It’s been said time and time again that the job search is a full time job for not only recruiters but candidates alike.  Unanswered questions baffle experts and novices in the recruiting and social recruiting industries.

Social Recruiting Review

• How can I increase candidate engagement and make my career website job seeker friendly?
• How does one increase candidate referrals, internally as well as externally?
• How can I make the best use of my recruiting team’s time keeping them from reposting openings on the hundreds of social networks?

Seems like online most anyone can log into most websites or online communities these days with your Facebook and LinkedIn user name and password.  Most websites anyway except that pesky corporate career website.  Wouldn’t it be handy as a job seeker to be able to quickly upload your social profile without the hassle of entering in 45 minutes of data and answering 60 questions even before you apply?

Questions like these seem to be some of the more popular life long unanswered questions in our industry.  First it was, “Why can’t I just use my LinkedIn login to quickly apply for jobs?”  And then, “How many licks does it really take to get to the center of that Tootsie Pop?”

Good news is that Bernard Hodes offers a new solution for job seekers and recruiters alike when is comes to offering an easy to use tool that instantly uploads and connect you and your community to jobs based on your work experience with that pesky corporate careers website.

It’s called Social Job Matcher, and it does exactly like it says.

Job seekers log into the company’s corporate career website using their Facebook or LinkedIn logins.  SJM uses the key words contained within your profile to match you directly to jobs using a scale of one to four with four being the best match.

This tool makes the use of proper key words and verbiage contained within your social profiles.  A poorly written profile will product poor job match results so it’s even more important to make sure that all words that are relevant to your job experience and industry are contained within all your social profiles at all times.

SJM not only matches you to the jobs based on key words but your friends and connections as well.  Job seekers can refer job openings to their connections allowing for a “controlled yet viral” means for spreading job openings and new positions.  This feature is not limited to external or internal candidates.  Job seekers can quickly log in and share job openings that SJM identifies match their friends and connections driving passive job seekers to the career website to learn more.

Social Job Matcher integrates with most any applicant tracking system allowing for a relatively painless install.  Because it is an add on feature purely for the purposes of matching jobs, job seekers will still most likely need to upload a traditional resume or input their job experience the old fashioned way.  The software does not replace the traditional ATS.

Tools like this make SEO and key words even more important not only for the job seeker but also contained within the job posting.  Since jobs are matched based on word and relevancy, it’s like that some job seekers will be overlooked for this reason.  Job descriptions and online postings must include industry keywords and combination more so than the company’s culture-speak and acronyms.

Tools like Social Job Match are a step in the right direction making the case for social media and ROI easier to make.  One of the first tool’s of it’s kind, I’d like to see future releases allow for candidates to apply using their social profile in full providing for spaces to upload their Slideshare, RSS Blog Feed, or Video Resume.

While I’m aware that these types of integrations may have employment law attorney’s running for the hills, video interviewing tools and communication tools like Skype have been extremely popular in the last 24 months.  And with candidates being googled for at an alarming rate, (85%) I see the trend not only continuing but growing.

And yet the precise answer to the Tootsie Pop continues to allude our industry. . .