Will Recruiters Start to Exploit Facebook in 2019?

The tides of social media are always ebbing and flowing, and when it comes to the hiring process, they are no different. While LinkedIn is the go-to social network for conducting business processes  – from research to communication to hiring – it’s not the only platform for finding professionals.

Sure, Facebook has connotations of being the personal network, but that view is changing and as the service grows and taps into new markets, you can be sure that recruiters will be looking at how they can take advantage of Facebook.

Facebook is the Biggest Social Network

The number-one edge Facebook has on LinkedIn is that it simply has more users. While the recruitment industry isn’t a total numbers game, there is something to a social network that boasts somewhere 2.3 billion active monthly users, about three times as many as LinkedIn.

More users mean more possible recruitment leads and, with more users on its network, there are more connections among those people, meaning more potential to reach.

More and More Business is Being Conducted via Facebook

Facebook started out strictly as social network for college students to communicate with one another. That function definitely still exists, but over the years, we’ve become able to do more and more with the platform.

Now, Facebook is not just about sharing communications – it’s about sharing just about anything, including business. While there is no real system in place yet for doing business transactions through Facebook, brick-and-mortar shops, online retailers, and freelancers alike have pages set up to promote their business. Naturally, recruiters will flock to where the success is for hiring.

The Problems with Facebook as a Recruitment Tool

Despite all of this, Facebook just isn’t quite there yet as a recruitment tool. For one, there’s that aforementioned stigma that the network is purely a social system – that image will take time to change.

LinkedIn has, from the start, been about professional networking. Recruitment firms such as the Ashdown Group already have a strong presence on the job-based platform. It’ll take time for Facebook to implement features that give LinkedIn the advantage.

Also, just because Facebook has better numbers than LinkedIn, that doesn’t mean that those are high-quality numbers. Not everyone on Facebook is interested in finding a job or making a business connection. While a recruiter will have a larger reach on Facebook, their message may fall on more deaf ears than it would on LinkedIn.

While we can’t say definitively that recruiters will – or even should – completely jump ship from LinkedIn and migrate to Facebook, there’s a good chance that, for all of the above reasons, they’ll find themselves dipping their feet more gradually into other streams.

Nothing is stopping recruiters from trying out other methods to generate business leads. Now  – while alternative online recruiting methods are in their infancy – is the best time for recruiters to start exploring these opportunities.

Author bio

Usman Raza is the co-founder of Christian Marketing Experts and marketing specialist at PSDtoWPService.com. He has been writing for magazines and newspapers since 2001, and editing and managing websites since 2006. Usman has a BA in Business Development, Philosophy, and English. When not working, he’s probably spending time with his family. Follow Usman on Twitter: @usmanintrotech.