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According to a recent Facebook blog post, “Half of employers (50 percent) are using Facebook in their hiring process. A majority (54 percent) already using the social network anticipates Facebook becoming a more important part of the talent acquisition process in the near future.”

Job candidates are also infusing their job search with Facebook activity. In a recent study conducted jointly by Facebook and Carnegie-Mellon University, results revealed that job seekers with strong ties who shared private messages, commented on each others’ posts, or posted directly on each others’ walls found new jobs at a rate of 33.2 percent over the three months. Those with weak ties found jobs a fifth as often, at only a 6.5 percent rate.

This data suggests two things: The first is that we are hiring people who are spending a lot of time on social media. (Let’s hope they’re not doing it while on the job!) And second, Facebook is a powerful tool for active, hands-on users. Like job seekers, recruiters need to do more than just jump on to the Facebook wagon — they need to learn how to drive it and not to forget to use the phone along with it. keep reading…

The fPhone is finally here. Facebook is launching its own brand of phones that put social networking front and center. With an estimated 650 million mobile users it was inevitable that Facebook would introduce mobile devices that integrate users more tightly with the site, allowing for faster posting, chatting, and commenting. They might even allow for voice calls (remember those?).

Facebook’s foray into mobile phones is a direct response to Samsung’s plans to develop a social network. Slated to launch this year, it is designed to rival Facebook. The project is codenamed Samsung Facebook (Brilliant! Who could possibly guess what that’s about?). The thinking behind the fPhone and Samsung’s network (I believe the official name will be Twitter Plus) is to control both content and the mechanisms through which it is created. Samsung dominates the mobile phone market and makes nearly a third of all smartphones sold worldwide — more than double what Apple does. All those smartphones are the source of huge amounts of content, which becomes the property of Facebook, Google, etc. This means that most advertising based on that content doesn’t accrue to Samsung. But the combination of mobile phones and a social network is a direct threat to Facebook’s business model.

The Mobile Recruiter keep reading…

We are entering a time of social fatigue. A recent survey from Pew Research found that 61% of current Facebook users have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more, and 20 percent of the online adults who do not currently use Facebook say they once used the site but no longer do so.

The forecast is for decreasing use: 34% of current Facebook users say the time that they spent on the site has decreased over the past year, and only 3% say they will spend more time on the site in the coming year. Meanwhile, 27% say they will spend less time. The honeymoon is over. Among the top reasons cited for decreased time spent on Facebook are: it’s a waste of time; bored with it; content is not relevant; and just didn’t like it.

This doesn’t mean that people are abandoning social media. Overall time spent in social networking continues to rise — up 38% over the previous year according to Nielsen Media — more than any other online activity. The growth in time spent on social media is largely tied to the spread of smartphones, sales of which are accelerating overseas but slowing in the U.S. as we reach near saturation. That just means that the same pattern of skyrocketing use of social media followed by slowing use will be repeated in other countries in coming years.

Why Didn’t the Mayans Warn Us?

So what’s happening? keep reading…

I’ve been using Facebook’s much-vaunted graph search for about a month now, having been on the list for early users. The feature was launched with much fanfare by Facebook in January at a press conference that proved to be distinctly underwhelming. Expectations were high that the company would announce a Facebook phone (The fPhone?) — a blue device capable of automatically recording all your activities and posting them publicly (privacy settings would be permanently disabled). But instead those watching found that the company was rolling out … a better search. Evidence of disappointment was the company’s stock price which had been rising but reversed course halfway through the press conference.

Graph search supposedly makes it easier to find people in your network and discover potential connections. Filters such as “place type,” “liked by,” and “visited by friends” make locating things faster. The feature can serve recruiters by allowing for better search of people’s profiles. It appears to be reasonably effective. As an example I typed in “People that are Java Developers and live in Minnesota” and it turned up 38 names. That’s a small number so I tried variations such as “People that like Java and live in Minnesota” — which produced a much larger number, but many of these were coffee aficionados. Putting in more complex queries, such as adding another skill, produced no results. Switching to finding .Net developers produced only 18 names and trying “People that like .Net and live in Minnesota” turned up three names of people who like to fish.

Seek and Ye Shall Find keep reading…

You’ve probably heard the hype about Facebook’s new search utility, which it calls Graph Search. Unveiled just a couples weeks ago, it’s already being described as everything from a LinkedIn killer to a privacy killer, and a recruiter’s new best friend. For every one of those you can find an article — or 100 — that says the opposite.

Except when it comes to recruiting. While calling it a best friend may be premature, it won’t be long before Graph Search becomes as valuable to recruiters as Google and LinkedIn.

As Stephane Le Viet, CEO of Work4 Labs, wrote in a post on Forbes, “Graph Search is about discovering people — their work history, their education, their interests and their motivations — and using that discovery to recruit better.”

Described simply, Graph Search indexes and quickly accesses all the information each Facebook user has made available. This includes their profiles, photos, comments, likes, friends, and whatever else is out there. Theoretically, what Graph Search does was always possible. In practice, sifting through the thousands of pieces of data was such a huge, time-consuming task, it was all but impossible. keep reading…

With all of the concern about the recession and the current unemployment rate, it’s easy to overlook the fact that as of October there were 3.7 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. Alone, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those of you working in the HR industry probably already know how close to home this number hits — and how difficult it is to close the gap between the number of open positions and the qualified candidates needed to fill them.

That said — and I may be biased, since my company, Work4 Labs, and I have a stake in the continued success of social recruiting technology — I truly believe we are at a really exciting juncture in the history of the recruiting industry. We not only have professional networks in place to connect active job seekers with specialized positions, but we also — for the first time — have the buy-in from active and passive talent on personal networks such as Facebook.

