Facebook Kickstarts its Jobs Board - Poaches on Linkedin's Territory

Earlier today, Facebook launched its jobs-board application having a total 1.7 million jobs sourced from BranchOut, DirectEmployers Association, Work4Labs, Jobvite and Monster.com.

Seeing the tremendous potential of social media to connect great jobs with deserving candidates, last year Facebook started out with Social Jobs Partnership (SJP) along with the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), DirectEmployers Association and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA).

The new jobs board app is an extension of the SJP page and allows users to search for jobs based on keywords, location and skill.

Considering the fact that Facebook has 1 billion users, it makes sense that most of the business will use this facility to find the right candidate.

Talking about this initiative, Marne Levine, Facebook's VP on Global Public Policy said:

Facebook is all about connecting people and we’re thrilled to see developers leveraging our platform to connect job seekers and prospective employers. By allowing job seekers to view and share job openings based on personalized criteria, like location and industry, the Social Jobs Application builds on our broader effort to help people use social media to find jobs in the US.

However, this also poaches on Linkedin's territory. Linkedin has primarily been a professional networking website with a focus on career building. But an access to a better (and informal) social graph of user on Facebook might lure recruiters away from Linkedin.

Presently the jobs board works only for US/Canada but we can hope that it will soon be opened to other nations as well, including India.