Where Does Facebook Stand as a Recruitment Tool?

August 17th, 2011 by Trefis Team
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With a +750 million active user base, Facebook is increasingly becoming a preferred choice for recruiters as the line between professional and personal networking continues to blur. [1] Here we look at certain key current trends for Facebook and its role in the recruitment arena. As the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook competes in the online advertising space with companies such as Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD).

We currently value Facebook at around $45 billion.

LinkedIn’s Success has Prompted Facebook to Explore Professional Networking

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As the first truly professional networking site, LinkedIn has turned the recruitment market on its head giving stiff competition to incumbent players such as Monster and reaching over 115 million registered users.

With a user base more than 6x larger than LinkedIn, job seekers now are turning to Facebook apps such as BeKnown and BranchOut even as LinkedIn has launched newer, simpler and more social features. [2]

Corporate Customers Save on Recruiting

From the customers’ (i.e. corporate employers) side as well, the response to recruiting tools on Facebook has been encouraging. A recent example is Oracle, which plans to  recruit 1,700 employees from Facebook and Twitter for their European expansion. [3]

From the recruiter’s perspective, seeking employees through a social network is more cost-effective as individual job postings on sites such as LinkedIn can cost a few hundred dollars. Additionally, Facebook’s platform would provide many more opportunities for employee referrals, owing to the immense number of connections its users have and the social nature of the site.

But Skepticism Still Exists

Despite the above advantages, some experts continue to be skeptical of mixing the “social” and “professional” sides of networking.

One obvious risk that emerges is that private/sensitive data of users might be at the risk of exposure. Additionally, traditionalists point out that regardless of the growth in social media, there can be no replacement to face-to-face interaction(s) with job seekers. However, given Facebook’s presence in an individual’s personal and professional life (people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook), [1] recruiters are expected to set their eyes on the company to deliver bigger and better professional networking solutions in the future.

See Our full Analysis for Facebook

Notes:
  1. Facebook Statistics [↩] [↩]
  2. Monster and Facebook Let Job Seekers Be Known [↩]
  3. Oracle used Facebook and Twitter to recruit 1,700 employees in European expansion [↩]