Will Facebook job search feature fully compete with Linkedin? Image Courtesy Linkedin
LinkedIn is the gold standard when it comes to social job search. Whether you are looking for a formal job, freelance job or a consulting job, having a LinkedIn profile with many connections and recommendations go a long way in boosting your ability to get a job, a gig or consulting work. Indeed, having a LinkedIn profile is fast becoming a necessity, almost becoming as indispensable to the job search and contract search process as having a resume or media kit or company information sheet.
Be that as it may, the recent announcement by Facebook that they would be launching a job search feature in their system got a lot of LinkedIn and industry observers thinking out loud as to what the impact will be. Think about it. Facebook has 900 million users and growing. A huge portion of that 900 million is heavy and active users. The scenarios that played out in the minds of some observers were that this would completely harm LinkedIn. Others on the other hand were more level headed but still concluded that this is not good news for LinkedIn. What are the considerations to look at when analyzing this story? First of all, it is worth keeping in mind that the listing is a roll up listing. It means it would aggregate job listings that are already being sent to Facebook by third party services that already use the Facebook platform.
These services include Work4 Labs, Jobvite and BranchOut. As such, there is already built-in identity with these services coming into Facebook. If you have a resume in Work4 Labs or in Jobvite, it stays there. Sure, there may be some sort of blurring of lines between your personal life and your professional life, but given the stakes involved and the need to avoid embarrassment, some observers are saying that the chances are high that people would want to keep their professional profile and their personal profile as separate as possible. This is very easy to see. People post all sorts of embarrassing, even offensive, content on Facebook and you do not want that to be carried by your personal profile. That would be bad news for your job search prospects. With that common sense assumption in mind, some industry observers and financial analysts are saying that the roll up approach by Facebook would probably not affect LinkedIn as much because there is still a big difference between a LinkedIn profile which is very professional, very straightforward and objective, and a Facebook profile. Expect that wall of separation to remain and unless Facebook somewhere down the road decides to tweak its roll up system a little bit, these third party job listing services and LinkedIn should rest easy, at least for now.