Beginning last month, Facebook became LinkedIn’s newest competitor, as the social media giant introduced job postings to its list of services, allowing businesses in the US and Canada to now post job listings on their company Pages. The applicant’s public profile information automatically populates the application forms, allowing users to browse and filter jobs and apply quickly.

While LinkedIn remains the central hub for business social media, Facebook’s prime differentiator comes in the form of its 1.79 billion users and the virtually endless amount of data that accompanies them in the form of likes, wall posts, tagged photos, etc. It will come down to how effectively Facebook can utilize this data to determine whether or not they can compete, and overtake, LinkedIn as the primary source for social recruiting.

Here at Stories we’re excited to see how it all pans out, and think Facebook has some great things going for them, to name a few:

Better data = better candidate targeting. Here at Stories one of our (many) goals for our clients is helping them use content in order to reach best-fit candidates that turn into top performing hires. That means understanding as an organization exactly what qualities make up your company culture, the attributes that characterize your top performers, and what personality types and skill sets you’re looking for in your next hire to raise the bar within your team.

Facebook has access to so much data that they practically know you better than you do yourself.  You could use your current top performers’ Facebook qualities as a basis for your targeting, ensuring that your job listing will turn up in the newsfeeds of candidates who would be most likely to succeed in your organization.

Getting (a little) personal isn’t the worst thing in the world. While we would recommend changing your privacy settings to leave out your photos from last Saturday night, adding a little personality to the job search process could lead to finding a better fit for both candidate and hiring manager. This is the reason we use our storytelling methodology — real, concrete examples from employees are a much more authentic portrayal of company culture than corporate jargon. In the same way, adding some personal touches such as hobbies or cultural interests gives the employer an idea of your whole person, not just what’s on your resume.

Passive candidate potential is endless. LinkedIn is a phenomenal resource, but limited in the fact that most users are active only when they are actively looking for a new job or when they are updating their profile once they are hired. Facebook, on the other hand, has over 1.1 billion users every day, dramatically increasing the chances of getting your job posting in front of the eyes of a scrolling passive candidate who never would have seen it otherwise.

It will be interesting over the next few months to see how Facebook develops this service, and to what level of success. One way or another, it is clear that social recruiting is becoming more and more of the norm, calling for talent acquisition and employer branding teams to adjust their content to the needs of social media platforms and to optimize online interactions with potential candidates.