Facebook Inc. (FB) is planning to launch its own job board later this summer, said people familiar with the matter. The board will aggregate the job postings of third-party providers, making them available for search by Facebook users.

While these knowledgeable people said the new effort doesn't yet signal that Facebook is making a full-blown entry into the job-recruiting market, it does represent more of a threat to other professional networking sites such as LinkedIn (LNKD), should the social-networking giant get more serious about the project.

At least three job-posting companies that currently leverage Facebook's platform will be involved in the new offering, including BranchOut, Jobvite, and Work4 Labs, the people said. Some partners have begun telling their clients about the job board, which could launch as soon as early August. Initially, Facebook doesn't plan to monetize the service, and it's unclear whether the social network aims to do so in the future.

A Facebook spokesman said, "We don't comment on rumor and speculation." Representatives for BranchOut, JobVite and Work4Labs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"It doesn't feel like a big effort that they've worked on for a long time," said one person with knowledge of the new jobs effort. "It feels lightweight." The person speculated that the effort was meant to drive user engagement on the site.

It's also unclear whether Facebook will integrate the postings into its users' news feed, or whether the postings will only exist in a standalone section of the website. Facebook had a third-party developer create the new site, said a person familiar with the matter.

In October, Facebook announced a partnership with the U.S. Labor Department and other partners to provide job-hunting resources. At the time, Facebook said that the "partnership will explore and develop systems where new job postings can be delivered virally through the Facebook site at no charge."

This new effort, which is being seen by some as an extension of this partnership with the Labor Department, could help give Facebook positive exposure in an election year when concerns about unemployment are high, said one person familiar with the matter. "If it takes off, they could devote more resources to it," the person said.

In recent years, the success of sites like LinkedIn, which merge users' personal and professional histories with information about jobs, have put pressure on once-dominant sites like Monster.com. While job seekers once considered sharing information on Facebook to be a liability when finding a job, today a host of companies, including those partnering in the new job board, have popped up promising to better match job seekers and recruiters using profile information from Facebook users.

The global online job-recruitment industry is estimated to be as big as $4.3 billion.

Companies and corporate recruiters already use Facebook to recruit new employees. Several large companies, including Unilever (UN, UNA.AE), Boeing Co.(BA), Dell Inc. (DELL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Walt Disney Co. (DIS), PricewaterhouseCoopers and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) have Facebook career pages--some have as many as 80,000 "Likes." College students who want to get a job at a particular company often choose to "Like" that company's recruitment page.

The job-postings business has been undergoing a restructuring since the successful IPO of LinkedIn. Analysts expect generic job boards to become less attractive to recruiters seeking high quality job candidates.

Two types of job boards expected to gain include those that employ social networking and those that target specific job seekers. On June 30, Dice Holdings Inc. (DHX) agreed to buy FINS.com, a targeted job board with editorial content, from Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newswire and a unit of News Corp. (NWSA, NWS.LN), for an undisclosed sum.

blackboi: Facebook...empowering wicked scammers

blackboi: Facebook...empowering wicked scammers

Maleeq: No thanks! I'd prefer to separate my social, albeit crazy, life separate from my professional life!

Imagine applying for a job where you state that "you are a very serious minded person", and then you have pictures of you drunk as hell or something even crazier on your profile! The employer wouldn't take you seriously. Unless they come up with a means of separating both. A lot can be deduced from stuffs a simple as a "like" or comments on facebook that could tell about a person. These may not go down well with recruiters. Just my 2cents

mukina2:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/BT-CO-20120706-710695-kIyVDAtMUMyTzAtNjIwMDYxWj.html

Maleeq: No thanks! I'd prefer to separate my social, albeit crazy, life separate from my professional life!

Imagine applying for a job where you state that "you are a very serious minded person", and then you have pictures of you drunk as hell or something even crazier on your profile! The employer wouldn't take you seriously. Unless they come up with a means of separating both. A lot can be deduced from stuffs a simple as a "like" or comments on facebook that could tell about a person. These may not go down well with recruiters. Just my 2cents

Maleeq: No thanks! I'd prefer to separate my social, albeit crazy, life separate from my professional life!

Imagine applying for a job where you state that "you are a very serious minded person", and then you have pictures of you drunk as hell or something even crazier on your profile! The employer wouldn't take you seriously. Unless they come up with a means of separating both. A lot can be deduced from stuffs a simple as a "like" or comments on facebook that could tell about a person. These may not go down well with recruiters. Just my 2cents

Paentera:

Any serious business will go to LinkedIn to recruit not Facebook

violent:

And why is this the case? Are people on Linkedn likely to be largely different from those on Facebook? I do have both accounts, and so does many other people i know. What difference does it make that a company reaches out to potential employees through either platforms?

If companies have to pay more to recruit via LinkedIn than Facebook, then it makes more economic sense that they are likely to opt for the latter. Also, LinkedIn is estimated to have roughly 100million users while Facebook is believed to be closing towards the 1billion landmark. It means you are 10 times more likely to make better recruitment choices via Facebook than on LinkedIn.

Maleeq: No thanks! I'd prefer to separate my social, albeit crazy, life separate from my professional life!

Imagine applying for a job where you state that "you are a very serious minded person", and then you have pictures of you drunk as hell or something even crazier on your profile! The employer wouldn't take you seriously. Unless they come up with a means of separating both. A lot can be deduced from stuffs a simple as a "like" or comments on facebook that could tell about a person. These may not go down well with recruiters. Just my 2cents

emmyitodo: i just hope facebook dont want to get ahead of theirselves.[b] Ben Carson [/b]says:- growth for the sake of growth, is the philosophy of a cancerous cell. i advice they thread gently and take their ambition with reasonable stride before they Spiral off tangent. i tell u google plus is waitng for the opportunity to pounce. i will regard it as speculation and wish fb dont crack like the rest.

trigar12:
Ibillion unserious people, facebook is just like a dating site to me. Linkedln have professionals discussing issues that concerns business