BeWare of BeKnown from Monster.com – on Facebook 20 Comments
You probably haven’t heard about it yet (it just launched), but it’s big news in the human resources and recruiting space. Writers are enthralled with another new shiny object in the social recruiting space, called BeKnown. It’s almost like building networks, brands, and referrals online or within a social network is a new concept. While doing some research, I came across an interesting post on this topic – and was reading through the comments. Naturally, I started thinking about BeKnown…
Leveraging the power of facebook’s 700 million users can be an attractive proposition for employers, and separating business and personal relationships can be the same for users. BUT, before you jump in feet first, do some research on your own and consider:
- This is an app, on facebook. Facebook owns facebook, not Monster.com. It’s an app. There is a privacy hurdle perception here.
- You are creating yet another network (albeit within a network) to manage. Do you have the time to cultivate and continue building a professional network within a social network? Although it’s on facebook, and you already spend time on the site, this is yet another activity to manage in order to produce mutually beneficial outcomes.
- If you need the recognition of badges in a professional setting, you’ll like BeKnown.
- If you rely on your network and relationships for referrals and jobs, this might be something for you to consider.
- This app is by Monster.com, a job board. Like all public companies, they need to show a return to their shareholders. While you would expect an app like this to focus on building as large of a community as possible, the long-term target audience for products like these is typically recruiters (revenue).
Some call this a game changer – and while I think competition is a great thing and BeKnown could have a significant amount of possibility if managed properly, it also has the possibility to add more clutter into the already over-populated, too many applications-per-req, low candidate conversion, horrid candidate experience recruiting space.
I don’t have anything against Monster, (or the BeKnown app), in fact I’ve used some of Monster.com’s products for 15 years. Instead of jumping on a bandwagon saying look at the latest and greatest, I’d simply recommend users (recruiters and or job seekers) consider the pros and cons before clicking the install button, which are different for every user. Here is some additional information where you can get an overview of the app – directly from BeKnown.
Recruiting organizations can focus on building a competitive approach to recruiting talent – or continue relying on a third party sites (and or using apps). Longer-term (with or without an app), recruiting on social networks is nothing new and already existed in a very targeted / niche fashion.
Will you BeKnown?
About Jason Buss
Talent HQ’s creator and editor is Recruiting & Diversity Leader, Jason Buss. Talent HQ is a premier online news and information channel for the Recruiting and Human Resources community.
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Talent Acquisition & Diversity Exec, Jason Buss, is the founder and editor of THQ. Prior to starting THQ, Buss launched The Talent Buzz in 2008. He is also the Vice President of Talent ... read more
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#1: “This is an app, on facebook. Facebook owns facebook, not Monster.com. It’s an app.”
That is what the masses want. They do not want FB to intermingle with Professional, but they wouldn’t mind it being a network w/in a network.
#2 “There is a privacy hurdle perception here.”
Agreed. But that is the case with every FB app. Hasn’t appeared to stop 100+ MM from Farmville, Cityville, MafiaWars, ect.
#3 “You are creating yet another network. Do you have the time to manage another network? Although it’s on facebook, and you already spend time on the site, this is yet another activity to manage.”
Is it really another network, or a centralization of your existing attempts to connect with others?
#4 “If you need the recognition of badges, you’ll like BeKnown.”
Says the guy claiming to have “75,000+ followers or members” on all of the current major networks?
#5 “If you rely on your network and relationships for referrals and jobs, this may just be something to consider.”
Considering that 2011 CareerXRoads found that 65% of all hires where internal or referrals, this is most of us!
#6 “This app is by Monster.com, a job board. Like all public companies, they need to show a return to their shareholders. While they will focus on building as large of a community as possible, the target audience is recruiters.”
What feature of BeKnown is for recruiters exactly?
Really,
Thanks for sharing your opinions, although anonymous. It is OK to have an opinion publicly.
#1. The masses want this? Let’s see a year or 2 from now if the masses “wanted” this.
#2. Slight difference between a social network and games – and connecting professionally.
#3. A centralization of existing attempts to connect with others? Huh? Seriously?
#4. Happy to validate any numbers – most of the networks are open and public. As far as badges, you won’t find me posting “mayorship” updates from Foursquare. I call it like I see it, it’s an opionion, and I doubt the badge concept in professional networking will really matter – especially to the talent most of us try to recruit.
