As I think about the future of job boards and social media I can only think that the two must merge and become one.
Without a doubt job search is getting more social (and mobile). So job boards needs to start adapting to these trends to stay relevant. What do I mean? Well for starters you can let people login with their facebook, twitter or Linkedin accounts.
Some job board software like webjobs and Smartjobboard already provide this feature. There are startups like bright.com and jobsminer.com which have popped up. But I want to get you thinking farther ahead and here are some things I would do to make job boards more social media fiendly.
1. Allow job seekers to see their connections via either facebook or linkedin with the companies that post on your site.
2. Give seekers a social media dashboard to see where their friends are working and when they’ve changed jobs (google Job Change Notifier)
3. For every company on your job board link to their linkedin profile.
4. Let them search for jobs on Twitter. Just tap into the twitter API and search for keywords with the words “hiring” or “jobs”.
5. In addition to resume uploads give seekers a way to add their social media accounts to their public profile pages.
I think the job board of the future will incorporate some, if not all of these ideas.
