Dive Brief:
- Yesterday, Facebook began allowing businesses to post job listings on their own Pages as well as in News Feed, as reported by Business Insider.
- The move puts Facebook in direct competition with job listing websites, particularly LinkedIn, which has long been considered the go-to business-oriented social media platform, along with services like Glassdoor.
- Listing jobs on Facebook had been going on ad hoc according to Facebook's VP of Ads, Andrew Bosworth, and the change is meant to bring more structure to the process.
Dive Insight:
Last November, Facebook began testing a similar feature with a "jobs" tab on business Pages, along with recruiting offerings such as allowing Page administrators to create postings and receive applications within the platform. The formal rollout yesterday looks like a more sharpened, organized result of that test, and includes a tight integration, not only with Facebook's main platform, but also its Messenger app, which has grown to become a key part of the company's business over the past 12 months or so.
Facebook's main platform started with a focus on the user-to-user social experience but has since expanded to serve a variety of purposes, notably as a purveyor of news. Networking and recruiting, however, are relatively uncharted territory for the company, and it has a strong, well-established competitor in LinkedIn.
The introduction of more LinkedIn-like tools for businesses is just the latest example of Facebook building up its walled garden, a long-term strategy that seeks to have users get everything they need online within Facebook's suite of products while boosting the platform's data set around users, information that is valuable to marketers.
The new feature has Facebook streamlining job both postings and application, and it stands to gain from the listings as well. When a business posts a job to its Page, anyone wanting to apply gets an auto-fill option based on information in their profile and companies can reply to applicants via Messenger, according to Business Insider. Anyone who has liked the businesses Page will see the listing in their news feed. On the revenue generating side, businesses can pay to increase the reach of job listings via targeting criteria.