#5. CareerXRoads study – employee referrals and networking are typically successful. An app within facebook won’t change that.
#6. What feature is for Recruiters? Time will show whether or not this was built for Recruiters.
Completely agree with the post!
BeKnown is an example of yet another late entrant in the online professional networking space. LinkedIn was a pioneer outside of Facebook and BranchOut is the #1 professional network on Facebook, launching in July 2010, and now serving well over a million users.
Rather than offering a new or innovative way to help job seekers and recruiters, Monster copied BranchOut’s app, from the overall concept down to endorsements and badges. Copying features is easy, but building a robust community that truly helps job seekers and recruiters is difficult. BranchOut is the only successful solution on Facebook, which is why over 50,000 new people join BranchOut everyday.
As always, we are happy to share more information on BranchOut, our network, and products that help companies source top talent. You can always learn more and sign up at http://www.branchout.com.
Best,
The BranchOut team
[...] piece of critical analysis I have seen this early in the ‘game’ is from Jason Buss at TalentHQ. By the way, the comment left on his post left me with a funny feeling, kind of like when I [...]
Jason,
I always appreciate your sanity in the world of crazy recruiting bells and whistles! Thanks for the heads up on this app.
It’s really early in the customer adoption cycle for social recruitment and only the absolute beginnings for the service providers in this space. BranchOut for example had less than 100k users in January 2011.
Monsters launch is probably rushed from their point of view. The job recommendations it created for me are here: http://bit.ly/kIOpyK. The rush was probably due to the pressure to do something fast in the space and square up to BranchOut early on.
It’s going to be very hard to beat LinkedIn in the professional networking space now. But there will be a lot of white space that smaller players exploit and possibly grow large feeding off.
Interesting post. I already received an email from Monster talking about companies will soon have online access to pages to help showcase their brand and extend their job posting reach. Like this wasn’t built for recruiters…If I only had a dollar for every new thing Monster came out with!
My reservations about apps such as BranchOut and BeKnown stem from the presumption on the part of employers that employees want to share their personal networks with their employers.
With a lot research coming out recently that indicates less employee engagement than before (Manpower, Towers Watson), many employees may not want to share their networks because the employees are using those networks to find another job. It becomes awkward if, the day after I message you asking if you can get me into your employer, you get a message via my FB account soliciting your talents for my employer.
And, yes, I know such referrals are voluntary, but here’s the other awkward moment. Suppose my employer e-mails me and asks me to share my network for recruiting purposes. If I am not ready to share, my reluctance– however innocent– could be taken as a sign that I am about to leave. That, in my mind, increases the likelihood that I will appear on the next “list” of those to be laid off. What to do? It really amounts to an implicit form of blackmail.
Great post, Jason, and thanks for your analysis.
[...] Jason Buss offers a great deal of insight about why to restrain your enthusiasm on the topic. [...]
@Anonymous
#2 “There is a privacy hurdle perception here.”
Agreed. But that is the case with every FB app. Hasn’t appeared to stop 100+ MM from Farmville, Cityville, MafiaWars, ect.
There is a difference, I keep my Facebook life away from my LinkedIn life. Facebook is for my friends and family, and I can pick and choose which of my personal information is linked out there in Facebook land.
HOWEVER, with an app that kinda of requires you to list A LOT MORE about myself for it to work the best ( I mean if you are looking for a job, you aren’t going to list a bunch of CONFIDENTIAL this or CONFIDENTIAL that, you gotta be open) It would be a completely different ballpark than what type of plants I may like in Farmville
Great post regardless of what side of the topic you fall on. Companies like Monster and others do a great job of marketing to the recruiting community who are often ready to try anything even though thy have not yet mastered the tools they already have. Adding more clutter may prove to be BeKnown’s downfall, yet on the other hand the concept is quite good – aka BranchOut.
At least you pose some interesting concerns that every recruiter should look in to.
@branchout: i’d be defensive too if my business didn’t own any semblance of a competitive advantage in a soon to be crowded space. must be worrisome that anyone can basically just copy your app and provide basically the exact same experience. 1,2,3…feature war! not good. and you know the only thing worse than that? saying that the key differentiator between your two apps is that branchout ‘truly helps jobseekers’, because everyone knows the jury’s definitely still out on that one.
i give you guys credit though – you moved first in this space with a good idea, spammed people’s walls to grow quickly, and cashed in with a big investment. and good thing you raised all that money too – you’re going to need all of it. good luck.
