Facebook takes on LinkedIn by testing job seeking features

Facebook is poised to introduce a job listing feature on its business pages. The new feature aims to provide another way for businesses to increase traffic to their Facebook page.

Last year, Facebook had been testing a feature that mirrored LinkedIn's endorsements feature, called Profile Tags.

In future, organisations might also be allowed to pay Facebook to ensure their job openings are placed in a more favourable position and reach a greater number of people's News Feed.

In a statement sent to TechCrunch, the company confirmed it is testing out new recruitment-related features.

A Facebook spokesperson said: "Based on behaviour we've seen on Facebook, where many small businesses post about their job openings on their Page, we're running a test for Page admins to create job postings and receive applications from candidates."

This new introduction by Facebook could be problematic for developers such as Work4, Workable and Jobscore, which specialise in building job application forms that organisations can choose to embed into their Facebook pages.

The new career tools include an option in the status update composer, which allows Pages to share a job opening with all related details (e.g. salary, job title, part-time/full-time, etc.). These job postings will then be saved in a Jobs tab of the business' page, where anyone interested in pursuing a career at an organisation can skim through.

When a Facebook user applies for a position, Page administrators should receive the application form in a Facebook Message.

This new feature would be in direct competition with LinkedIn, the job-related platform that specialises in professional networking and career development.

LinkedIn is currently in the process of acquisition by Microsoft. This Facebook move could prove extremely challenging for the careers platform, which is still lagging behind in terms of active users, with 467 million members in contrast with Facebook's 1.79 billion.