Facebook has launched a job-hunting app that enables its network of more than 1 billion users will help people find their next career opportunity.
The social network launched a jobs board with the Social Jobs Partnership app that pulls in job listings from several services, including BranchOut, Jobvite and Monster.
The Social Jobs app was announced on Wednesday, November 14, 2012. The app is a result of Facebook’spartnership with the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, DirectEmployers Association, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. With the app, users can browse through more than 1.7 million openings.
Facebook has made a leap into professional purposes beside being a casual social network. Facebook is a repository for users' daily activities which include updates that might be inappropriate if users are using the site to look for a job. There have been cases where people have lost their jobs and not promoted because of updates they posted on Facebook.
Websites for people in professional occupations like LinkedIn, are built for users to expose their professional identities, targeting very specific qualities - skills, past jobs, languages spoken, and more - that someone might want to highlight when searching for a job or presenting themselves to recruiters. Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook hasn't got a boundary between social and professional. But the Social Jobs partnership found in its research that Facebook is a useful site for both job hunters and recruiters.
In a survey of 530 employers, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that half of employers use Facebook in the hiring process, and more than half anticipate it becoming a more important tool for finding and recruiting talent. The vast majority said that Facebook helps decrease print advertising for job openings, and that the site can be used as a networking tool to get jobs.
The app isn't actually hosting the job listings. At its initial launch, the app functions more as an aggregated search tool with a ticker at the top that shows the exact number of available job. Users can find jobs through the app, but once they try to learn more about a job, it points them to another app.
Although the app is far from perfect with several glitches, Facebook is slowly discovering its potential to connect users to jobs - and create another source of revenue at the same time. Facebook said that half of U.S. employers are using the network during the hiring process. But in its current state, Facebook’s Social Jobs app is more of an extra side tool than an actual player in the job-hunting territory.