from Hacker News

Facebook rolls out job posts to become the blue-collar LinkedIn

by james33 on 2/28/18, 2:38 PM with 148 comments

• by vinceguidry on 2/28/18, 4:39 PM

  I read a story recently about a guy who, through sheer happenstance, managed to fix his entire life. He had gotten laid off of his job and was getting desperate. He usually picked up the New York Post and applied to the jobs he saw there.

  This time they were out of the Post, so he grabbed the Times. He saw an ad for a job fair. He went to the fair. The fair was practically empty, but the employers were desperate, the first recruiter he meets basically just takes his info down, tells him where to report to and when he starts.

  The job fair folks didn't realize that blue collar workers didn't read the Times, so that's the reason why the fair was empty.

  Blue collar job matching still appears to be a blue ocean and Facebook seems to be uniquely positioned to serve that market. If they can get this right, this could end blue-collar unemployment overnight.

• by angrymouse on 2/28/18, 6:34 PM

  Having redesigned a hospital's recruitment process to use Facebook advertising for the more "blue collar" type jobs (porters, support workers, estates type jobs as well as nurses) I can really see this working.

  We got ridiculous traction in the local area. We were reaching people who had never really thought of a career at their local hospital. But a hospital isn't just doctors.

  Often with Facebook we didn't actually directly hit the candidate either. People's mum, uncle, brother or friend would find the advert and pass it on.

  Facebook is already successful in recruitment. Only makes sense they really target this market and provide the business tools to do it

• by whatshisface on 2/28/18, 3:55 PM

  There's some who argue that having all of your life in one place, recorded, won't be a problem because society will be forced to shift in a more liberal direction and stop judging people. The alternative outcome is that this forces a hard crystallization around various very specific cultures, where for every community there's a list of "weird stuff that everyone does," and "stuff that gets you ostracized." So for example going to furry conventions might end up assigned to Googlers, and going to church assigned to machinists. That seems a lot more likely, given human nature.

• by deftnerd on 2/28/18, 4:10 PM

  No... Just no! Facebook crawls into every portion of our lives. I killed my account because of its insidious feature creep.

  You don't put up photos of yourself in a swimsuit at work and would sue any workplace that demanded that you show them those pictures.

  You shouldn't bring your political beliefs into work, and would be uncomfortable if your boss cornered you and demanded to know how you felt about the president or some tax policy.

  But, this is content that is often on your Facebook page. By moving employeer/applicant relationships onto Facebook, it's associating applicants personal lives into the sphere of employer consideration.

  It's wrong and I hope that nobody takes this seriously.

• by JumpCrisscross on 2/28/18, 4:16 PM

  A few months ago I turned off Facebook notifications on my phone. Then I turned off Messenger notifications. I recently deleted the Facebook app. A month ago, the Messenger app moved to page two. Two weeks ago I deleted both from my phone (still have WhatsApp) and force myself to log out when I visit on my laptop.

  I'm not sure this is the level of disconnection I'll remain at. (Maybe only in election years.) I do think it's a gentle enough curve that everyone should try it.

  When I ask friends whom, among Facebook, Apple, Google, Netflix and Amazon, they trust most, the results are heterogenous. When I ask whom they trust least, it's universally Facebook. If you don't trust someone, they may not have your best interests at heart; keeping them close is like holding on to a toxic friend.

• by thisisit on 2/28/18, 4:03 PM

  > Meanwhile, job seekers can discover openings, auto-fill applications with their Facebook profile information

  And soon we will need discussion on how a job seeker is being shunned at a workplace for his/her personal views which came bundled with these auto-fill forms.

  I can be wrong but whenever I read stuff like these it seems to me companies, specially social networking, are running out of ideas and just scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.

• by at-fates-hands on 2/28/18, 4:44 PM

  This is so wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. I was told for years and years to keep my business life separate from my personal life.

  It's actually quite scary people are going to fall for it and use this and in the process, hand over a myriad of information that should be protected, solely for the purposes of screening people based on their personal life and their choices therein.

  Scary, very, very scary.

• by Legogris on 2/28/18, 4:26 PM

  I find it a bit uncomfortable with the repetitive use of "low-skill" in the article. You can actually be skillful in areas outside of STEM, finance and business.

• by cs702 on 2/28/18, 4:50 PM

  In the short run, this may be a great revenue-growth opportunity for Facebook.

  That said, prospective employees will want to look their best for prospective employers, and vice versa, so I have a nagging feeling that the job-posting initiative will further accelerate Facebook's ongoing transition from a network of genuine profiles and social connections to a network of puffed-up, cleaned-up social resumes and necessarily superficial connections.

  I say "ongoing" because many Facebook profiles have already become puffed-up, cleaned-up social resumes, and many Facebook connections have become superficial links between people who may not necessarily like or even want to spend time with each other.

• by mr_tristan on 2/28/18, 4:17 PM

  Great, now it's just a matter of time until recruiters start trying to contact me via FB. In which case... that will be the end of my FB usage.

