• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer, November 19, 2012

LinkedIn has some competition in the social media recruitment category, with Facebook’s launch of its new “Social Jobs” app, which helps Facebook users find employment and allows employers comb the ranks of the social network for talent.

The product of a partnership between Facebook, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Direct Employers Association, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, and the National Association of Colleges and Employers, Social Jobs aggregates job listings and other relevant information from a number of online recruitment platforms, including Work4 Labs, Jobvite, BranchOut, Monster, and US Jobs.

The simple interface allows users to search for job opportunities by keywords, location, and job categories and subcategories. They also have the option of searching for “veteran-friendly” jobs (personally I’m of the opinion that all jobs should be “veteran-friendly,” but what do I know).

While “Social Jobs” is new, Facebook has been increasing its recruitment offerings for some time, including the BranchOut app, launched in July 2010, which basically converts the social network into a big professional network. And it turns out Facebook is actually used by more Americans looking for new jobs than LinkedIn, according to the 2012 Social Job Seeker Survey, a poll of 2,108 U.S. adults performed for Jobvite by The Polling Company, which I wrote about in October. Fifty-two percent of jobseekers surveyed said they used Facebook this year, compared with 38% for LinkedIn. Twitter came in third, at 34%.

In terms of activity, 20% said a contact had shared an employment lead with them on Facebook, which was even with 2011. Meanwhile 19% said someone had shared a lead on LinkedIn, up from just 8% in 2011, and 11% said someone told them about a job via Twitter, compared to 7% last year. 14% of those surveyed said they have searched for jobs on Facebook, 11% said they searched on LinkedIn, and 10% searched on Twitter.