Looking for a job? Now you can leverage one of the sites that you use the most, Facebook, to help in your hunt.
Facebook on Wednesday rolled out its long-awaited Social Jobs app for U.S. users, which has aggregated more than 1.7 million job listings from job search sites that were already using Facebook to reach recruits, including Jobvite, BranchOut, Work4Labs, and Monster.com.
The social network first announced plans for a jobs app last October as a joint venture with the Labor Department. The two launched the Social Jobs Partnership, a group that includes the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, and the Direct Employers Association.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis in a statement said "the foundation of an industry-supported open-source job-posting schema" is "helping America get back to work."
The national unemployment rate in October dipped below 8 percent for the first time since January 2009.
Facebook says the app is a natural progression in social networking. NACE research indicates that 50 percent of employers already use Facebook to find new hires. Those employers said potential recruits can better use Facebook to find jobs by liking company pages and networking with contacts.
"Facebook is all about connecting people, and we're thrilled to see developers leveraging our platform to connect job seekers and prospective employers," Marne Levine, Facebook's vice president for global public policy, said in a statement. "By allowing job seekers to view and share job openings based on personalized criteria, like location and industry, the Social Jobs Application builds on our broader effort to help people use social media to find jobs in the U.S."
LinkedIn competitor?
It's unclear whether Facebook intends to ramp up competition with professional networking site LinkedIn, which has 175 million users compared to Facebook's 1 billion. LinkedIn offers paid accounts for both job hunters and recruiters. For now, Facebook's jobs app serves as a marketplace of other sites' listings.
LinkedIn recently revamped its user profiles to make the site more visually appealing in an effort to compete with other social networks.
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