By Maria Valdez Haubrich
Are you getting ready to hire employees to ramp up your business after years of running short-staffed? Or maybe you just need to replace an employee who’s retiring or leaving for other reasons.
For small businesses, finding good sources of job candidates can be a big challenge. Listings on big job search sites may return too many unqualified candidates, costing you time wading through resumes of people who don’t fit your description (not to mention the cost of the listings, which can be fairly high for a small business). So maybe you resort to word-of-mouth, letting colleagues and customers know you’re on the hunt for a new staffer.
While word-of-mouth is often a great way to find new candidates, it doesn’t always work due to timing issues. Now there’s a new way to take advantage of word-of-mouth and spread the word even more widely to your friends’ and colleagues’ friends and colleagues using Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal recently took a look at the growing trend of using social media to find and advertise jobs. While LinkedIn, which offers job listings and is more career-oriented than Facebook, has dominated up till now, the Journal reports that Facebook is starting to catch up. One reason could be that people tend to be more closely connected to their Facebook friends, so they trust their referrals and recommendations more. One expert cited by the Journal says candidates are 50% more likely to apply to job openings they learn about through Facebook than through other means. Another is simply that people tend to visit Facebook more often than LinkedIn.
The Journal says that according to Jobs2Web, Facebook hires currently make up less than 1% of total new hires, but that could be changing: Jobs2Web says if Facebook hiring trends continue, the social network could rival traditional job boards as hiring tool by 2012.
How can you use Facebook to hire? One simple way is to post information about jobs on your business’s Facebook page, but some companies go so far as to search for comments people are making about job hunts or unhappiness with current jobs to sniff out potential candidates. This strategy can backfire, though, if candidates see it as “invasive” because they weren’t actively seeking jobs. By comparison, candidates who are active on LinkedIn tend to be more open to new job offers and opportunities because that site is focused on job-related networking.
You can get around this hurdle by accessing tools that are dedicated to Facebook job search. One Facebook app, BranchOut, boasts it enables job seekers to browse through millions of job listings. And job search site Monster.com has a Facebook app called BeKnown.
Have you tried looking for job candidates on Facebook? Will you next time you’re on the hunt?
Image by Flickr user Marc Falardeau (Creative Commons)
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