BranchOut, the largest specialized networking service on Facebook, released its newest product yesterday, the Jobs Tab.
BranchOut’s Jobs Tab distributes job openings to a company’s Facebook Page and makes it easy for Facebook users to apply, share the job, and see their inside connections at the company that posted the opening.
BranchOut also announced that it has raised a hefty $18 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures. In September 2010 BranchOut accepted $6 million from Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Floodgate and several of Silicon Valley’s most prominent angel investors.
BranchOut lets users put together professional profiles, search more than three million jobs and 20,000 internships, find leads for sales or recruiting, and build powerful professional networking connections – all using Facebook’s social reach.
BranchOut’s Jobs Tab helps employers and job seekers. Employers can put the Jobs Tab on their Facebook Pages. This is especially useful for companies like Levi’s that have millions of Facebook fans. These fans would probably be interested in job opportunities at the companies because they have shown how much they like the brands by worshipping them online.
“Many employers have been eager to experience the power of social recruiting on Facebook,” said Rick Marini, founder and CEO of BranchOut. “We are excited to introduce our Jobs Tab product to help match terrific talent with great job opportunities.”
Facebook users gain an advantage from the Jobs Tab because BranchOut adds a social layer to recruiting. The users can share job openings with their Facebook friends via messages and wall posts. They can also discover their inside connections for these jobs on BranchOut.
Levi’s, Groupon, Kiva, charity: water and Readyforce are among the list of employers in BranchOut’s beta program.
Facebook is growing and they are getting involved in almost every valuable service. It will be interesting to see if they can continue to grow. Adding a job search function with a social networking aspect is an interesting idea. Let’s see if Facebook finds a way to ruin it with ads or something.
