Facebook, CareerBuilder Team Up For Job Ads
New York – For most people, Facebook is still a social network — Yet it never hurts to have an opportunity dropped in one’s lap — Internet jobs site CareerBuilder.com is set to forge an alliance with Facebook to enable job recruiting campaigns within the online social network, the two companies announced recently.
With much of the information available most people’s profiles, targeted ads on Facebook should provide a good way for companies to connect with would-be workers. Want to get the attention of recent Harvard grads? Or kids who only took two years to get through college? The program could deliver.
Specialized job-seeking advertisements will appear within Palo Alto-based Facebook pages, designed to promote CareerBuilder and employers’ sections, with the aim of attracting potential hires who may be hard to reach via traditional methods like newspaper help-wanted ads.
“For example, college students just about to receive degrees in engineering could be targeted by engineering firms.”
The Silicon Valley-based Facebook was founded in 2004 as a social site for students at Harvard University and stretched out quickly to other colleges and eventually into work places. Its popularity stems from how the site conveniently allows users to share details of their lives with selected friends online.
Targeted ads will become visible on the side of the Facebook site, or within a user’s daily summary of activity among their network of friends. Clicking on an ad will take users to a CareerBuilder Web page.
Selecting an ad will take users to a CareerBuilder Web page. Building upon CareerBuilder’s present ad sales relationship with Facebook, the job recruiter also plans to act as a conduit for corporate clients to reach potential recruits.
“CareerBuilder is paying out a substantial amount of money to promote on the Facebook site and the Facebook network, and then we will have the ability to re-sell certain units to continue that promotion for our clients,” said Richard Castellini, vice president of consumer marketing for CareerBuilder.
Facebook refused to comment on whether it was considering a similar ad deal with Monster Worldwide Inc., which runs rival jobs Web site Monster.com. “The only relationship we have in place is with CareerBuilder,” said Mike Murphy, Facebook’s vice president of media sales.
The deal also raises the privacy issues of users. But, Murphy, said that users’ privacy would be protected as the site is not entering anything into anybody’s profile as they will simply run advertising using Facebook Ads to prospective employees, and it is entirely upon the users to choose whether to participate or not.
Facebook is the internet’s fifth-largest-trafficked site, with 67 million active users worldwide. The site has signed up more than 85 percent of U.S. College students attending four-year colleges, according to company statistics. Microsoft Corp, an investor in Facebook, supplies the advertising network for Facebook.
Using the site (http://www.facebook.com/careerbuilder), help-wanted advertisers will be better able to target their search for job candidates, Castellini said.
Facebook and CareerBuilder declined to specify the value of the non-exclusive advertising deal; the initial focus will be on the U.S. market. CareerBuilder is owned by newspaper publishers McClatchy Co, Gannett Co Inc and Tribune Co.