Apps Make Life Easier For Recruiters And Seekers

by John Zappe Sep 3, 2009, 12:24 pm ET

Two
apps to tell you about today. One will get your job openings from your
company website to your Facebook page in a snap and the other will get
your jobs before on-the-go candidates.

The Facebook app comes from LinkUp, one of the second-tier job search engines. It's owned by JobDig, which operates a traditional pay-to-post job board and an inexpensive on-demand ATS called JobDig Tracker.

If your company career site is one of the 22,000 indexed by LinkUp, then installing "Current Jobs at Our Company"
will automatically update your company's job listings on Facebook every
day. The first five jobs are free. Any more than that and you'll have
to pay $39 a month.

In either case, LinkUp must be indexing your career site. Check
LinkUp to see if that's happening and if you don't find them there,
then you have to contact the company.

As much of a time saver as this app can be, if you don't work your
Facebook presence then it really won't make a difference. Simply
posting jobs to a friendless Facebook site is a waste.

JobDig CEO and president Toby Dayton makes that point himself in a blog posting that
praises Hyatt Hotels for its community-building efforts. Now it happens
that Hyatt has installed the Current Jobs at Our Company app and,
presumably, is paying JobDig $39 a month for the more than five jobs
capability.

But Dayton is right about the personal effort Hyatt is making. Take a look at the comments on the Wall
and you can see there's a thinking person behind the company's
comments. As he put it in his blog post, "there is a real dialogue
going on between job seekers and people within Hyatt."

Now, there are plenty of jobs apps available for Facebook. There are apps for users interested in security jobs, and apps from CareerBuilder for jobs of almost every type, and Indeed,
which has a new mobile app we'll get to in a moment, has an app to find
jobs where your friends work. But as far as I can tell, LinkUp is the
only app developed specifically for recruiters. And no, I'm not
forgetting the Jobvite or Force.com apps. They are aimed at getting referrals by leveraging their employees' Facebook relationships. Plus they cost a boatload.

Indeed, which never seems to sleep, has the #1 most popular free business app for the iPhone and iPod. And, to give credit, where credit is due, CareerBuilder is #5 on the list.

While everybody always wishes for some feature more than the product
has, Indeed's app is rated a bit higher than CareerBuilder's. Of
course, CB released its app 14 months ago,
pioneering, if you will, mobile search in the U.S. Indeed released its
iPhone search in March, including some features CareerBuilder's
reviewers wanted.