By now you would have heard Facebook has launched a new jobs app, in partnership with 5 organizations. As you would guess, the experts and news organizations are stating LinkedIn should be scared as they have been “put on notice”.

After receiving some feedback and taking a look at the app, there are some substantial obstacles to overcome before LinkedIn ever has to worry. In fact, they are probably cheering at how bad this is.

The examples:

1. Search Results.  Boasting 1.7 million jobs posted, one would expect some jobs to show up in the search results. I conducted a basic search for a recruiter job in Minneapolis.  3 of the 5 tabs show no postings, while the other 2 show jobs that aren’t even close to a recruiter in Minneapolis.
2. The tabs.  Why would you force job seekers to maneuver between tabs and not integrate all of the job postings into one list of results?
3. Search relevance.  As mentioned the search results were lacking, but the relevance was worse. Ex. a document shredder in California was one of the top listings for the Recruiter in Minneapolis search. What’s even more interesting is some of the sites (tabs) show zero listings but if you go directly to their job board (not through the app) the listings are endless – and accurate relative to the search terms.
4. Apps within Apps. If you see a job you’re interested in you are forced to leave the facebook jobs app and either view that job on one of the web sites listed, or view it through the app which the listing came from – forcing job seekers to install and use yet another app.
5. Networking. You’d expect better from Facebook and industry leaders. How ironic is it you cannot even view your connections and how to get introduced information within the posting? I take that back, you can, if you leave the site and install one of the apps.

What’s laughable is the context of some of the articles and the headlines which show the success and the new 1.7 million job listings on Facebook – as if recruiters have flocked to the app to post their jobs in the past 24 hours.  The reality is every single job listed on the app was already posted somewhere else – and was searchable by job seekers.

Forget what I think, here is some feedback aggregated through other postings about the app:

• Tried a search and got the spinning wheel of death for over 5 minutes. What a piece of crap.
• A Database Error Occurred, Unable to connect to your database server using the provided settings, Filename: core/Loader.php, Line Number: 232
• Cool idea, poor execution. The first apply now button I hit was a broken link.
• Error message: Spark Notes Version –> I’m staying with LinkedIn
• Another band-aid on a bleeding wound.
• The application doesn’t do anything more than what other job boards already do. So what?

My recommendation for job seekers is to continue using top aggregator sites like Indeed.com where nearly all postings already are, and networking sites like LinkedIn which allow you to apply directly to a company without creating a profile in a database, or through another app.