For some, the economy may be showing glimmers of hope, but the millions of Americans who remain unemployed are still looking for a lifeline. Maybe they’ll find it with the help of social media.
Savvy job seekers already know that they can search for jobs via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but that typically involves a company-by-company search. Now the U.S. Labor Department is trying to make things easier. Last week, the Labor Department announced a partnership with Facebook to launch a special page. It will bring together the job-search services of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the DirectEmployers Association, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Many of these services are often below the radar of people searching for jobs.
This is novel collaboration acknowledging the fact that a social media network could play a central, coordinating role in helping people find jobs. At a news conference on October 20, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis indicated there are 14 million people out of work, but some 3 million job openings are available in the United States.
Marne Levine, Facebook’s VP for global public policy, said the new page is “a free, online job fair that can be accessed seven days a week, day or night. Our labor market is changing, and so should the tools that are used to find these jobs.” Levine said the company would support the effort by making public service announcements on Facebook, concentrating on the ten states where unemployment remains highest.
Consolidated Resources
The Facebook page includes a variety of resources consolidated in one place, as well as the ability for users to share stories about how the Social Jobs Partnership helped them find a job. After just a few days, the Social Jobs Partnership page already had over 11,000 fans, a promising sign that the service is gaining early traction.
In addition to launching the Facebook page, the “Social Jobs Partnership,” as it is called, will conduct in-depth survey research about the ways in which job seekers, college career centers, and workforce recruiters are using the social web. It will also explore and develop systems where new job postings can be delivered virally through the Facebook site at no charge.
The partnership plans to distribute educational materials about leveraging the power of the social web to recruiters, government agencies, and job seekers. Eventually, the partnership will expand to Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites, according to Labor Secretary Solis.
Lessons for Marketers
There are some intriguing lessons for online marketers to learn from this major initiative:
- Facebook is as much a portal as a page. Marketers typically think of Facebook as a medium for single-company usage. However, social media could be all the more powerful if symbiotic marketers were to collaborate and take advantage of strength in numbers. The Social Jobs Partnership is a good example of several organizations with a common purpose coming together to form a portal-type page that achieves a unified goal.
- Competitors can cooperate. Some of the organizations working together in the Social Jobs Partnership may have competed with each other in the past, but unemployment is a compelling problem. It’s something all of these groups can rally around. In a tough economy, rules have to be re-evaluated. It is not inconceivable that marketers may find themselves in situations where they need to practice “co-opetition,” working side by side with competitors so that everyone can gain from a collaborative effort.
- Social media can make big things happen quickly. The Social Jobs Partnership is not an insignificant initiative as it’s spearheaded by a federal agency. In the past, such an initiative would have likely taken a long time to get off the ground. But with social media, even the Labor Department can be nimble. This is something for marketers to keep in mind when they want to get the word out rapidly about a new product, service, or marketing campaign. Social media is ideal for doing just that.
- Feedback is an aspect of social media marketing that should not be overlooked. I don’t know how many people will actually take the time to tell their stories about finding a job via the Social Jobs Partnership Facebook page. Giving job seekers the option to do so shows that the Labor Department recognizes social media is a two-way street. Encouraging feedback suggests that sponsoring organizations care about job seekers and want to hear about their successes. This may seem obvious, but many marketers still make the mistake of treating social media as a uni-directional media outlet instead of a medium whose real power is in active two-way dialogue.
Many Americans are pointing fingers at a dysfunctional government that doesn’t always seem able to help solve pressing problems. That’s why it’s encouraging to see this kind of innovative use of Facebook by the U.S. Labor Department in an effort to reduce the unemployment rate.
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