Job hunters often turn to LinkedIn to find new jobs, but another social media platform has helped fill over 1 million jobs. What is that social media platform? None other than Facebook.
According to a recent Facebook post from Mark Zuckerberg, over 2.6 billion people all over the world use the platform to find new employees. While Facebook wasn’t originally designed to be a site for job hunting, it is easy to see how that feature evolved.
What is Facebook Jobs?
In 2017, Facebook created a special section called Jobs, which works similarly to Marketplace. Users can search full-time or part-time jobs, industries, and location. When users find a job they like, they can apply directly on the site by clicking on the “Apply” button. The link shares the applicant’s name, phone number, email address, and experience.
Success Story #1
For small businesses, Facebook Jobs is a useful tool for finding employees. One of those businesses is Bella Bridal Boutique in Minnesota. After sifting through 60 applicants, the hiring manager found three employees. Bella Bridal Boutique has a 13-person staff, so those new employees needed to be just right. To communicate with candidates, Bella Bridal Boutique used Messenger, Pages, and Page Publishing. There was a small fee to boost the post, but according to the co-owner Kirsten Walfoort:
“We spent money on all the job sites, but Facebook was the only tool that brought a diverse pool of applicants which gave us more choices.”
Success Story #2
Another small business that saw success using Facebook Jobs is Striper Sniper Tackle. In fact, the fishing tackle business can attribute 75% of its sales to Facebook itself. Instead of using Facebook to hire traditional employees, Troy Robertson – the owner – used it to attract brand ambassadors who loved to fish and did so in popular locales around the country. Robertson narrowed down his applicants to 27 and hired 15 of them, and many were professionals in the fishing industry. He found better applicants on Facebook than any other site.
To keep his ambassadors on the same page, he held meetings through Facebook Groups. On a regular basis, he meets with his group so they can share fishing strategies, tips, and more. They also speak to each other via Facebook Live. Facebook not only helped him sell products, but he was able to use it to build far-reaching community so he could build relationships and sell even more products.
Other Business Tools on Facebook
Even though the Jobs section of Facebook is relatively new, the site’s investment in helping local businesses is not. According to Dan Levy with Facebook, the company has invested over $1 billion to help local businesses and that includes helping them find quality employees. Many of the solutions that Facebook offers to businesses are completely free:
- Pages: Where businesses can share their profiles. There are 90 million business pages.
- Groups: Where businesses can interact with smaller communities. 200 million people belong to at least one Facebook Group.
- Events: Where events can be shared and publicized to the Facebook community. 700 million people post or show interested in Events.
Despite the grief that Facebook gets for outages, trolls, and analytics, there are good things coming from this massive social media platform. It makes the world smaller, so small that small businesses can grow and succeed.
