Facebook Social Recruiting – Learning More About the Professional Skills Category

By Tess Curle Taylor, PHR, CPC

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At the tail end of 2013, Facebook made a very subtle change to user profiles that’s actually had a greater impact on the social recruitment effort than experts believed it would. What was this update? The addition of the “Professional Skills” category gave users the ability to narrow down their career skills into subsections, virtually turning Facebook into a talent database overnight.

Located under the “Work and Education” section in each user's profile page, Facebook members now have the ability to create multiple professional skills on their profiles in one easy interface. The Professional Skills section was virtually unnoticed for several weeks, until Facebook stepped up marketing efforts by setting up profile update reminders when users login; something that remains in force as of this article.
 

How Users Set up Professional Skills on Facebook

It’s very easy to add unlimited professional skills on Facebook. Once you have logged in, click on your user page, and then look for the “Update Info” button found on the Facebook cover image. Clicking this takes you to the main profile information update page. Find Professional Skills on the left hand side, under the Work and Education section.

It looks like this:

 

Clicking the “Edit” link opens up the options, where you can type them in and save them. 

 

Once you have saved your selections, your profile now becomes part of each skills category group, which is accessed by clicking on the skill type links. So if you want to find the Blogger community, you click on it and it will take you here for example:

 


How Facebook Professional Skills Category Helps Recruiters Find Talent

The addition of the Professional Skills category on Facebook creates a searchable database for recruiters to find the best talent online. So, using the above example: if a recruiter working for a marketing agency wanted to find great blog writers, he or she would type in Blogger and the above group pops up. Then all the Facebook members who have selected Blogger as a professional skill type will be listed in this database.

Searching for the term “Blogging” populates all the people in the public profile who have chosen this as a professional skill, starting with those in your closest networks and their associates. This gives recruiters direct access to Facebook users who are either interested in blogging or are active blog writers who may be suitable candidates. By searching through the members who are in this skills group, recruiters can also connect with other Facebook members and gain more knowledge of who professes to have these skills.

While it’s still in early stages of adoption as a method of social recruiting, the Professional Skills category should make it a lot easier for recruiters to find job seekers in niche skill groups and boost interest in using this social recruiting resource.

 

Learn more about Social Hire

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Our team are a company that assists our customers further their digital footprint by giving digital marketing on a regular basis.

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