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.

Legal Experts Stress That Social Media Background Checks Create Risks from Workforce Management

Legal Experts Stress That Social Media Background Checks Create Risks from Workforce Management argues that conducting a Google search on a candidate, not to mention looking at their Facebook profile, is akin to interviewing a candidate. I don't know if I would go that far for public results available from Google, though I do contend, stay out of Facebook for screening.

This argument may be enough to curb the practice:

Employers also should review their liability insurance programs, including employment practices coverage, to make sure they are covered if they are sued by employees or job prospects in connection with the use of social media"

This is also another article that attempts to hammer home the point about mistaken identity when conducting online background checks on candidates.

The Onion: CIA Facebook Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

Stalked off

Now, I know the article [Stalk your way to a new job] was tongue-in-cheek, but I don't recommend stalking individual people at an organization--you should follow news stories and items about an organization. If the people that work there happen to publish and you might end up working in their department, you should read their publicly available work. But staking out their Facebook page?

According to the article,

Within minutes, you can find out where he’s from, how to reach him, where he’s worked in the past, and – perhaps most importantly – what his favorite movie is. The more you know about him, the better your ability to sell yourself.

Not so fast. This depends on a few factors.

1. The person is online and is accessible. This mean that they keep their blog or their Facebook profile out in the public sphere on their own name. Lots of people don't.
2. Even if you think you have the right person, how do you know that you do? Plenty of celebrities have people who name-jack them (would that be Twitter jack?) but I know quite a few people who have misspelled potential colleagues names.
3. For librarians, many of us know where the privacy settings are. And we teach others where to find them.

A far more helpful post would have been how to find out information about a company and their prospects, especially for privately-owned or small firms not listed on the 500 that Fortune slavers over each year.

Is your minifeed blasting?

With Friendfeed, Twitter and the updates from the minifeed in Facebook, our friends and professional colleagues could get tired of us. And since Facebook has changed the setting so you can't close the minifeed in your profile, I have gotten a good look at how much information I am blasting out to my friends: tons. No wonder people think I'm on Facebook all the time: the constant blare from my apps is noise on their dashboards every check in.

You might want to tone down some of your apps. Each of these apps in Facebook has their own privacy settings, on the right hand side of the privacy dashboard.

Once you've selected from the apps menu, you can pick and choose the level of privacy. By default, most of my apps only let friends see what I am doing, but this means that I am constantly shouting out to my friends. For now, I'm going to switch off certain apps, knowing that I can go back in, turn on others, and tell them about other stuff that I am interested in (ie not always into the book learning, sometimes looking for new music).

One of my friends says she checks my profile for stuff to play with on Facebook (back atcha) but getting the habit of presence control is a good idea, especially if there are some days or some hobbies that you would like to go below the radar on. Reduce "spit".

Getting your blog on Facebook

There are a few applications that you can use, like Live Blog and Flog Blog, to post your blog to your Facebook profile. The simplest method, however, is to get your notes to confer with your blog. Click on the Notes application and look on the right hand side of the screen.

When you click on Edit import settings, you will then be asked to add the feed that you would like your notes to pull from.

Your blog will be updated to your Notes and anyone of your friends who is subscribed to your notes, can also get regular updates from your blog.