On February 15th, 2017, Facebook introduced the pilot to allow US and Canadian businesses to post jobs on their Facebook Page with the hope to help businesses find qualified people as “40% of US small businesses report that filling jobs was more difficult than they expected, which is surprising when you consider that these small businesses also employ nearly half of the country’s workforce.”

For job board businesses, it will be important to understand Facebook’s approach and how you will be able to combat their entrance into the continually competitive marketplace. Firstly, let’s cover a few key items;

1. Currently, small businesses are able to post their jobs for free for the next couple of weeks. (Will they start charging afterward the next few weeks?..we will soon find out)
2. Any applications will be submitted through Messenger and allow the business to begin a dialogue with the applicant through the messaging platform
3. Ability to easily boost job posts to reach a larger or more relevant audience.

It will be natural that your sales team may have already come across questions/comments from small business owners on why they should continue to advertise on your job board instead of posting for free on the largest social media site. And, to that question, let’s go back to the fundamental solution in recruiting; quality of applicants.

Time will tell the affect Facebook will have with small businesses by allowing their ability to advertise open job postings on their Page. Our thought is that this functionality will be effective for local businesses that are looking for employees to fill part-time hourly positions such as; cashier, hostess, server, teller, etc. The commonality amongst these listed positions is that fact they are entry level positions that would encourage the applicant to get started and leverage the company’s training to grow into their career. With recruiting for more senior level positions, typically recruiters/employers will be looking for more in-depth understanding to the applicants work history, experience, education level and personal attributes.

Therefore, depending on the niche in which your job board currently works in, it will be crucial to be powered with the data and analytics pertaining to your industry and job board. Employers are more interested in finding the right candidate instead of increasing the number of job views and filtering through irrelevant applicants (this may be a challenge small businesses will discover by using Facebook). So, when you come across the question from a small business owner on why they should continue to spending their money on the job board, follow up with analytics like such; (will use certified CPA as the example)

• Mr/Mrs Employer, we have ‘X’ amount of Accountants visiting our job board each month
• Currently, ‘X’ number of users have ‘X’, ‘Y’, ‘Z’ years of experience and education level
• And, of those users, ‘X’ number have registered within the last month and notified us they are currently seeking full-time employment.

A key note will be to tailor this information specifically to the recruiter/employer to ensure you are connecting the audience to help solve their problem. We hope our thoughts and approach will be helpful for your job board to combat the emergence of Facebook into the recruiting business.