Facebook Wants to Help People Land Their Next Job

Learn with Facebook is meant to provide people with skills to advance their careers with everything from simple tips on building a resume, marketing their work and services online, and interviewing, up to more advanced skills like coding. The new initiative stems from reports indicating that, while jobs are growing, the global workforce is on track to face a shortage of skilled labor. Back in June, Facebook actually pledged to educate 1 million job seekers and small business owners in digital skills that are becoming increasingly important.

“Our opportunity here is to ensure people are ready, not just for the workforce of today but of the workforce of tomorrow, so that they’re equipped to fill those unfilled jobs,” Fatima Saliu, head of policy and Americas marketing, said Tuesday morning in one of Facebook’s New York City offices.

The learning programs are meant to be entry level, so users shouldn’t expect to become coding and programming experts. However, Saliu notes that if people do want to continue expanding on those skills, Facebook can direct them to a partner program for more in-depth training. Learn with Facebook has already launched in France and Germany and there are plans to expand in Mexico, Brazil, and more. Facebook seems keen on expanding in the job-seeking and training sector. In addition to providing job listings and the new Learn with Facebook tool, the social media platform has already rolled out other features including the ability to use Groups to make mentorship matches and Blueprint, which is Facebook’s certification system for its platform tools. They’ve also partnered with community colleges or in-person training.

“This is a significant effort that we’ve invested in for a long time, will continue to invest in, and will continue to scale up as we seek to train people not just 1 million people by 2020 in the U.S. but more globally,” Saliu said.