Really. With the amount of time that so many of us spend on Facebook (ironically, while on the job), we shouldn’t be surprised that word out on the street is that they are going to launch an official jobs board on their website. On so many levels and for so many reasons, it makes a great deal of sense.
For one thing, who can watch one 30-minute television show without seeing at least five commercials with companies telling us that we can check them out on Facebook? This conveys the fact that businesses rely on the website for marketing purposes. Next up. Virtually all of us are connected to several people’s Facebook fan pages. These are pages that individuals use to promote their businesses and professional endeavors.
Are you starting to see a trend here?
Although a lot of us use our Facebook accounts for personal use, there’s no avoiding the fact that it has extreme power when it comes to the business world as well. And so, while we’re clicking “Like” on businesses and business people, shouldn’t we also be given the option of checking out some of the companies that are actually looking for you to do more than simply be a fan of their page; ones that would like you to consider becoming an employee of their company as well?
How it would work is that there would be third-party providers such as BranchOut and Jobvite that would allow Facebook to use their websites to post their leads. The bonus for Facebook members is that it would provide them with the convenience of being able to look for several different jobs within several different employment websites all while being on Facebook.
Although some experts suspect that such a move could prove to be challenging (at best) for the totally business-driven website, LinkedIn, others believe that Facebook might be providing too much of a good thing in the sense that people will want to keep their professional life very separate from their personal one; that even with such a development, Facebook is still seen as a social hangout more than a source for serious business leads.
Yet interestingly enough, even amidst all of the buzz that the jobs board could launch as soon as August, Facebook has yet to clearly deny or confirm if this is one of the newest parts of their development plans or not. Although, if you were to pay attention to some of their “clues”, it might be worth noting that last October, they did officially start a partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor as it specifically relates to providing job resources and information to people who need it. And indeed, that just helps in making the jobs board “rumor” seem more fact than fiction.
So, if you’re in LA looking for an administrative assistant New York gig, or you’re a teacher in Nashville wanting to relocate to Charlotte, it may just be a short matter of time before you can look for the job of your dreams all while updating your status.
And you thought Facebook was just for talking to your friends. In time, it could also for communicating with your new boss too.
