Work@ pulls open jobs housed on a company’s website or in their Applicant Tracking System.  After an employee adds the Work@ application to their Facebook account, CareerBuilder’s job recommendation engine identifies matches in that employee’s network to the company’s available jobs.

Work@ also provides analytics, through which the company can track and measure trends over time to gauge their program’s success.

"Work@ helps companies grow their recruiting staff overnight by giving employees an easier, more convenient way to identify and refer friends," said Hope Gurion, Chief Development Officer at CareerBuilder.  

"It’s never been easier to unlock the potential of your employee referral program."

Twenty-five percent of these employers are using social media to connect with customers and find new business, while others are using it to recruit and research potential employees (21%), or improve their employment brands (13%).

"As communication via social media becomes increasingly pervasive, organizations are harnessing these sites to help achieve a variety of business goals," said Jason Ferrara, vice president of corporate marketing for CareerBuilder.

"Social media allows organizations to communicate in ways that didn’t exist ten years ago, promoting their services and brands while also supplementing their recruitment strategy."

Businesses of all sizes and types use social media to promote their companies. Twenty-nine percent of organizations with 500 or fewer employees use social media, followed by 38 percent of companies with 501 to 1,000 employees and 44 percent of companies with more than 1,000 workers. Breaking it down by industry, leisure and hospitality led with 57 percent using social media to promote their business, followed by IT, (48%), retail (43%) and sales (41%).

When it comes to managing social media, 43 percent of employers have their marketing departments take care of their social media strategy, followed by public relations (26%) and human resources (19%). Twenty-five percent of employers have 1-3 people communication for their organization, while 7 percent have 4-5 people handle the work. Eleven percent have six or more people communicate for their company via social media and fifty-seven percent said they did not know.

Workers who come across company pages on social media sites shared what they would most like to see, including:

*Job listings-35%

*Q&A or fast facts about the organization-26%

*Information about career paths within the organization-23%
 

More than half (53%) of employers reported in a recent CareerBuildere.co.uk survey that they use social networking sites to research job candidates. Another 12 percent plan to start using social networking sites for screening.

Among employers who conduct online background checks of job candidates, 43 percent use search engines, 12 percent use Facebook and 12 percent use LinkedIn. Three percent search blogs and 4 percent follow candidates on Twitter.

  "Social networking is a great way to make connections with potential job opportunities in 2010 and promote your personal brand across the Internet," said Farhan Yasin, president of CareerBuilder EMEA. 

"Make sure you are using this resource to your advantage by conveying a professional image and underscoring your qualifications."

Top reasons why employers disregarded candidates after screening online:

•     Candidate lied about qualifications – 38 percent
•      Candidate showed poor communication skills – 31 percent
•      Candidate made discriminatory comments – 13 percent
•      Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs – 10 per cent
•      Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information – 9 percent
•      Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients – 9  percent
•      Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 8 percent

Top reasons employers hired candidates after screening online:
   

•      Profile supported candidate’s professional qualifications – 61 percent
•      Candidate showed solid communication skills – 41 percent
•      Candidate was well-rounded – 37 percent
•      Profile provided a good feel for the candidate’s personality and fit – 28 percent
•      Candidate seemed creative -24 percent  Candidate conveyed a professional image – 22 percent
•      Candidate received awards and accolades – 15 percent
•      Other people posted good references about the candidate – 15 percent

Related Articles:

> Social Media Will Not Replace Search

> People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email

> Consumers Are Looking for Offers on Social Networks

To clarify CareerBuilder originally launched BrightFuse in February 2008, but in its announcement it does not mention this detail. WebProNews contacted CareerBuilder for a comment but did not receive a response before publication.

CareerBuilder describes the site as a "free talent community for workers of all levels and industries to showcase their talents." BrightFuse offers users customizable profiles allowing them to post basic personal and professional information. In addition users can add recommendations from contacts, community activities, Twitter updates and RSS feeds to a blog or website.

Liz Harvey, CareerBuilder
Senior Director of Online Products

"In this difficult job market, online networking is an important piece of the puzzle for workers wishing to build professional relationships, and ultimately, connect with their next great job," said Liz Harvey, senior director of online products for CareerBuilder.

"With more than 1.6 million users, BrightFuse.com has become a thriving professional community. Workers of all levels can use BrightFuse.com to have that important open dialogue – while promoting themselves and recommending others."

Other features of the site include a Facebook application that allows users to post the main information of their BrightFuse profile as a tab on their Facebook profile, tools to publish portfolio pieces and the ability to connect with related groups.

CareerBuilder has a well-known brand but if it wants BrightFuse to do well it will have to promote it heavily to even have a chance against LinkedIn.
 

