Facebook Job-Posting Tool Helps Small Businesses Hire

Facebook officially announced it will be expanding its job-posting tool to 40 countries beyond the US and Canada. Already, more than one in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook. After seeing immediate success in North America after launching last year, the tech giant is broadening its job-hunting services to include the UK, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and many others.

“Local businesses strengthen our communities and create more than 60% of new jobs,” said Alex Himel, VP of Local at Facebook. “We want to help people find those jobs and help local businesses hire the right people.”

More than 40% of small and medium-sized businesses in the US claim they’ve been able to hire more employees since joining Facebook. This accomplishment shouldn’t be taken lightly considering 31% of survey small businesses owners had job openings they couldn’t fill because they couldn’t find qualified candidates. “A lot of these businesses who aren’t able to fill their positions elsewhere, they’re seeing success on Facebook,” Himel said.

Ben, operations manager at Sky Zone, filled 11 positions in a single week after receiving more than 200 applications using Facebook’s job-posting tool. “We had more of the right type of candidate apply through Facebook…It was also much easier to look through applications on Facebook, and I think it was easier for candidates to complete job postings,” he said.

Although seemingly late to the game against other established competitors like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed.com, Facebook believes that by offering a free and simple process, the tool will gain traction among small businesses.

Facebook boasts 2.2 billion active users, whereas LinkedIn just passed 500 million users earlier this year — that’s more than 4x as many potential candidates on Facebook! But only 55% of recruiters are currently using Facebook, while 87% use LinkedIn. More recruiters means more competition, but expect the number of recruiters on Facebook to rapidly grow with the expansion of this job-posting tool.

“Since 2011, we’ve invested a billion dollars in helping small businesses grow and helping people find jobs, and we’ve pledged that in 2018 we’re going to do a billion dollars more, which is with the same theme of helping small businesses be successful,” said Himel.

Facebook’s evolving job-posting tool is taking big steps to help businesses fill their open seats. For businesses struggling to hire through traditional recruitment methods and platforms, Facebook may be just the solution they need to find and connect with top talent.