Jason,
Great points all the way around! I like monter.com and use it, but it seems everyone is jumping on the Facebook Apps game and it’s just another social network password to keep up with. I have a black book of passwords and social networks and just do not have time to check on them every day. Work has to be factored in there somewhere, right? But what really ticks me is this: In two years when we as recruiters apply for positions, are we going to evaluated by yet another social network that we need to have connections in the thousands to even score an interview? That is what it’s coming to. All my interviews in the past two years have asked the question: How many connections do you have on LinkedIn? How many followers on Twitter? Etc.
Just how many social networks or apps of networks are we going to be required to join? How many do we really need?????
[...] You probably haven’t heard about it yet (it just launched), but it’s big news in the human resources and recruiting space. Writers are enthralled with another new shiny object in the social recruiting space, called BeKnown. It’s almost like building networks, brands, and referrals online or within a social network is a new concept. While doing some research, I came across aninteresting post on this topic – and was reading through the comments. Naturally, I started thinking about BeKnown…Read the article here. [...]
[...] now integrating social media components into it. From Salesforce.com buying Radian6 to Monster.com launching a Facebook application to establish itself as the social network for job seekers. Social media integration is, if not old [...]
Great post! In my opinion, Facebook should not become involved in professional networking. I think sites like LinkedIn are more appropriate and much more professional. Facebook already has such negative connotations associated with employers that I do not think it’s appropriate for an application to part of it. Check out TNS Employee Insights new blog. We have a new post on Facebook specifically: http://blog.tnsemployeeinsights.com/
Jason et al,
Great topic and conversation!
What a quandry.
Certainly there are many benefits to these online tools, however, praising them is not as interesting to this conversation as discussing valid concerns and gaps, not just from the recruiting side, but from other perspectives.
On ‘the dark side’ of online tools in general, the providers of social networks and apps benefit from rising numbers of users in many ways, one of which is the access to, viewing and packaging of collective and personal data that we have seen play out on a global scale (e.g. providing what we believe to be private data to governments and agents that may have ominous intent). This raises privacy and Civil Rights concerns. How would this concern play out in the Facebook social recruiting tool nationally? Globally?
From a technical standpoint, disengaging from online tools such as these may be increasingly difficult. Though not a social recruiting tool, here is an example of how system providers are beginning to approach user numbers. I use googlevoice (free calls nationally, low cost globally) and upgraded my account to connect with mobile phone messaging. But there are issues such as a lack of audible or on screen notification that a message is waiting and very poor voice to text transcribing. I’d like to go back to just the basic calling service, however, Google does not provide a method to cancel the account upgrade or to turn off the message system. Google even restricts the selection of what can be complained about in limited drop downs. Reading the provided complaint blog and FAQ, there is a great deal of frustration expressed (it reads like a passion play as people express incredible levels of frustration with trying to disengage!) but Google respondents don’t seem to understand the concerns and are non-responsive. Well, they respond, but as indicated in the blog, not to the concerns. Basically, the early adapters appear to be an experiment for Google and this may occur with their other new releases. The benefit is a locked in show of number of users, which they may tout to grow the business. As these large system providers grap for numbers of users, we may begin to see a trend in releasing new programs in other venues in like manner as well. Will that be the same with Facebook’s new social recruitment tool? You can check in, but can’t check out? So far, haven’t seen any comments from a professional recruiter who has beta-tested or otherwise used the tool. I’ll keep reading, but it would be interesting to hear from both the recruiter and a Facebook user perspective about actual use and disengaging from the social recruiting tool.
Along those lines is a concern about trying to remove or supress personal information or incorrect data once it is in any online venue. This includes age and financial data that could be used unlawfully, e.g. age discrimination, identity theft, etc. Short of costly and time consuming legal action, an individual has very little recourse for removing incorrect data especially when other tools pick up and spread that data. How will Facebook help individuals control such built out, auto populating or otherwise gathered data in and beyond the recruiting tool?
Will Facebook keep an ‘open door’ to hear and respond meaningfully to critical concerns, expecially from early adapter recruiting professionals?
[...] Jason Buss: BeWare of BeKnown from Monster.com – on Facebook [...]
[...] – Beknown: Launched in June of this year, Monster.com launched BeKnown on Facebook – and many experts called this a game changer. AppData shows the app having a consistent [...]