A new Facebook job board on the horizon?

Over the last few weeks, bloggers have discussed across the internet rumours about a brand new job board online - created by Facebook.

Facebook is rumoured to launch it's own job board as soon as next month, with third party providers such as Monster and Gumtree providers of advertisment, pooling their candidate databases. According to sources, the new board is meant to stimulate and drive further user engagement on Facebook, and does not necessarily indicate an official entry by the social network site into the recruiting market. If the reports are true, Facebook does not plan to monetise the new service.

In the US, Facebook launched a partnership last year with the US Department of Labour and other similar agencies to provide job hunting resources and for Facebook a job board is rumoured to be the natural progression from this.

I was not so interested in the threat that this would have to LinkedIn as I do not think this is a major concern, if anything this should drive competition and expand the recruiting market.

The dangerous aspect and issues/complications shall surround personal and professional profiles as many users will want to keep them separate. I personally would recommend any job seekers to clearly differentiate between their personal and professional profiles. The risks of crossover are high and Facebook will have to fully regulate the profiles and access by potential employers.

One can understand the pull to launching such a job board from a business point of view, the main attraction namely being the large pool of candidates - some 950 million people on Facebook, giving firms a further chance of success and getting their name out. However, the Facebook demographic is arguably much younger and one could in fact be missing our on entire generations of highly experienced candidates. Clearly much work will need to be done, and a tailored solution offered to resolve these issues to avoid missing out on top talent and protecting identities.

The obvious answer to avoid mistakes is for Facebook users to create a separate professional profile - however why would a job seeker want to create two professional profiles online. Does that not create extra work? Should LinkedIn not try to tap into the market that Facebook has created? Perhaps the two sites could work in partnership to streamline this process. Do Facebook plan on direct competition?

There are still many questions, and I will be eager to find out what Facebook proposes. Watch this space...