Facebook has officially challenged LinkedIn to a duel for the title of “Top Job Search Destination Spot.” As the 3rd largest search engine on the web, Facebook’s new platform, Facebook Jobs, has attempted to provide a free outlet and broad exposure for employers and job seekers. We approached Facebook Jobs with caution, due to Facebook’s reputation as a casual social hangout and not a spot for professional, career related content. We were hopeful, but…

…our suspicions were confirmed. A free platform with the reach of Facebook was appealing to us, but the problems with Facebook Jobs unfolded right away. We posted a range of jobs on the platform to test the response. Within a few hours, we had applicants messaging our company page with empty and confusing work history summaries generated by Facebook. These brief overviews provided useless info and made it difficult to determine whether someone met our minimum qualifications. We attempted to write individual responses to applicants to make sure that everyone had a positive interaction with our brand, but this proved to be an overwhelming task.

Two major conclusions:

• Exposing one’s brand to applicants with varying degrees of professionalism is a bad idea. Those who were not selected had nasty things to say when rejected from a job, and things quickly spiraled out of control.

• The penalty Facebook imposes for not immediately responding to applicants is a big negative. Facebook counts each “application” as a message to your company page and it tracks your response time. While there is an auto-reply function, Facebook does not consider that an actual response. So unless you have someone dedicated to responding to messages 24/7 (even on weekends and at 2am), your response time will take a hit. This means that Facebook will “like” your company less.

Ultimately, we received no viable candidates from our trial on Facebook Jobs. LinkedIn remains our dominant recruiting tool and networking platform because LinkedIn candidates generally care about presenting themselves professionally. Unless Facebook improves its Jobs feature, LinkedIn wins by a landslide.