Facebook rolls out job posts to become the blue-collar LinkedIn
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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.
I told my friend about how there is no single guy despite the unemployment. His reaction was "oh, really? They are in that coffeeshop just around all day waiting for jobs".
Turns out sitting there all day was their way to advertise. You just talk to the waiter about what you need and if it requires some speciality (painting, plumbing, etc...) and he points you right to the few guys who do it.
I'm not sure if Facebook will help them since my country has a low gdp/hdi but this might be otherwise for the developed and more connected world.
(And also, Striper Sniper Tackle is a fabulous name for a fishing store.)
The first thing I thought of when reading this article was "I wonder how many Herbalife 'jobs' in disguise will end up on here..."
LinkedIn has similar issues.
I think there's hay to be made just on requiring a minimum amount of (ideally structured) information.
Look, I know: network. That's the way to get work. But I suck at networking. I don't feel that it's because I'm unsociable, it's that I don't know anyone that that is working at a place that is hiring. All my contacts are in my same boat of shitty jobs in a shitty area (biotech-denver)
Does anyone know how to break out into another region where you don't know anyone? How to do remote-networking?
So yeah, 2/3 in 5 years getting quality remote jobs via reddit of all places.
/r/forhire, /r/devopsjobs, /r/sysadminjobs
This reads like a pitch for smart devices for baby boomers. Sure it's a blue ocean, but most retirees don't use smart devices, even though they may have a cell phone.
Really would love a citation for that. My dad is 74, my step mom is retired in her late 60s, all of their church group of about 35 people — every single one has a tablet or smart phone. That’s anecdotal obviously, but this sample is a mix of retired blue and white collar people at a variety of incomes (and ethnic backgrounds.)
Retired boomers are a huge smart device market from my experience.
She also puts more hours in on her tablet than I do mine and way more hours on the Chromebook I got her for xmas than I do my laptop.
And I think you underestimate the utility of technological aids for old people. They are using them, more now than ever.
Blue-collar unemployment isn't due to the lack of a sophisticated job search engine, it's due to not having enough jobs. Those jobs have been lost to process improvement and automation and they're not coming back.
They need training and education, not simply a blue-collar LinkedIn.
What I'm more worried about is that Facebook will drop the ball.
The article itself shows a lot of screenshots which are specifically service jobs, also referred to as "pink-collar". Those are indeed rapidly on the rise and generally underrepresented in LinkedIn (https://poachedjobs.com is the go-to for food & drink) so I think it could be successful there.
But to suggest Facebook Jobs will be the panacea for blue-collar unemployment is sheer ignorance.
Quite the assertion, that one. I feel like this was ripped straight out of an insane FWD:FWD:FWD email thread one of my older relatives would send.
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
I think a formalized and well designed way of doing this could work and a have a large benefit.
Facebook is used, heavily, by the lower class. Very. heavily.
Let's be clear about who.
Who is arguing that people need separate identities for work, family, and friends? Sociologists
Who is arguing that having a single identity will make society more open? Mark Zuckerberg.
Source: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/22/facebook-is-sad.html
As a young man I had a few friends and acquaintances who intimated that they had been stalked. My ex wife shared a story of being stalked by a deputy sheriff. And I can’t recall now but she may have been underage at the time to boot.
Pretty quickly I saw a pattern. People who don’t want privacy have never cared about someone who really needed it. Or needed it themselves.
If you think you might be queer, molested, or your neighbor might be in a hate group but you’re not sure, if you think your kid is doing drugs, you can’t just voice these opinions without putting someone in literal mortal peril. And there are a host of other things that might get you stigmatized. If you are in a bizg city that’s not a big deal. Find new people. But if you’re in a small town...
In a bid to capture all aspects of your “true” identity (that too, for marketing purposes) Facebook is trying to force legibility [1] on something it fundamentally doesn’t understand. If it succeeds, then we might have the largest disaster caused by a bureaucracy, the kind one has learned to expect from reckless government planning [1,2].
[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20186.Seeing_Like_a_Stat...
