Finding a job is hard enough in the current financial climate, myself and my friends emerged from college with a wealth of opportunities for employment, only to go into University for three or four years and come out of education at a time with diminished opportunities and ever increasing costs of living - from basics like bread and eggs to the fuel we put in our vehicles. An increasing trend in Internet and social habits has produced a range of different yet similar social networking platforms such as Facebook.
These platforms are used by graduates, students and a lot of other people on a day to day basis and with the current jobs market the way it is, it is likely a perspective employee will utilise many sources when looking to find a position fresh out of education – one such emerging source which can help you to find a new employee is Facebook.
Facebook is the largest and by far the most popular social networking platform available – it has grown in recent years to its current market dominance through innovation and meeting the needs of their ever expanding user base. Recently Facebook.com has been valued at some crazy figure like $50 billion US dollars [1] which makes it more valuable than some small countries! With such a large outreach it attracts people from every demographic with access to a computer, laptop or Internet enabled phone can utilise it from pretty much anywhere. Recruiters, unemployed, graduates and those looking for new opportunities of employment now have a way of communicating.
Radio advertising has been saying for a long time that advertising over the radio waves is a great way to find a potential employee who isn’t necessarily looking for a new job. A couple of observations here from a business perspective are that with radio advertising you pay for a chunk of slots, so if your employee is found in the first advertisement then you may have over invested, the radio doesn’t demographically target – meaning that you are essentially sending out an invitation to people with and without the skills needed for the position, i.e. a lot of extra paperwork. Regardless, this is still a successful model and one used by many businesses, based on this methodology we can apply this to the Facebook model.
Facebook operates on a per click basis, which means that you can pause or cancel any running campaign should you find your successful applicant, if they’re not the right one; well you can start it again at any time giving you complete control over your expenses.
Facebook also allows you to demographically target your visitors from most metrics a marketer would possibly ever need including:
- Age – set age groups; remember that Facebook has all of this information, because we give it to them upon sign up!
- Marital Status – Are you looking for someone who is happily settled or perhaps someone who is single?
- Level of Education – Choose appropriate levels of skills to match your available position.
And probably the most important filter by geographical location – You can target people nationally, internationally, by County or within a certain number of miles of a given location (say where the potential employee will be working).
It’s worth considering Facebook as a viable alternative to traditional methods of advertising your vacancy, If not as the sole advertising medium – perhaps an additional channel to your existing campaign?
Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/03/facebook-value-50bn-goldman-sachs-investment
Isaac writes for Team 24 who are a Doctor Jobs specialist – providing Nurse and Doctor Recruitment for a wide range of temporary placements.
