Facebook is now experimenting with job listings on its business Pages, a first foray into other potential features related to recruiting. For companies, particularly smaller businesses, with Pages, the new feature — which is a tab on the Page — could help drive traffic and expose more potential candidates to open jobs. The new feature would compete directly with LinkedIn, and also with Work4, Workable and JobScore, all of which offer “Jobs” applications that can be embedded into Facebook Pages.

TechCrunch reports that, “perhaps Facebook was prepping for these new features when it tested Profile Tags last year that mimic LinkedIn’s endorsements feature.” The Jobs feature offers details about the job, including title, salary and full-time or part-time status, and an “Apply Now” button to launch a job application with pre-populated information from the user’s public profile.

All in all, says TechCrunch, the result is a more dynamic offering than “a relatively static Careers page on a company’s website.”

The Page’s owner receives submitted applications as Facebook Messages, a process that might promote chat — or, alternatively, could be “clumsy” as companies also receive customer support requests via Facebook Messages.

“Facebook could reach people not even thinking about a job, yet could be convinced to apply for the chance at a higher salary,” adds TechCrunch, noting that “Facebook offers demand generation, drumming up interest people didn’t know they had.”

With 1.79 billion users, Facebook has impressive reach, and many peoples’ Facebook profiles are “often filled with extensive information about their past jobs titles, employers, education and interests.” That compares with LinkedIn, which only has 467 million users, many of whom check into the site less frequently than they do Facebook. Microsoft recently purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.