Facebook's Resume Feature - Should LinkedIn be worried? My take

Yesterday it was all over the tech websites, Facebook is reportedly testing a new resume feature called "work histories" that can help users share them privately.

Here are my thoughts about how this can play out:

1. Facebook is making an enterprise play. First with Workplace , the collaboration feature and then with  Facebook Jobs the job advertising feature. However, they haven't really done a great job marketing the jobs feature. If you see currently the number of jobs advertised in India is very low. As I write this is what is shown - 27 jobs in India (plus all of them seem to be with Facebook, not even sure it is used by other employers)
   
2. Facebook's big revenue features come from display advertising, sponsored posts for consumers. LinkedIn has that market cornered when it comes to employers - with their company pages and posts targeted to different kind of talent segments. So cracking this market is going to be tough for Facebook unless it invests in feet on the street to take on LinkedIn's Account Management, Sales and Customer Service. Facebook pages had talked about introducing a jobs/careers tab for adding to their business pages beginning with US and Canada, however I am not sure if this is in the priority for Facebook sales teams to pitch it to their customers
3. The big opportunity, Mobile recruitment. Where Facebook has a big edge over LinkedIn in the developing markets is the users who are solely on the platform as well as being actively engaged - the users for whom the internet is first mobile screen. These would be the blue collar workers which are not a strong point of LinkedIn. However to reach them Facebook would have to give the screen real estate to the product to make jobs a clear feature which might mean compromising on things like its news feed.
4. Microsoft and LinkedIn. Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn and its data getting integrated into Outlook and Office 365 is a moat that Facebook may find it difficult to cross.   
5. Facebook's perception problem. The biggest problem for Facebook is its perception of being a "social network" that is for friends and family. Whatever Facebook does in the jobs and careers space would run into that huge perception issue. At least in the white collar workforce, hence IMHO, the best bet for Facebook would be to concentrate on the blue collar workforce and focus on a "apply with Facebook" button with job sites to make the application process friction-less. The question is will they focus on it - at the cost of hurting their other revenue streams like digital advertising? And will they be able to convince the recruiting ecosystem like job sites and staffing agencies and make the products that they see value in? Time will tell, but very unlikely in my view. I hope I am proved wrong because LinkedIn can really do with some competition in this space.

#socialmedia and the Workplace @BT_India Video

Remember I had earlier blogged about being on the panel at the Business Today Knowledge Forum on HR where I was invited to be part of a panel discussion?

Well the video is out - and I hope you like it :)

First thoughts on Google Plus

Yesterday I got access to Google's new social networking effort - Google Plus or Google+ (pic of my public profile below)

First thoughts so far:

Google has introduced a social networking where you focus on whom you want to share stuff with. To do so you add people in your "circles" - for example I have circles for "social media people", "HR professionals" , "family" and "friends"

The big difference with regards to Facebook? Two things stand out:

1. You do not need to "friend" a person. You add a person to a circle and even if he/she does not add you you a circle you can still follow their public shares
2. I use facebook lists to edit out people (e.g. status updates visible to everyone except "Limited Profile") but Google+ is to add people - when you share you say "am sharing this with x, y and z circles".

Therefore Google+ would trigger a different kind of social behavior.. for self promotion we'll stick to twitter and FB pages, but move to Google+ for better conversations... hopefully!

The two features that stand out is "Hangout" - which offers a group video chat facility - and by doing so takes aim at Skype's revenue model by offering for free what they sell. It adds a richer experience to social networking.

Then there's Sparks - which is sort of like Google News+Google Reader content that you can search through and share with your circles. Great for starting conversations and much easier to share content than cut pasting a URL in the status box.

The big drawback? As of now, the fact that new comments on your friends' post push them back to the top of the stream. And you have to manually "mute" them to ensure you don't see them again

What about you? Have you used Google+ ? What do you think will be the use cases compared to Facebook/Twitter?

Related articles

• Google+ has great features - now it just needs people (gigaom.com)
• First Take: Google + Gets Features Right - But Offers No Reason to Leave Facebook (web-strategist.com)

Social Recruiting - Hireplug leverages Facebook profiles and pages

Two years ago when I had blogged about referral based recruiting models I had written that organizations should leverage their employees' social networks

I would be a lot more interested if jobsites can leverage the existing social networks where Indians hang out. Making apps that make sharing and applying to jobs and ride on the platforms that Orkut and Facebook provide. Wonder why nobody has thought of that?

