As Facebook approaches 1 billion users globally, it would be folly to ignore the vast amount of human capital data that Facebook has to offer.

However, as I have written and spoken about many times, the value of data is directly proportional to the ability to retrieve it.

And therein lies the rub of Facebook.

It’s just not very searchable, and the structure of Facebook source code doesn’t make it easy to reliably target the really good stuff that sourcers and recruiters would be especially interested in.

Aside from being highly unsearchable, Facebook doesn’t score highly on the depth of professional content either.

I am aware that many of you probably believe that very few people enter in any professional information into their Facebook profiles, but you might be surprised to learn that more people than you would assume actually do enter titles and the companies they work for.

Also, while the percentage of Facebook users entering in professional details might be relatively small (for the sake of argument, let’s say 10%), given the nearly 1 billion profiles, that would be almost 100,000,000 profiles with some amount of professional data.

I don’t know about you, but I can work with 100,000,000 profiles.

So, while Facebook isn’t very search-friendly, and not everyone enters professional information on their profiles, there are a few ways to search for and target people based on what they do and where they work.

Let’s get on with a walk through of some of the ways you can leverage the professional content that is present within Facebook. Continue reading →