Facebook now directly competes with Linkedin as professional job market place – Image Courtesy Facebook
I can’t say I am surprised that Facebook has launched a job board site. Considering the amount of pressure the company is under to find ways to milk revenue from its huge user base, the only surprise is the fact that it took this long. The long time delay is also surprising because LinkedIn has already demonstrated that social job search can pay off. According to some recruiters, another key reason why it is surprising that Facebook only recently stepped up to the career and recruitment space is the fact that Facebook is routinely used by recruiters to find information on job seekers’ personal life. Primarily, there are just way too much information Facebook can hold that might turn a company’s tentative acceptance of a job seeker into a rejection.
The Facebook jobs board changes Facebook’s use from background research to an actual job search platform where users can look for work by specifying location, industry, skill set, and apply for the position directly through the social network site. Of course, the page also allows a user to share jobs they find interesting with their social network. Interestingly enough, Facebook denies that it is venturing into the job recruitment business. This is quite surprising considering the fact that Facebook is under so much pressure to find a way to get more revenues from its 1 billion users. Moreover, the social job recruitment business model has been more than adequately validated by LinkedIn. Also, the huge number of potential job seekers the page might help span the globe. Talk about a huge market!
Regardless of what Facebook says, it still racked up losses north of $50 million last quarter. Also, while it is enjoying quite a bit of a stock rebound, no one knows if the recent bounce can be sustained. It is under a lot of pressure and turning its base of social users into a professional network or at least offering that capability can only mean bad news for LinkedIn and other professional networking sites. Sure, these sites might be more specialized than Facebook but FB brings something to the table these smaller sites don’t have-scale and volume. At 1 billion users, Facebook simply smokes the competition. I would worry if I were a LinkedIn executive right now.
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