CareerBuilder was the most popular site with 21.7 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo HotJobs with 17.9 million visitors (up 23% over a year ago), and Monster with 14.5 million visitors (up 6%).

The next three sites in the ranking have each achieved significant growth in the past year, with Indeed growing 59 percent to 8 million visitors, Job.com sites up 46 percent to 7.4 million visitors, and SnagAJob up 48 percent to 4.7 million visitors.

Although CareerBuilder had the most unique visitors in June, its year-over year growth was down by one percent.

"Job and career-related resources continue to be one of the fastest-growing categories online, which is not surprising given the current state of the economy and the number of people seeking job opportunities and career advice," said Jeff Hackett, comScore senior vice president.

"The top three sites in the category – CareerBuilder, HotJobs and Monster – have maintained their leadership positions for several years now, but there are also a few upstarts in the industry making some noise. Certainly with millions of Americans reevaluating their careers right now there is opportunity for continued growth and innovation in this segment of the online marketplace."

comScore also analyzed the most searched occupations in June to understand which jobs are in high demand.

"Customer service" ranked as the most searched occupation with 273,000 searches, followed by "warehouse" (257,000 searches) and "sales" (217,000 searches).

Visits to career development websites grew 20% YoY, according to Nielsen, rising 41.5 million visitors in January 2008 to just under 50 million in January this year.

The vast majority of visitors to career development sites, around 17.8 million, are aged 35-49. However, Nielsen found a significant surge in visitors aged 65 and older, increasing 41% from 2.5 million unique visitors in January 2008 to 3.6 million in January 2009.  

It appears the need to generate income is motivating the older generation to stay in work, especially during difficult and uncertain financial times when their nest-eggs are less than secure, and they are turning to the Internet to seek out jobs. For many older job seekers who have lost long-term jobs, the Internet is a new medium through which to find new positions and opportunities exist for niche content to attract them.

This trend looks set to continue, according to a report out last year from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They state that while the total labor force is projected to increase by 8.5% between 2006 and 2015, when broken down by age group some very different trends emerge. In particular, workers aged 55-64 are expected to rise by 36.5%, but the most dramatic surge will be among workers aged 65+ – up an incredible 80% as Baby Boomers flood the job market. 

Overall, workers aged 65 and over are predicted to make up 6.1% of the total labor force by 2016, up from 3.6% in 2006.

In January CareerBuilder was the most trafficked job site with 20.8 million unique visitors. Yahoo! HotJobs came in second with 11.8 million visitors, while Monster.com was third with 9.5 million visitors.

Why would we think that Twitter is above this? Well, their announcement a month ago about cracking down on spam would be one indication, but honestly, who really thought that this type of behavior would be eliminated?

The CareerBuilder Model

Svetlana Gladkova at Profy has uncovered what appears to be CareerBuilder "gaming" its way into Twitter’s "Trending Topics" and search results (actually our own Susan Coppersmith noticed it a while back as well and twittered about it [you can follow her here.]). Gladkova noticed that a lot of searches using Twitter Search (formerly Summize) would turn up results with CareerBuilder in the top ten. Her curiosity was piqued when no recent big CareerBuilder news was evident. Why would the brand come up so frequently? Gladkova writes:

The answer proved to be very simple – CareerBuilder generated all the activity required to make the name of the site the most discussed topic on Twitter on its own. The thing is that the guys behind the website simply configured a few Twitter accounts (each account focused on a particular city) to broadcast all the latest job positions advertised on CareerBuilder automatically to Twitter. This resulted in a few dozens of new tweets posted to a few timelines belonging to different CareerBuilder geographical sections every hour (as I believe they must have some moderation for new jobs where they approve new postings to the site in bulk).

"I also suspect that these tweets are posted using some sort of a script as they show ‘from web’ as the posting method while normally when we see such automatic tweets published via RSS we see ‘from Twitterfeed’ there."

Questions Arise

First of all, does this not fall into Twitter’s definition of spam? Last month the company said it was hiring workers specifically to keep spam under control. Apart from that, they would suspend offending accounts, and provide community-powered alerts to help bring offenders to their attention. They did note however, "As always, fighting spam is a sustained activity. There is no magic wand we can wave or switch we can flip to make it all go away." Secondly, what is to stop everybody else from doing the same thing, rendering Twitter Search and Trending Topics virtually useless?

It would be one thing if CareerBuilder’s listings were coming up in searches for say, "jobs, los angeles", rather than just "los angeles" and appearing as five of the top ten results. Then again, you have to criticize Twitter’s search algorithm as well.

