How Employers Can Make the Most of Facebook’s New Job Tool

Just when you thought Facebook had reached its full networking potential, Mark Zuckerberg’s team found a new way to enhance the platform. While job seekers have gained more and more power over the last decade, Facebook’s new jobs feature hopes to address the needs of employers as well.

While many employers may not be ready for yet another job posting channel, the tool could be useful for the way it combines the ease of networking with sharing job openings. What could this new form of online interaction and job posting mean for your company’s future?

Social Media Recruitment Is on the Rise

Thanks to the transparency social media platforms offer to both employers and job seekers, these sites are becoming increasingly popular in recruiting. A recent survey by Rake found that 53 percent of job seekers use 2-3 social media sites during their job searches. What’s more, 67 percent of social media job seekers are already using Facebook in their searches, according to Jobvite’s Job Seeker Nation 2016 survey.

It seems like a new job search tool pops up every day, and most are geared toward job seekers. While new apps and job boards focus on candidates’ needs, the large number of recruitment advertising and talent sourcing options can make it hard for employers to keep track of their recruiting efforts. This results in misplaced posts, missed deadlines, and the loss of high-quality candidates.

Facebook’s new job tool could be a step toward bringing everything into one easy-to-use location for job seekers. They’ll be less likely to miss out on your opportunities when job posts from multiple locations are aggregated in one place.

It is increasingly important to keep up with the changing times in recruiting. Knowing where job seekers go to find roles could be the difference between finding the best candidate and settling for the candidate who happened to hear about your opening.

New Complications Could Arise

Anytime a new recruiting tool appears, it can throw a wrench in your hiring plans. Recruiting already costs companies more than $100,000 for every employee who leaves, according to a recent Globoforce study. Adding more new tools and channels to your recruiting arsenal can make your efforts cluttered, confused, and inefficient.

Even though you’re already managing a Facebook page, the job feature would add one more place your team needs to keep tabs on. Also, candidates searching for jobs on Facebook may not be attracted by the same types of job posts as those on other sites.

Employers may need to adapt to new styles of writing job posts, rewrite current job posts, and offer new training in order to teach recruiters how to effectively use Facebook as a recruiting tool. Don’t waste time and money guessing what job seekers on Facebook want. Do your research. Align your strategy to the specific needs of candidates on Facebook.

Job Boards Aren’t Going Anywhere

Facebook has the power to make a lot of changes to the recruiting industry, but making job boards obsolete isn’t one of them. It is important to keep an eye on new tools and trends, but you can’t let them distract you from the methods you’re already using to land quality candidates.

Job boards will require the same attention to detail as they have always required – maybe even more now that a new platform is on the scene. As always, focus on where your preferred types of candidates are looking for jobs.

Karyn Mullins is the executive vice president and general manager of MedReps.com, a job board dedicated to medical and pharmaceutical sales jobs.