Can a Facebook Page replace your Career Site?

 

According to New Media Age, brands such as Coke are starting to plan to build Facebook Pages and branded YouTube Pages instead of Campaign Sites.  Hubspot blog goes into a bit more detail (and is worth reading) but in summary Coke want to go where the consumer is rather than drag them to a Coke site.

So does the same strategy apply to potential candidates?

Of course you have to make sure you have sufficient people on Facebook so let's take Graduates as an example as it is one of the most relevant.  Typically, Facebook is a channel to engage with candidates to then bring them over to your career site to search and apply for jobs.  But as per Coke's thoughts, why do you need to do this?  Why can't they apply within the FB Page?

Take the DLA Piper current set-up.  As you can see from the image below they have built a really nice, interactive Page.

But then you get taken to their main graduate site to apply.  Great consistency but does it have to be this way?  Within the Graduate site they promote their FB Page and Twitter account which is good but and their FB Page is one of the best I've seen but, a lot of duplication that could maybe be avoided?

Technically, they could of course make it more like this.

 

Of course there are some downsides to doing it like this but I'd suggest the following benefits apply:

• Saves a lot of money if you can replace your Graduate site.
• Simplifies the process so more applicants.
• Gets applicants to take action within FB so more applicants.
• Removes any duplicate content so aids SEO.
• A FB Page will perform better from an SEO view point.

I'm not saying this is the answer for every category of staff but in the same way you have to market your career site across multiple channels, you can market a FB Page and drive traffic to it from other sources.  The likes of Coke are no fools so maybe they have a very valid point.  DLA have done a fantastic job and are way ahead of many of their competitors but is the above the next step forward?

What do you think?