Facebook Eyes LinkedIn with New Recruitment Features

Facebook’s app development team has been in the news lately for their “memorial page” banner error, but there’s something much more meaningful that tech pundits should be focussed on: new features that promote job-hunting on the platform.

As LinkedIn adjusts to life under Microsoft, Facebook is seizing the moment to start an unexpected race with the recruiting tech giant. While LinkedIn is indisputably the king when it comes to employment services — as its $26.2 billion acquisition cost attests — Facebook has a huge advantage when it comes to reach. Particularly for reaching users who aren’t actively job-searching, Facebook could become a major problem for LinkedIn when it comes to reaching job hunters who aren’t actively searching, but might consider applying anyway if it “pops up in their feed.”

Adding recruitment-friendly features also has the potential to boost the value of business pages for Facebook, which will be useful in winning over small business owners who don’t directly benefit from the often-expensive Facebook advertising service. Streamlining the entire recruitment/marketing process could create a ton of value for businesses that otherwise might not want to bother with participating in the Facebook platform — and as we’ve seen, the more people participate, the more valuable it becomes.

The move towards recruiting services also signals opportunity for smaller iPhone app developers, or even local NYC iPhone app developers looking to build more niche products for job hunt services. LinkedIn has a major problem when it comes to engagement, and many startups see its Microsoft acquisition as a negative development for the company. Acquisition often leads to product stagnation, which allows smaller, nimbler startups to move around it. Being the big fish in a small pond is good — but being the faster fish is ultimately more important.

In the short term, iPhone app development companies expect Facebook feed recruitment tools to be highly useful in reaching new talent, particularly considering how difficult it can be to find decent development talent. For developers, any tool they can add to their toolkit will help.