Facebook Graph Search: Find Who (and what) You Want

Facebook Graph Search is unique tool that provides recruiters with a more precise yet expansive way to scour the social network for potential candidates. Ultimately, it’s a fantastic complement to your daily sourcing strategies and should be immediately incorporated into your efforts.

facebook graph search icon

Graph Search is advertised as a tool for identifying people with similar interests, exploring your world through photos, discovering restaurants, music and more. Looking for Didgeridoo enthusiasts who also enjoy bird watching? Graph Search can help! But Graph Search has become so much more than a casual people-finder; it has become an integral tool for recruiters.

For those still new to the party, Tony Steman’s video blog on Facebook Graph Search for Recruiting is a great way to get your Facebook recruitment efforts started. As we all know by now, Facebook provides the opportunity to “Like” any number of pages based on your interests. These pages and the individuals who are interested in them can now be searched—think of it almost as x-raying a site via Google. In fact, it’s quite similar to sourcing via Google, except the strings are a lot different.

For example, let’s say you’re searching for nurse candidates in Milwaukee, WI. Your Google search string may look something like this:

site:linkedin.com (“Registered Nurse” OR RN OR R.N) AND Milwaukee -inurl:pub -intitle:pub -inurl:dir -inurl:jobs -intitle:jobs -intitle:profiles

This search string yields approximately 5,050 results, and of course can be further specified based on certain requirements. With the advent of Graph Search, you can hop on Facebook and apply the following, very simple string:

Nurses who live near Milwaukee, Wisconsin

This search string yields more than 1,000 people (i.e., potential candidates). Quite obviously, there is a big difference in the two search strings. One has all the complex fun of Boolean searching (see: occasional head-banging frustration), while the other features a simple descriptive phrase. Graph Search is built to be straightforward, convenient and conversational.

Consider these additional strings to benefit your searches:

  • Nurses who like [insert interest: Nursing, Chemistry, Sales, etc.]
  • Nurses who live near/in [insert city name and state]
  • Nurses who work as [insert job title]
  • Nurses who have graduated in [insert field of study: Nursing, Biology, Technology, etc.]
  • Nurses who are members of [insert Facebook Group: American Association of Medical Assistants, among others]

Although results can be limited to what users choose to share publicly on their profiles, experiment with the strategies explored above, combine searches and A/B test; you just might discover new candidates.

All in all, Graph Search is a nice complement to your daily sourcing strategies, and a great yet simple way to maximize social recruiting efforts. Stay tuned for my sequel to Facebook Graph Search: Find Who (and What) You Want—which will dive headlong into the most effective ways to communicate with candidates via social media!

Post contributed by Andrew Rojahn, Pinstripe Social Media Specialist. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter – or source me through Facebook Graph Search!


Link to original post

Leave a Reply