Really? This hasn't been my experience at all. FB can be just as toxic as e.g. a youtube comment section, and what I see more often than not is people self selecting based on who agrees with them nearly 100% of the time.
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.
Beyond that, this move is surprising to me because we've been seeing a lot of stories lately about Facebook struggling to get people to post original content after letting the platform go wild with politicized third-party content and advertisements. I can't imagine a better way to make Facebook less comfortable and fun than to turn it into a resume site.
E.g. You submit an application for a job posting - once that application is opened, Facebook could block anyone who has used that IP in the past 30 days from accessing your profile.
I imagine Facebook is where most publicly accessible personal data is, if they could be compelled to, by PR or law, they could dramatically curb discrimination.
How do you see Facebook stifling discrimination?
That's not to say people shouldn't take reasonable precautions, but the fact that people can shouldn't excuse opening up more avenues of abuse.
It's wrong and I hope people take that seriously.
My first job out of school I never had a non-compete because I refused to sign the first one and told them to give me another one, which they promptly forgot.
It said I couldn’t work in Internet Technology for a period of two years. My entire resume and focus. Yeah I’m not signing that. It’s just a formality it’s not a big deal. Well if it’s not a big deal you can change it right?
But why would anyone ever want to work for a company that would even attempt that sort of thing? That is clearly a sign that they will not respect work/life balance.
Sometimes you don’t have a choice. The only place I worked where they demanded this was my first job out of college and I’d already been selling plasma and working part time third shift at a warehouse trying to keep my apartment while I was job hunting.
It’s scummy but sometimes you need money and can’t say no, and employers know that. Especially unskilled positions or entry level jobs where you have zero leverage.
why would anyone ever WANT to work for a company that... vs why would anyone ever work for a company that...
the social network can only share as much as you give it, its up to you to keep that content personal and offline. i’m not a huge fan of this concept that people give tons of info to these personal dat selling websites and shouldn’t be responsible for it, it’s the companies that shoulder all responsibility. everyone should be well versed in online sharing
You and your "friends".
There are different kinds of politics. There's the old saying "never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table," and I think the "politics" there are the kind that are more akin to religious belief: beliefs that are strongly held, where compromise is difficult or impossible, and have big emotional components. An example are the big divisive social issues, talk about figurehead politicians, or touchy current events. For these topics, there's a high likelihood that a bitter argument or fight will break out if they come up in mixed company.
I think the politics or worker-organization among peers are totally different and very appropriate for the workplace. There's going to be a level of solidarity between the people discussing them that encourages empathy, and actual social good can come from the discussion.
For instance, in the politics that "got us the 40 hour work week and the weekend" it is illegal to overtly not hire someone just because they expressed sympathetic pro-union views (https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employers/d...). But what stops an employer with direct links to a profile from running analysis on posts exactly for that? Such a thing it seems would be hard to detect.
You also make a good point about this enabling deniable illegality in the hiring process.
I was just only trying to clarify the kinds of politics that belong at work and the kind that doesn't in my comment, with little to no reference to the Facebook angle of the OP.
I would suggest not discussing unionization with your manager like you would with a peer-worker.
The feelings underlying my comments here are that I think it's important to not shy away from divisive topics in the workplace. OpSec only goes so far. At some point we must take risks to create a better future and creating an environment that nurtures open and honest discussion, even if divisive.
I agree conditionally, since there isn't one kind of "divisive" topic. Some kinds should be avoided, which are the ones people usually are talking about when they say politics should be avoided the workplace. The main thing that comes from them are disruption, polarization, and nasty feelings. Other kinds, like ones that are "divisive" between workers and owners, should be tolerated or even encouraged, since they are appropriate to the context and can lead to genuine improvement within it.
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.
Every time I open the facebook app I am alerted of a new message. I've gone so far as to file a report with facebook, but have not heard back. I assume this behavior is intentional at this point.
Unfortunately the only things I see on there are cars where the list price is $1 but when you open the ad it’s actually $20k. I’ve reported those to Facebook as scams but the response was “these are legitimate ads” so there’s no reason to go back. Other than that damn red icon.
