Facebook Search This morning I did what most of us do. I skipped the morning coffee, walked past the newspaper and got on Facebook to get my morning news. More and more, Facebook is becoming our first stop for news, trends and now, sourcing?

It could happen now that you can use Facebook to search the more than 2 trillion posts and data points available in the Facebook universe. Curious to see how well this new search worked, I snapped a screenshot and started to run a few searches to test the people search waters.

Here are my findings.

I can now search more than 2 trillion posts and news updates

As Facebook made the kind suggestion to search for “The King of Pop,” I decided to search for Software Engineers instead.

Facebook_Search_1

Here are my first two attempts at running basic searches to see if I can dig up a few people talking about “Software Engineering.”  You can see the searches below, highlighted in red.

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Search 1:”I am a” “software engineer” “new job”

The idea behind this search was basic. I want to identify people with a job title of  “Software Engineer” who also mention a “new job.”

Results:

In red, you see that Jamil mentioned that he has a new job that he started in March. Also, he states that his new job is not a good fit, great news for recruiters who might recruit Jamal. Comparing this back to the original Graph Search just a year ago, the results are strong.  The advantage with the new search feature is that I see posts from the general public outside of my little world of Facebook friends. This includes news feeds, postings, status updates, group messages and events.

Search 2: “I am a” “software engineer.”

Results:

In these results I noticed that most were targeted but did not stray too far into the land of suggestions, which I’d expect to change as the feature matures into a full system search tool.  What I searched is what I got. The second search was scaled back only to mention the job title and the phrase “I am a”. As I continued to test, this search worked well across many different job titles (for example, Engineer, Administrator and Analyst) and seemed to pick up more results based on Facebook groups in place of person profiles.

Facebook_serach_2

Here are a few key points to consider as the new Facebook search grows:

  • The new Facebook Social Graph is good, but not yet great for recruiters. Searches provide reliable results, but they are not laser targeted. Basic search works better than any blown out Boolean search you will enter, for now.
  • As the new Facebook search feature matures, I expect that we will see a serious contender for search, news and mindless time wasting activity. This will, in fact, eat into millions of offsite search queries once dedicated to a “Google Search.”
  • You have access to all 2 trillion posts, updates, status updates, groups and events and that is powerful.
  • With that, you can expect to be smacked in the face with re-targeted ad placements and more scary “Facebook is stealing your data” posts that you can recopy into your status updates.

In all, I’m a fan. Let’s see where this takes us.

Editors Update:

The Facebook platform has changed a bit. Now, you can narrow your search even more by using modified Boolean language also known as “Detailed Marketing.” This is awesome because you can use  Boolean Operators AND/OR/NOT. This will give you better results and save you time.

Boolean-Ven

 

See the Facebook Search Demo

[vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/143213455″ width=”500″ height=”300″]

About the Author

Ryan_Leary_HeadshotRyan Leary is COO of RecruitingDaily and is responsible for driving technology and innovation into the recruiting community. Ryan helps create the processes, ideas and innovation that drives the community at RecruitingDaily. He’s our in-house expert for anything related to sourcing, tools or technology. A lead gen and brand buzz building machine, he is the force behind the marketing automation process for some of the industries top fortune brands and some of the most progressive startups in our space.

Connect with Ryan on:   Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or RecruitingBlogs

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By Ryan Leary

Ryan Leary helps create the processes, ideas and innovation that drives RecruitingDaily. He’s our in-house expert for anything related to sourcing, tools or technology. A lead generation and brand buzz building machine, he has built superior funnel systems for some of the industries top HR Tech and Recruitment brands. He is a veteran to the online community and a partner here at RecruitingDaily.