The Real Issue

But algorithms aside, this is really just an example of a much bigger issue. This type of thing happens all the time with social sites across the board, and there seems to be no easy solution. Sites allowing stuff like this to happen are giving social media marketing a bad name. Any social media marketing enthusiast will tell you, the best way to market via social networks/social bookmarking sites, is through conversation and relationships.

Yet the opposite seems to be true for what is really happening. I discussed earlier this month what was going on at Digg, as revealed by an interview with an anonymous "top digger" at Invesp. Now that StumbleUpon is dropping the toolbar-only approach, they’re going to be attracting a lot of new users, so the "gaming" will likely increase there as well. I’ve always loved StumbleUpon’s service for the sheer quality of results obtained from its search tool, but part of me wonders if that is a product of its limited use due to the toolbar factor. If the usage increases tremendously, so might the spam (if you wish to call it that).

The fact that it is such an issue also leads me to wonder just how much success the "gaming" parties are actually achieving with these methods.  Are the guys paying people to "digg" their stories truly reaping tremendous rewards? Is CareerBuilder gaining a whole lot of excess traffic thanks to a script flooding Twitter with job tweets?

Considering the popularity of a site like Twitter, I’m curious to know the percentage of Tweets rolling in on Twitter’s new election page coming directly from the candidates’ campaign staffs. It would certainly provide a much easier venue for hiding behind lies. See more of what Gladkova has to say on the matter in the comments. 

There’s no denying that so called "new media" has had a huge impact on how people get their news. The pros and cons are the subject of ongoing debate throughout the Internet and the blogosphere. Though I have personally defended new media (specifically blogs) as a legitimate source of news, it is behavior like this that tends to favor the other side of the coin. I still think new media is legitimate, but social sites need to reallly come up with solutions to keep results from being too polluted. It defeats the purpose. If people want to know what others are "twittering" about, they don’t want to see what one source is "twittering" about itself. If they want to see what’s popular on Digg, they want to see what people actually like. Not what people were paid to like.

Twenty- two percent of hiring managers said they use social networks to research job candidates, up 11 percent, according to a survey of more than 3,100 employers from CareerBuilder.com Another 9 percent said they don’t use social networking sites to screen potential employees, but plan to start.

Among employers who have screened job candidates through social networking profiles, 34 percent said they had found content that caused them to dismiss the candidate from consideration.

Some of the major areas of concern for employers included candidates that posted information about them drinking or using drugs (41%), posting inappropriate photographs (40%) and badmouthing previous employers (29%).

Social networking profiles gave some job seekers an advantage with 24 percent of employers who researched job candidates social networking profiles found the content helped them to decide to hire the candidate.

Top influences on their hiring decision included the candidate’s background supported their qualifications for the job (48%), great communication skills (43%), and a good fit for the company’s culture (40%).

"Hiring managers are using the Internet to get a more well-rounded view of job candidates in terms of their skills, accomplishments and overall fit within the company," said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.com.

"As a result, more job seekers are taking action to make their social networking profiles employer-friendly. Sixteen percent of workers who have social networking pages said they modified the content on their profile to convey a more professional image to potential employers."

Gannett got the ten percent chunk from Tribune Company, which is left owning 30.8 percent of the site.  The Tribune’s been having some problems lately, and breaking the 40.8-40.8 tie could also be seen as breaking a sort of piggy bank.

 Sam Zell

Still, Sam Zell, Tribune’s CEO and chairman, chose to emphasize something else when explaining the move.  "This transaction offers us an excellent opportunity to monetize some of the value CareerBuilder has built over the years, while enabling us to maintain a significant stake in a great online property," he stated.

And indeed, considering how shaky economic indicators have been lately, it seems that CareerBuilder might interest a lot of people who have either lost their jobs or are looking for something more secure.  Should things get worse, its popularity will grow.

Gannett isn’t going to go into "vulture mode" or in any other way drastically change CareerBuilder, though.  Even (potentially ironic) employee changeups appear not to be a possibility.

 CareerBuilder’s Existing Presence On Facebook

With all of the information available most people’s profiles, targeted ads on Facebook should provide a good way for companies to connect with would-be workers.  Want to get the attention of recent Harvard grads?  Or kids who only took two years to get through college?  The program could deliver.

Facebook itself should benefit if the attention of any professionals is drawn away from sites like LinkedIn.  And that’s not counting whatever money (financial details remain undisclosed) will come in as a direct result of the ads.

Of course, some users are bound to be quite happy with their current jobs, and Facebook claims they needn’t worry about getting bugged to apply elsewhere.  David Kaplan reports, "Facebook insisted that it won’t be inserting the ads without users’ permission."

Given the economy’s questionable state, and the usual grass-is-greener outlook, permission will likely be granted in a lot of cases.