Deleting the app makes you aware of how frequently one gets the subconscious urge to do that. (Same with logging out on the computer.) Once you add that friction, it becomes easier to become conscious of the behavior and then decide if, in a car between meetings, what you really want to do is scroll through Facebook.
And then one day, the numbers decline enough and people don't care much about Facebook anymore.
It's almost inevitable in business I feel. Enough higher-up business people at a corporation make safer and safer decisions, take less and less risks, until the corporation just starts acquiring companies to stay relevant.
Oh wait...
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.
And because of the scale of Facebook, there's no penalty for this not working out. So they will just keep pushing random features and will see what sticks. See stories, their AI chatbot assistant in messenger, and I suspect this will suffer the same fate.
"Must apply via our Facebook listing - please have the show all photos checkbox selected" - Granted, that probably won't affect white collar workers as heavily
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.
It may not happen, though. Social networks tend toward natural monopolies. Facebook may have better features and uptime than the next best alternative (or not), but either way, social networks gain most of their utility from all the people on then.
So it's notable that linkedin survived this consolidation. I think this is because people want to keep their business and professional lives distinct. It's actually more than that. There's a comment lower about how Facebook is creepy, and linkedin is pushy. There's a very good reason those are the notable faults identified.
Think of this scenario: a programmer goes to a business meeting with some people form ops and marketing after a conference, and they have lunch or coffee afterwards. Some linkedin invites follow. It might seem a little pushy to some, not to others, but most people (from my observation) wouldn't consider it inappropriate. It's "ok" to be a bit more direct and immediate with business contacts. The same thing with Facebook might seem creepy.
I suspect linkedin or something like it will hang on precisely because it isn't a "social" network.
High-skill workers are expensive to make, expensive to hire and expensive to replace. The tolerable level of turnover amongst high-skill staff, to the average company, is low. (At least in comparison with low-skill staff, who can be more-easily replaced.)
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.
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.
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.
“One in four people in the US have searched for or found a job using Facebook” writes Facebook’s VP of Local Alex Himel.
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.
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.
Both LinkedIn and Facebook accounts are free for anyone to create and use to their full extent. How is this service not a net positive if it gets people legitimate jobs? Is that not competition? Isn't more options a good thing?
Others already made statistics and articles about this topics. It seems the workers loose.
But you raise a good point about it having the potential for being yet another class marker.
FB needs to make clear what information they will never share with job posters.
Oh, they won't...unless they pay for the premium package.
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".
"Please provide your Facebook profile to continue with your employment application."
#WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?
[citation needed]
It’s a primary source. They know what people search for in their own site. That’s like me saying I found my job using a newspaper and you saying citation needed. I just told you what I know to be true.
Do you go around snapping ‘citation needed’ at anyone who tells you anything about their business? Madness.
A "primary source" also isn't in any way immune to rational inquiry. I don't mean for this parallel in any way to imply a relationship, but just look at our administration or any one of innumerable other examples to this end. Taking something at face value, to me at least, requires more than a decontextualized statement of fact when my immediate impulse is to question it (in this particular case).
For instance, define "job". Are we talking about a recommendation leading to a project for a contractor, or are we talking a full-time position? I mean, that's just the start. In what ways are they determining what constitutes "finding a job"? Talking to friends and friends of friends? Or directly messaging a corporation's page on Facebook?
There's a lot of squish here and I wish they were more forthcoming about what that statistic actually means.
A citation is a reference to a document where information came from in the first place. What document are you expecting to be cited here? A citation for some internal Facebook email where a manager asked for a stat and the data guys responded with a number? How's that going to help you if it's just the same number as in here?
If I tell you I saw a cat in my garden, and you demand 'citation needed', what do you want me to cough up? There's no document to cite. That's just me telling you what I saw.
I don't understand why questioning a statistic, or especially my use of the word "citation", is controversial.
Do you reject all new collected data because it doesn't come with a citation?
If I worked directly with someone and know they're good, I'm happy to endorse that.
(There are, yes, parts of it which aren't. But ads are the prime motive.)
Though payment is only required for limited categories.