Social Jobs Partnership

Facebook has launched their Social Jobs Partnership, which is an aggregate of Work4Labs, Monster, Jobvite, BranchOut and, DirectEmployers US.Jobs. This is a parternship of non-profit, government, for-profit and Facebook developers into one aggregator, creating a vertical search engine of the partners' jobs.

Like most aggregators, such as Indeed or SimpliyHired, you can search a variety of job posting services and boards simultaneously from the vertical search engine interface and be redirected to the posting on the originating site's own board. So, no, you can't apply with your Facebook profile.

At this time, the service offers one filter for "veteran-friendly" posts.

The Unemployed Need Not Apply

Catherine Rampell's piece in the NYTs The Help-Wanted Sign Comes With a Frustrating Asterisk exposes how some employers are discriminating against applicants that are unemployed, while pointing out that "the average duration of unemployment today is nine months". However, discrimination on this point is not really discrimination since unemployment is not a "protected ground", though the article does list some states that are prohibiting this practice in job ads.

I really liked The Cynical Girl's response when she pointed out that HR should not participate in this practice and that there is probably a method that the major job boards could use to remove job postings with an "unemployed candidates need not apply" caveat.

Monster Interviews and Work for Us

Online Recruiting News has reported on two new apps this week, one from Monster and one within Facebook.

Monster has launched a new app for interviews--Monster currently offers mobile versions for iPhone, iPad and Android--which is available on the iPhone and iPad. According to the reviews, the app would be most helpful for entry level job seekers. PCMag suggests that one of the weaknesses of the interview app is that it doesn't integrate with Monster.com, though that might have been the purpose of the original Monster mobile apps. It might have been better to add the interview version to an upgrade of the current Monster mobile app users, though it is likely that the interview app would have been an enormous patch for the original mobile version.

Work4us has launched an app within Facebook to help friends find jobs. The Work for Us apps lets you look at friends that would match with a job, post jobs on your wall and receive applications. This appears to be geared more for employers that are using Facebook to post job opportunities. The service is only free for the 30-day trial period.

Are the niche boards eating Monster's lunch?

Not likely--would you eat a monster's lunch? Workforce Management* looks at the proliferation of niche job boards and how attractive they are to employers to find qualified or specialized candidates in a specific industry or sector.

"Today, some 100,000 Internet job boards vie for listings and résumés, double the number in 2000..."

Well, I knew there were a lot of job boards, but not that it was anywhere near that high a number.

Monster has opted to go with more accurate search tools for employers, rather than specializing their job boards. If you remember what happened in the contest between the Yahoo! directory and keyword search, perfected by Google, you'll remember how that battle turned out.

*You need a log on and password to access content on Workforce Management; sign up is currently free.