Facebook and job recruiters

If the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is right, Facebook could become a major recruiting tool for employers. WSJ said in a recent article that Facebook could give "traditional job boards" a run for their money in 2012 (link to article embedded in title of this post).

The WSJ says that new hires directly from Facebook is a very small percentage of overall hires. But, given time, that could change.

I haven't done it often, but sometimes when I'm in chat with someone on Facebook, I'll ask if they've heard of any job openings in the PR field. In a couple occasions, I've used Facebook to get more information about a job opening I've seen. In a way, Facebook might bring a new twist to the "word of mouth" means of finding out about jobs.

The WSJ article mentioned a new app on Facebook from Monster called BeKnown. According to the article, BeKnown now has close to 800,000 users (including yours truly). Matt Mund, a top executive with Monster.com was quoted in the article as saying, "I wish every company used Monster [but] social is a solution many people are using."

I have found that the major job search engines, Career Builder, Monster, et.al. seem to point job seekers to jobs that are sort of close to what they are looking for. And, sometimes, jobs will pop up that really aren't remotely close to what job seekers are looking for.

If the WSJ is right, and Facebook does surpass the major job search engines in 2012, what will that look like? Will it stay legitimate; or will it become a gathering place for hackers and spammers? In either case, if Facebook does become a major recruitment tool, remember: you might want to double check your Facebook profile, just to make sure there isn't anything recruiters won't like.