Twitter isn’t the only social network you can use to get hired, although you might think that by reading our extensive guide on how to get hired via Twitter. While Twitter makes sense for the US market especially, there’s a far larger platform you need to use not just for branding yourself, but also getting hired faster. It’s Facebook. While Zuckerberg might not be your next employer, it’s time to use Facebook to get a job. A good job. A great job – thanks to the world’s largest social network.

Everyone Has a Facebook Profile

While a lot of people might not use Snapchat, Twitter or even LinkedIn (professionals, much? -_-), almost everyone uses Facebook. It’s the most popular social network and while it’s not a business-focused network, a lot of users do get content relevant to their field of work there thanks to the many Facebook groups. Having large parts of your company and colleagues in the industry on the network also helps! Our ‘end game’ is to show you the many ways you can post influential content on Facebook to get hired in no time!

Would Anyone Mistake Your Profile For a CV?

Before I show you how to become a thought leader in your industry thanks to Facebook, you need to promise me to re-read .ME’s guide on setting up your Facebook profile for personal branding. Use the content we prepared and make your profile shine.

Get Verified

Have you ever seen the little checkmark next to someone’s profile on Facebook. What it means is that a certain person has been checked by Facebook and is 100 percent the person they claim to be on the social network. It’s not a troll account, an imposter or anyone else. While identity verification like this is very important for celebrities from Brad Pitt to the Kardashians, it also comes in handy for those of us who want to show we’re a bit more important than others. After all, a person’s status can determine how a potential employer perceives them – and that check mark can definitely help in landing you your job.

Unfortunately, depending on the part of the world you come from and what you do, you might or might not be able to get verified. For example, Facebook has definitely reached out to journalists to verify their profiles in order to offer them the Notes 2.0 platform for content creation. How would Facebook know who’s a journalist and who isn’t if they didn’t go out of their way to make sure, right? If you can apply for verification, you’ll be asked to provide some documentation, scan it and upload to Facebook. The process takes days or weeks, depending on the time you apply.

While it might seem tedious, it’s a great way of standing out among countless other Facebook profiles and will get you noticed both in comment threads on user’s profiles and group discussions.

The Curse of Facebook’s Newsfeed

While your status can stand out after you get verified, it’s all for not if other Facebook users (especially the ones that you want to hire you) don’t see your status. Unlike Twitter’s timeline, Facebook’s newsfeed is generated based on a number of parameters that Facebook actually doesn’t want you to know about. It’s not like you’ll get EVERY status that all of your friends post – unfortunately.

Engagement Is Like Adding Oil to the Fire

In order to get your posts in front of more users, they need to have a lot of likes and a lot of comments. It also helps to get that engagement in a certain period of time to show how your post is very ‘hot content’ – a signal to Facebook’s newsfeed to promote if even more.

Simple ways of increasing engagement include asking users directly to like your content (Like?) or comment! You’ve probably seen media brands that ask their readers to ‘share their opinion’ on a Facebook post. While I’m sure they appreciate the feedback, it’s even more important for them to get the comments in order for the post to get more reach on Facebook?
Reach, what?

Remember earlier when I mentioned that most users don’t see your content? You can blame Facebook’s reach, a measurement that lets you know the percentage of users that will see your content based on a number of factors including your interest in the topic, engagement with that person in the past, etc.

Focused Groups Show How Much You Know

But let’s not worry about reach just yet. A sure-fire way of knowing that users will see (at least a notification of) the content you post is by adding the content to a Facebook group. Facebook groups were started as a “club” feature that lets users discuss a certain topic in a closed-out area of the popular social network.

The feature has been used not just for clubs, but also – which is important for us – industry groups, event participation discussions, and even intranets. It might not be LinkedIn, but because of its popularity users have found numerous ways of using it to talk about business. And that’s exactly what we want to get you hired.

The best groups to post content in are focused on your industry or a certain topic that your future employer cares about. Be sure to follow Facebook group rules, as some moderators do have strict policies on what they allow to be posted. For example, a certain group might have been created just to post jobs in your industry and may not allow any other type of content. By posting in that group, you’re not only showing that you don’t care about rules (or haven’t even read them) but also that you don’t respect other people in the industry that follow them.

No Groups? No problem!

Most industries will have local groups on Facebook, but there’s a certain number of industries that still aren’t represented on Facebook – and lack groups. Not a problem, because creating groups on Facebook is not just free, but also very very easy. You’ll have to open the ‘Groups’ tab on Facebook and name your group, as well as adding a description and the first members. The challenge will actually be making the group active, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, it can be a way of you getting potential employers on a ‘list’ that will notify them of new content posted to it. In this instance, the list is the Facebook group.

Increase The Likelihood of Your Content Being Seen

Facebook groups have you covered, but let’s get back to the content you are promoting on your Facebook profile because you have a lot of people as friends – your potential employers among them. Here are just some of the methods you can use to make sure that they see your content.

As I’ve explained, most content doesn’t get seen by everyone and your end goal on Facebook is to either get users to interact with you to increase the chance of them seeing your posts – or have them tag you as a ‘Close friend’ which will send them a notification each time you post something. Subtle, eh?

An entirely unsubtle way of getting people’s attention is tagging them. However, if you know the users you are targeting, it’s very effective because you’re basically calling them out. Tagging a user will dramatically increase the likelihood of them liking and commenting the content you posted.

I’d recommend to tag users sparingly because too many tags will not make you a thought leader – it will make you a spammer! And we don’t want to get you marked as a spammer, we want to get you hired, right?

Curation is the Name of the Game

Now that you know how to get your content noticed, you’re asking yourself what to post, right? While this is an extensive challenge, you should start by curating content. It means finding great content on the web and then sharing it either on your profile or, as I mentioned, industry-specific Facebook groups. While sharing, don’t forget to add your comment in order to show your expertise. By following all the steps mentioned, you’ll quickly get noticed as someone who obviously knows a lot about the industry – someone that should get hired for his/her knowledge!

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