The social media giant along with a handful of partners are launching a new Social Jobs Partnership app that allows employers to cast a line into the Facebook population, and allows prospective employees to search a directory of jobs that claims more than 1.7 million jobs from partners including Monster Worldwide and BranchOut, the company said on its website.
Opening the floodgate, the social networking giant’s new Social Jobs app will keep participating Facebook users up to date with job opportunities listed by BranchOut, the DirectEmployers Association, Work4Labs, Jobvite, and Monster.com. Those initial partners can now provide job-seekers with “access to more than 1.7 million jobs currently hosted on Facebook,” the company said.
“Facebook is all about connecting people and we are extremely thrilled to see developers leveraging our platform to connect job seekers and prospective employers. 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.,” Facebook vice president for Global Public Policy Marne Levine said in a statement.
The process began last October, when Facebook joined with the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the DirectEmployers Association, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) to establish the Social Jobs Partnership (SJP), an initiative to leverage social media to “connect great jobs with great candidates.”
The app empowers job hunters search by keyword, location, category and subcategory. There is also an option to filter by “veteran-friendly” jobs. “The SJP created this app to tap into the growing trend of talent acquisition through social media…The Social Jobs App will hopefully be a valuable resource for job seekers and an additional avenue for professional exploration and connection,” says Facebook.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis described the social media as an emerging driver of employment opportunities and said the Social Jobs Partnership was “helping get America back to work.”
“Today’s launch of the Social Jobs Application highlights what we have known all along – that both recruiters and job seekers benefit when jobs are posted where candidates spend their time, and research overwhelmingly tells us that this is on Facebook,” Stephane Le Viet, CEO of Work4Labs, said in a press release. “Undoubtedly, there will be an acceleration of the shift to social media as the primary source to find a job with the extraordinary push of this consortium. We are fully committed to making the Social Jobs Application on Facebook the best possible resource for connecting candidates and companies.”
So, why a social job app and why now? As a matter of fact, Facebook’s 1 billion users is what is attractive about recruiting on the network, recruiters said. Work4 Labs said it is posted 2.2 million jobs to Facebook in the last 18 months because that is where potential employees are. Fifty percent of employers use Facebook in their hiring process, according to a Social Jobs Partnership survey.
You can check out the new SJP app here.