By now, most of us know the value of using our personal network to help find job leads. LinkedIn has been the leader in social networking designed to help professionals build their personal brand, their business network and it is the go to place for those looking for a new job. In stark contrast, Facebook, another leader in the social networking game, is a one stop resource for keeping connected with our personal network. If only there was a way to turn our personal network into a job hunting resource..
Enter BranchOut, a new Facebook application that allows users to make Facebook a place for career networking.
The application unlocks loads of career data on all of your Facebook friends and friends of friends that before now was impossible to get. You can search a company and find out which of your friends work there, and if they have BranchOut installed, you can even find out which of their friends work for the company as well. This gives you the ability to find people in your personal network that could be able to recommend you for a position or give you job leads.
If you are already using LinkedIn, you may wonder why this is important to you. For starters, Facebook has over 5 million users- more that 7 times more than LinkedIn. While it is still early in the game, some of the benefits of using BranchOut, according to a recent article, are-
- Some users keep business contacts on Linkedin and personal contacts on Facebook. Using both services allows a job seeker to leverage both business and personal networks.
- Linkedin allows 3 degrees of separation, while Branchout only offers 2. While this limits network size using Branchout, your odds of communication with someone 3 degrees away are less than if directly introduced by your contact.
- You can see what companies are represented by the friends of your friends (2nd degree) on Branchout if your friends also install the Branchout application. On Linkedin, you automatically can see 3 degrees of separation without installing additional apps.
- Linkedin includes Q&A capabilities, large active industry groups, recommendations, an active job board, and the ability to overlay inside company contacts over job advertisements.
- While Linkedin allows for larger networks (Facebook limits friends to 5K per user), this isn’t an issue for the majority of users, who limit networks to those they know personally, or might expand to others in their industry.
- Linkedin still offers superior search tools, allowing users (and employers) to search by title, geography, company, industry, and name. It will be interesting to see if Branchout expands its ability to search beyond company name.
Although I don't think that BranchOut will replace LinkedIn as a business network tool, it certainly has the potential to bridge the gap between business networks and personal networks. I'm sure that there isn't one of us who hasn't, at some point in their lives, gotten a job solely on account of their grandma having a friend that knows someone who is hiring. So, never underestimate the power of friends of friends and the great value of knowing someone that can put in a good word for you.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a freelance writer and regular contributor to several websites and other publications, a volunteer, a full time mom and an active job seeker.
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