Conventional wisdom says that Facebook and the job search don't go hand in hand, with horror stories of job candidates losing offers after employers found incriminating evidence on their Facebook profiles.
But a new site called Jibe aims to change that.
Jibe, which bills itself as "the next generation job board," offers users job listings and allows them to see which of their Facebook or LinkedIn connections might be able to assist them in getting that job.
The site shows users which of their friends works at a given company and counts up their various connections in any given industry so that users have a clearer sense of where their networks can help them.
In this way, founder Joe Essenfeld said Jibe is "the only job board that actually makes applying for a job more similar to how it's done offline."
The site launched last week with 500 job offerings from six partners, including Amazon, MTV and Condé Nast.
Another feature that makes Jibe different, Essenfeld says, is that it limits the number of applications users can submit each week. That, he says, helps Jibe guarantee to employers that they will get quality applicants, as opposed to the "spray-and-pray" approach most job-seekers use on standard job boards.
Essenfeld insists that the company takes privacy concerns very seriously.
"This has nothing to do with exposing a user's Facebook info to employers," he told the Huffington Post. "We don't look to see their pictures from their college days. We only look to see where they work, where their friends work, and where they went to school. We look at social media as a way to make the process more convenient for the job-seeker, not as a way to expose anything."
Essenfeld says his company is approached by recruiters "all the time looking to see people's Facebook profiles, and we tell them it's not available for recruiters to see."
"We're not exposing personal data, we're not exposing recruiters' data," he said. "We just built a really good channel. We're not a research tool, we're a social media recruiting tool."
The company also runs a blog, The Hush Recruiter, which features "the brutal, honest truth" about the job search process written anonymously by recruiters and HR professionals.
"We've gone rogue, and we've gone anonymous to give you the much needed guidance that
will help you get your ass off the couch and into the workforce as a contributing, tax-paying
member of society," the blog says.
Screengrabs below:
