Recent studies show that an increasing number of companies are using LinkedIn for recruitment; however, results in the US show that only 30% of active job seekers are actually using LinkedIn, which has led to recruiters finding LinkedIn quite overcrowded and questioning where all the candidates are.
Active jobseekers are hanging out in other social platforms, like Facebook. However, whilst many recruiters have realised this and started targeting Facebook users, they’re finding that recruiting on Facebook is an uphill struggle and unfortunately for recruiters, the problems that are arising are unlikely to ever disappear completely due to the inherent nature of the social platform that is Facebook.
- Facebook users don’t want the fact that they are unemployed advertised to all their friends and acquaintances; it’s a private matter and one that people don’t always want every Tom, Dick and Harry to know;
- People might be friends with their current boss or colleagues and so do not want to take the risk of being found out they are looking for new work;
- Facebook users are constantly being told that making certain posts or adding personal pictures can often result in a disciplinary at work, or even total dismissal, so they don’t want to take the risk of using Facebook as a route to employment;
- Jobseeker Facebook apps often need permission to post to your wall and access information about you, before you can sign up to use them. People don’t like this and see it as an invasion of privacy and don’t like the fact that the app is beyond their control;
- With all the recent warnings about online fraud and hackers being able to access your information online, people have upped their privacy settings on Facebook and are much more wary about letting people that they don’t know access anything about them;
- There are a lot of potential candidates on Facebook, so it’s hard to filter them all down to only those that would be relevant to the jobs that need to be filled. To be able to narrow the field, recruiters have to pay Facebook for certain information so that they can only advertise to the most relevant candidates but then the advantage of free advertising is lost.
- Recruiters must keep in mind that platforms like LinkedIn are meant for public viewing, whereas Facebook started out as a private university forum. It’s developed now but we mustn’t forget that when it comes down to it, Facebook is the online version of an after work get together, where people go to let their hair down after a busy day at the office or a hard day at school/university and no one wants to be hassled when they’re trying to wind down.
About Nik Lemmens
Do you have career challenges you want to overcome? Work with me and lets get you on the right track.