Facebook’s interface has helped facilitate a shift in the user experience, especially when it comes to sharing personal information with companies and brands. Call it a lucky result of the implementation of Facebook’s Timeline, the simplicity of single-sign-on and one-click sharing features, the push by marketing agencies to maximize employer branding through Timeline for Business, or what you will.

And now you have a new tool to add to your recruiting arsenal.

Beginning this past summer, you may have heard rumors of the formation of a partnership in the interest of creating a job board on Facebook. Indeed, the Social Jobs Partnership, a “coalition of employment service non-profits, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the world’s largest network (namely Facebook),” was formed in the same month as the U.S. Bureau of Labor released the statistics on unfilled jobs. And one of this partnership’s initiatives was to create a job board app for Facebook, which launched in November. (You can learn more about all of the SJP’s initiatives on the SJP Facebook page.)

At the time of the launch, the Social Jobs App, a job board that uses the power of Facebook’s network, featured 1.7 million listings, creating a central location for recruiters to share jobs with the Facebook’s 1 billion user community. The app allows job seekers to use Facebook to search for jobs by industry, location, and skills, making the job search process easier and more accessible.

I often hear concerns from bloggers and industry professionals who think the job board is an attempt to turn Facebook into a professional networking platform or somehow compete with the likes of LinkedIn. It’s not — and I think it is helpful to look at it this way: keep reading…

Forbes said that recruiting will never be the same. I said in July that a Facebook-driven job board has potential. And after several false starts this summer and fall, it finally released it into the wild this week. Now, millions of people are flocking to it to get a job, right?

Paying homage to the folks at Monday Night Countdown, there’s only two words I have for you: “C’mon Man!”

The entire platform is stalled before it even got started. In many ways, it doesn’t function properly at all. There is bad targeting either for the job itself or for the location parameters (or, in some tragic cases, both). When it works, the results are underwhelming. That’s putting it kindly.

If I were Facebook, I would quietly remove the server that hosts the application, toss it into San Francisco Bay and start over, never to speak a word of it again.

keep reading…

Big news came from Facebook: the largest social network in the world enters the 400 billion-worth market of job search and recruitment!

I’m not sure about others, but this is where my excitement ends. I think Facebook just blew it. keep reading…

The worst-kept secret in the recruiting field, looked at by some as a LinkedIn killer and by others with deep skepticism, is now officially out.

Andrew Noyes, a Facebook manager in Washington, D.C., who handles lobbying-related communications, told me yesterday that Facebook is launching a new feature on its site for job-hunters and employers, focused initially on the U.S.

If you’ve been waiting for a “Facebook job board” where you’d send Facebook $300 and a description of a job — well, this isn’t exactly it. keep reading…

Want to get your friends to help you raid a company? There’s an app for that. Want an introduction to a hiring manager? There’s an app for that, too. Just nosy about where your friends work? Yes indeed, now there’s the (same) app for that, too.

BranchOut, which launched yesterday and is profiled today on TechCrunch, is an app that details the past and current employers of your Facebook friends. And, if you can convince your friends to install the app, you get the same info for the friends of your friends.

It gives a new twist to Sun-tzu’s counsel about keeping your enemies closer. With BranchOut installed, you’ll want friends closer, lots and lots of close friends who will unlock their profiles so you can see who works or worked where and who has friends there.

If you’re a recruiter or otherwise have reasons to know your Facebook friends’ work history,  it’s a great tool, even if it’s a little buggy right now. Michael Arrington, who wrote the TechCrunch piece, warns as much. The most glaring bug I found was that BranchOut has trouble distinguishing between current and past employers. It also listed the clients of some of my friends as employers. keep reading…

What a fun week in the community. I can’t wait to see more of you in person at the #socialrecruiting summit in May (pst… this is the last week to get the early bird discount).

Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. Inhouse recruiters: ignore Facebook at your peril
2. Confessions of a Job Seeker: What I Learned!
3. Typers and Talkers
4. Oregon Law Bans Use of Credit Reports for Employment Screening
5. Diversity Firms — Know of any good ones?
6. Featured group of the week: Dallas/Ft. Worth Recruiters

1. Inhouse recruiters: ignore Facebook at your peril

Katrina Collier writes regarding the importance of not ignoring Facebook, “Social Networking Could Soon Pass Search, written by ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick, summed up the importance of this beautifully: “What would it mean if social networking over-took search in terms of sheer visits online? It would mark a sea-change on the Internet. No longer would our dominant use of the web be seeking out web pages built by HTML web-masters! Now we would all be publishing tiny little updates that perhaps only our friends and family care about.” So what “tiny little updates” are being written about your company and are any of these preventing you from attracting and hiring great talent?

Is Facebook an essential part of your branding and attraction strategy? If not, would a shift in traffic numbers with Facebook in first place change your mind? Drop a line in the comments.

keep reading…

Top of the morning to you! This is a special ERE Expo/St. Patrick’s Day edition of the community highlights.

Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. Multitasking hurts corporate recruiters too
2. Two Facebook accounts? No!
3. Are video interviews going to replace face-to-face interviews?
4. Example RPO agreements
5. Featured group of the week: Sales Recruiting

1. Multitasking Hurts Corporate Recruiters Too

Louis Kadetsky writes: “Multitasking, once considered a rare talent, is now an essential skill … but it comes at a price. As employees juggle tasks – and take this into their personal life, checking devices while pushing grocery carts and ordering dinner – they are paying with pain. Fortunately, there is a cure for what ails you!

Do you think multitasking is harmful? Check out the conversation.
keep reading…