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Everyone’s favorite social networking site, Facebook, plans to launch its own job board later this summer. The board will aggregate IT job postings from third-party sites and make them searchable to Facebook users. Considering the massive reach of the site, 955 million monthly active users, of which more than half are daily users, 552 million, the idea may seem like a dream for all IT recruiters, IT job seekers, employers or IT recruiting companies. Two debates are raised however on the effectiveness and appropriateness of Facebook as a professional IT job seeking and technical recruiting tool.

One fundamental question for Facebook’s potential new job board is how to publish open positions to its multitude of users. The site exists to promote social networking and while it may be one aspect of this, IT job searching is not the main reason people visit Facebook. If IT jobs were to solely take the form of ads on the side of the page, they could likely be ignored as most other ads on Facebook are. Another proposed idea is to include job postings directly in newsfeeds, using information in a user’s profile and timeline activity to match particular interests or skills. Considering the way we use Facebook, newsfeed job postings may be annoying and overlooked. Maybe Facebook should call up one of Boston’s top IT staffing firms and have our web designers and programmers create the solution.

As AVID IT recruiters Boston can tell you, matching the perfect candidates with our IT job openings is tough work. Considering my own carefully maintained Facebook profile and those of my many friends, it seems the information published by Facebook users may not provide the best source for matching technical jobs. Facebook profiles most often do not include extensive information about one’s professional experience, interests, or skills. Listing a workplace or position is not even a profile requirement.  Take a look at Facebook’s professionally minded step-sister, LinkedIn, on the other hand. LinkedIn by design is a means to display your information technology career information in detail and invite employers and IT recruiters MA to view it and reach out. A Facebook profile showcases very different aspects of one’s life – 1000s of pictures from college and your recent family trip, life updates and that great song you just listened to, rather than your project details at work.

There’s always the risk too of showcasing the wrong personal life details with the wrong professional contacts. People have failed interviews and lost jobs for precisely this reason. If Facebook users were to alter their profiles to make them more professional in nature and appealing to IT recruiting firms, by deleting those photos of you and your college roommates at the bar in matching pumpkin Halloween costumes (guilty) and adding complete professional resume details (boring) wouldn’t we lose the appeal and charm of our most beloved and addicting work distraction (just kidding, boss)?

LinkedIn was built as a professional networking site, allowing users to make connections with people they are not necessarily friends with, or may not even know personally, but who may provide insight into a desired career. We understand Facebook as a place for friends to connect and share socially with each other (even those 200 “friends” you’ve barely, or never, met but you still convince yourself it’s not creepy to look through every picture from their last trip to the beach.) While all IT job seekers should be using LinkedIn to connect with other IT professionals who offer networking opportunities and career advice, do you really want to “friend” your IT recruiter on Facebook?