  In less snarky terms, spam is the bane of nearly every "jobs" site I've ever seen. Since FB attracts such a wide net, i.e., not very technical and skilled folks, it will be a significant challenge to make any kind of jobs/careers feature not turn into a noise-fest as they grow it. I wish them luck.

• by propman on 2/28/18, 7:55 PM

  I'm fairly anti-Facebook but this is actually a great idea. A big reason for unemployment is the inefficiencies it takes to take all the steps from motivating yourself in finding a job to getting hired. A lot of unemployed sometimes need a kick in the butt because it's hard to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities (been there), so this partly eliminates the first step of making the decision to get you stuff together and look for jobs by making it come directly to you. Good job Facebook!

• by sharno on 2/28/18, 4:26 PM

  I actually like this. Linkedin is very annoying sometimes, but it gives nice exposure to the job market if you're looking for opportunities. Facebook did a great job with buying/selling stuff that matches and complements craigslist for example. This gave a lot of power to communities which don't use craigslist much outside the US. I think they can do a nice job to have people get more exposure in the job market when they need to and become a better job market than linkedin.

  I think we should be more pragmatic in the tools we use and just encourage the usage of better tools in the right way. Facebook is horrible as a content or social network because of our behaviour in using it as so. But they do great tools and we should fix our usage of these tools.

• by asab on 2/28/18, 9:31 PM

  I'm curious how this Facebook VP knows what he knows:

  “One in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook” writes Facebook’s VP of Local Alex Himel.

• by AndrewDucker on 2/28/18, 5:13 PM

  I recently got some plastering/tiling done.

  I asked on Facebook, people recommended a tiler who had a Facebook page, I looked at the reviews there, and the photos they had posted, and then I sent them a message over Facebook Chat, we agreed a price/time, and they came and carried it out.

  This was all incredibly easy, and much less stressful than most times I've needed someone to do this kind of work.

• by blablabla123 on 2/28/18, 5:21 PM

  This is soo wrong. This will consolidate a 2 class work world. One that deserves to be on LinkedIn and one that is only present on Facebook.

  Even worse, those in the "lower" class even have to deal with their job life creeping into their private lives.

  Really stupid, everybody should have both a LinkedIn and a Facebook account.

• by gumby on 2/28/18, 10:46 PM

  LinkedIn is trying to be the blue-collar LinkedIn (plumbers, florists, machinists etc) but I don't know how effective they have been. FB seems like they have the reach

• by Bahamut on 2/28/18, 5:27 PM

  I sure hope when applying for a job via FB, companies do not have access to your sensitive FB information.

  FB needs to make clear what information they will never share with job posters.

• by znpy on 2/28/18, 7:21 PM

  Job application via Facebook? No way I'm going down that route.

  By the way... It seems to me that "youngsters" are slowly realizing that heavy social media (a-la Facebook, that wants to know everything about you and wants to follow every aspect of your life, intruding wherever possible) is higly toxic, and it's trying to expand to other "market areas".

• by dredmorbius on 2/28/18, 8:32 PM

  "Nobody forces you to use Facebook."

  "Please provide your Facebook profile to continue with your employment application."

  #WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?

• by c1utch1 on 2/28/18, 6:45 PM

  The problem I have with this is that job applications are one of the only instances where I use real data for my personal information (besides when dealing with heavily regulated industries like banks). So now Facebook is collecting treasure troves of data on people via this job application tool.

• by parliament32 on 2/28/18, 5:44 PM

  Older blue-collar workers are pretty much the only demographic left on Facebook, so I suppose this makes sense. Personally, I don't think I've logged in this year yet -- all my social circles have moved on to other networks.

• by codegladiator on 2/28/18, 6:11 PM

  So if you don't have a nice facebook profile, you dont get a job ?

• by redthrowaway on 2/28/18, 7:41 PM

  This could turn out really well for them. I've got several friends, from real estate agents to concert promoters to plumbers who already use Facebook in this manner.

• by Kluny on 2/28/18, 5:34 PM

  I have to admit I've found at least 3 jobs through facebook. I still hate this though. I don't want employers to see my facebook.

• by k00lGr4p on 2/28/18, 4:26 PM

  FB is getting pretty desperate these days.

• by vanadium on 2/28/18, 5:33 PM

  "One in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook"

  [citation needed]

• by digi_owl on 2/28/18, 4:57 PM

  What was that line about feature creep and email again?

• by mydpy on 2/28/18, 5:28 PM

  This is going to kill snagajob.com

• by debacle on 2/28/18, 5:23 PM

  And suddenly LinkedIn is dead.

• by paulie_a on 2/28/18, 3:54 PM

  LinkedIn uselessness with Facebook creepiness™

• by megaman22 on 2/28/18, 4:11 PM

  Facebook is pivoting into becoming Craigslist.

• by brickmort on 2/28/18, 4:57 PM

  There is absolutely nothing blue-collar about Facebook.