Finally it seems that Hireplug a Social Recruiting startup is trying to do it - See their blog post

Turn your Facebook Fan Page into a Talent Magnet

Hireplug's 'We Are Hiring' App. sitting on employees' Facebook profiles and also on Employer Fan Pages prompts visitors for joining Employer's Talent Network. Here is a screenshot!

Once the visitor clicks on 'Join' link. Most information is grabbed from user Facebook Profile and App asks for more information on Skills as show below.

Now the candidate becomes part of the Talent Network(read 'Talent Pool') and is searchable by recruiters using Hireplug.com as shown below!

Jobseekers don't want employers to check their social profiles, says study

Another interesting article on how the job hunting process is changing with the availability of social profiles on the web. The assumption is that recruiting firms and employers can access data that will be damaging to the job seeker. However, it can work the other way too. A friend who works with a bank in Asia Pacific region shared that a job seeker was shown as "unreliable" in the traditional background verification process, but based on checking the person's social profiles - they decided to hire the person!

So job seekers don't really have to be alarmed in the way this article proposes, keep privacy filters on and don't indulge in hate-mongering on the web are the two aspects I'd suggest.

Here's the article excerpt:
Job seekers wary of social media

Job seekers are aware that bosses are using social media as part of the recruitment process but don't think it's entirely appropriate, according to a new survey.

The Hays online survey of 885 people found that 38 percent of respondents believe employers use social networking profiles to help vet applications, but should not do so.

It says 35 percent not only believe employers use social networking profiles, but also believe that they should use such information to vet applications.

Just 27 per cent think employers do not use social networking profiles as part of the recruiting process.

"This survey reignites the debate about public versus private life, but this time it's not celebrities or politicians that are arguing their right to privacy, but every day job seekers," said Jason Walker, Managing Director of Hays in New Zealand.

"The majority of job seekers feel that their personal life is their personal life, and their social media profile should not be used as part of the decision making process.

Creating Online Content and #socialrecruiting

The newspaper The Hindu has an alarmist take on social networking and job hunting called Gossip to eternal regret

Yes, we are in the Wild West world of social networking - and using our earlier models of thinking - and it will take some years to figure out how to make sense of this data that is being generated. An NYT article says that the web means an end to forgetting. While the print medium existed - only things about the important people used to be preserved for posterity - and never at the reach of a mouse-click. The digitisation of data and information about everyday people like us will mean something profound - and we'll realise that in some years only.

The Hindu article says:

It is a mindless exercise in inanity. Getting into social networking sites, feeding the ever hungry digital blank that asks you “What's on your mind”, “What are you doing.” You feed it and it asks for more and more, finally you feed it something to your eternal regret. As information from Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and blogs swamp our collective lives, it is proving to be a treasure trove of information for recruiters, hirers and online job search companies.

The crescendo of information has reached such a state that recruiters are weeding out potential hires on the basis of the information, just as employees are being weeded out based on their social networking updates. Apocryphal stories are aplenty. “We had this person who was just out of college who would call up and say he is ill, but by afternoon there would be status updates about how the lunch with the friends was and by afternoon how good he was at network gaming. He would post his top scores to cheers and jeers by his friends,” says an HR person at one of the big five IT companies.

It is not that young people are unaware of the changing scene. “It is really difficult to create a profile that is not so – you. Every bit of the profile has to be you, right from the information that you keep updating, to the photos, to the friends, to the groups you like. You cannot hide information and you cannot be not doing what young people are doing,” says Divya, who works in the media.

There are two ways in which people would react - a few people are content creators - and which status updates and photo-uploading via Facebook has made the percentage increase - most people are still content to consume and respond to content that the few create.

As for the author who claims :"it's a mindless exercise in inanity" I'd like to point him to Clay Shirky's views on LOLcats

The range of creativity is not limited to the civic-ly valuable actions. But even if we take Lolcats and we stipulate, as the lawyers say, that this is the stupidest possible creative act… the stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act.

Doing something is different than doing nothing.

But creation of content is - I believe- just the first step that we are taking. The next step that people would take is creating and nurturing their own online communities and tribes - to bring people of a shared interest and passion together.

The social business employee manifesto

I posted this presentation based on my blog post Social Business employee Manifesto a couple of months ago.

Do take a look and leave your comments :)

The social business employee manifesto

View more presentations from Gautam Ghosh.