Integrating Facebook Connect with your Job Board


Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 11:37am Tuesday 24 March 2009

Facebook Connect is part of the sites API platform released late last year. With Facebook the number 1 social networking site in the world, who wouldn't want to leverage off the success of this site?

Facebook Connect allows users to: Sites will adopt Facebook Connect for two reasons. First, their users are already actively using it; millions of users have OpenID log-ins and don't even know it. And second, because it's not just a registration system, it's the potential marketing channel. The integration between your website via the Facebook Connect API needs to be carefully thoughtout.

I have spoken with numerous colleagues in the industry about Facebook Connect integration with job boards, and unable to provide any Australian examples. There are a number of global job boards who have integrated with the platform including Tribehq, LawEnforcementJobs, HealthJobsNationWide

So why should job boards and career sites integrate with Facebook Connect?

Whilst many people may think that not having users register with you could damage your site, this probably will not be the case at all. I am sure there has been many a time that you or I have come to a website for some information only to find that you have to go through a long registration process to get the information you want.

I can certainly say that i have hit the back button and got the info from elsewhere. With Facebook connect your users can simply hit the Facebook login button, find the information they want, and stay on your site.

Facebook can tell you how many of the user’s friends are already members of your site. You can put a link somewhere that says, “Three of your friends already use the site - invite them to connect.” This can dramatically increase engagement of your existing users by drawing them back to your site. Not only this you can show the friends activity on a page within your site, so that users have yet another reason to return.

Facebook also let you pull certain information about the user such as basic profile info, avatar image etc, this can save you space on your server by hosting everything in a centralised location.

Whenever a user on your site does an action, you can post this information onto their wall. Obviously i don’t need to tell you how valuable this is, as not only does it appear in the news feed it also encourages their friends to click through onto your site.