.S. and Canadian Business Pages.