Social media is now a permanent part of the job market, there’s no getting around it. But for the majority of people in the workforce, there continues to be a disconnect between the two worlds that’s puzzling. After writing about the subject a few times this year, I came up with a fairly simple theory: LinkedIn remains the best social media platform for business, but its doesn’t integrate into most user’s lives all that well. Meanwhile, Facebook has found a way to connect to millions of users’ daily lives, but most people still resist using it for their career pursuits. Thus, people’s working lives and personal lives have become two separate worlds in the social media realm, with Facebook obviously towering over the competition. There are scores of social media users who are willing to spend hours posting pictures of themselves on Facebook, but still haven’t considered posting their resume online.
So when I saw the headline on TechCrunch, “BranchOut Unlocks the LinkedIn in Facebook,” I immediately took notice. Michael Arrington explains the basics of how BranchOut works:
The application unlocks massive amounts of career data about my friends and friends of friends that was just impossible to get to before. Search on a company name and see which of your Facebook friends work there (or used to). If those friends have installed the app, you can also see how many of their friends have worked at that company. You can then reach out to them for an introduction if you like. My network of 5,000 friends have worked at 4,664 unique companies. My 20,607 friends of friends have worked at 17,901 unique companies. Basically, someone I know or someone that they know works at any place I want access to. BranchOut tells me that 5 of my friends worked at Sun. 68 worked at Microsoft, and 53 worked at Google. I also have three friends who were in the Navy, apparently.
To me, BranchOut could be that missing piece that finally unites personal and working life in social media, and allows who knows how many people to finally make the leap to 21st century career networking. As Joe Grimm said about it at Poynter Online:
BranchOut is worth a look. I know you may have privacy concerns, but employment information seems to be relatively benign. The big take-away, though, should be that another company has built a tool that employers are using to look for help. Isn't it time you got serious about how social media sites can help your career?
Indeed. I gave BranchOut a test drive. It’s not perfect, and its functionality is still somewhat limited, but there is an incredible amount of potential there. Basically, it sends you to your Facebook account, and then gets to a page that will spook a lot of people, especially with all the furor over Facebook privacy. It asks for access to your profile and friends info, as well as access to your Wall, your email and “any information I’ve shared with everyone.” It also wants to access that data at any time, even when you’re not on Facebook yourself. None of these things is particularly invasive, but it does look a little sinister all crammed into one list, and my guess is many people will chicken out, at least in the early going.
But they shouldn’t, as far as I can tell. What opens up is an extremely user-friendly, and potentially very valuable list of companies where all of your friends work (provided they have made that information public, of course). You can also invite your friends to join BranchOut, which allows you to see where their friends work. Lastly, there’s a job board to browse.
BranchOut may not be the be-all, end-all for career networking on Facebook. But it’s a big step.
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