Vacancy search engine teams up with Facebook

Tap your friends for a job

Job seekers can find new openings through their friends on Facebook

Vacancy search engine Simply Hired has set up a service that allows job seekers to use their Facebook account to discover new openings available at the companies where their friends work, or at organisations whose Facebook pages they like.

The service includes a private messaging function so they can contact their friends to find out more about a position and the company's culture before applying.

Users are able to discover vacancies based on their current or previous job titles, location, interests and their friends’ companies on Simply Hired's site. From the results page, job seekers can browse friends’ firms and search for suggested openings.

Simply Hired beta tested this service in the US and claims it has doubled user engagement. The full version now rolling out in the UK, US, Australia, Canada and India allows users to see a company directory that lists where all their friends work, available jobs at companies they like, and the companies where they have the highest number of friends.

“Simply Hired is showing what is possible when you make it easy to find jobs through friends,” said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook's developer network. “Personal relationships and professional networking have always been the best ways to find a new job. By integrating with Facebook, Simply Hired is bringing this to life online and helps users tap into their social connections to personalise the job search process.”

According to Simply Hired, half of all hiring has been done via referrals. In a poll conducted on the head-hunter's site, 73 per cent of respondents rank Facebook as the social media site they use most often; 43 per cent said they devote at least half of the time they spend searching for a job on social media sites such as Facebook.