In celebration of their 10th birthday, I’m blogging about Facebook to show how much I appreciate its implications for career management and job search. Facebook often plays second fiddle to LinkedIn and many are unaware of its enormous potential for job search. Here are a few of the features I particularly like.
Graph Search
Graph Search allows you to search profiles based on information that may be important to your job search. Finding people with a particular job title, at a specific company, in a certain city can be done in a snap with graph search. Just click on the browse tab from your home page and key in the information you are looking for. From here, you can message the person or subscribe to their public feed if they have enabled that feature. Or your search may show that you have mutual friends and a friend request may be in order.
Glassdoor Inside Connections
Glassdoor Inside Connections is an application that runs on the Facebook platform and allows you to search for Facebook friends who are connected to people at your target companies. You may be friends with people on Facebook who are not your connections on LinkedIn. By knowing who your friends know at certain companies, you open the door for additional networking opportunities that may have been left unearthed via LinkedIn. Glassdoor is also a great repository of information on companies, jobs, salaries, interview questions, and more.
Company Pages
Company Pages on Facebook are a great way to learn about a company’s culture, interact with company decision makers, and find out about job opportunities in real time. Just key in the name of the company that interests you in the Facebook search box. In general, I see much greater engagement on Facebook company pages than I do on LinkedIn company pages, so this feature is definitely worth exploring and provides a great alternative to applying via the black hole of a job board or career page on that company’s official website.
Hashtags
Hashtags turn topics and phrases into clickable links in posts on timelines. This helps people find posts on topics they are interested in. Facebook recently began rolling out Trending, a feature that highlights the most popular topics and hashtags. Frequently these topics are related to something that may be relevant for your search and can fuel your ability to source decision makers. Check for it on your homepage.
