Facebook has infiltrated the daily life of many of its 900 million users, but could the social network become the go to place for job seekers as well?
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook is planning to launch its own job board later this summer, which will aggregate the job postings of third-party providers, making them available for search by its users.
A survey conducted in December 2011 found that Facebook is preferred by many over professional social network, LinkedIn for job searching.
JobVite, a recruiting platform for the social web, said in its survey that more than 18 million Americans find jobs through Facebook, more readily than on LinkedIn or Twitter, at 10 and 8 million, respectively.
The job board initiative isn’t Facebook’s first foray into connecting job seekers with work. Last October, it teamed with the US Department of Labor and three employment-related agencies in an attempt to decrease the unemployment rate using social media.
Facebook’s scale and success in the social networking space give credence to the idea that a job board powered through its platform would work, but some have their doubts.
“It doesn’t feel like a big effort that they’ve worked on for a long time,” someone with knowledge of the new jobs effort told WSJ. “It feels lightweight.”
Techcrunch, an influential technology site, followed suit.
“Could Facebook become a more serious player in recruiting?” it said. “Sure, anything is possible. But there’s nothing here to make me think it’s more likely.”
Facebook users — and job seekers — will just have to wait and see if the job board works for them.
