betterGrind: A challenge to LinkedIn? Possibly not...

ˈIt’s not what you but who you knowˈ is a phrase that often pops up in connection with people who manage to land a job that to the innocent bystander seems way beyond them. Well this site positively encourages you to use your friends and any influence they may have to get you a job where they work but if you don’t have a Facebook account you can’t, at least for the moment, play along. It might be simplifying it a little I suppose. After all if you wanted a job and needed to ask your friends to put in a good word for you wouldn’t you just post your requirement on Facebook anyway and cut out the middle man? Of course you would but BetterGrind encourages you to spread your job-search network wider in the hope that you may get that dream job via a friend of a friend of a friend. And of course you need to do it with them.

The FAQ’s include the answer that a Facebook account is needed because it’s the service they use to "find out where your friends work". Again, I kind of know where my friends work and so I’m not sure why I’d need to sign up to this one to find out.

For companies and recruiters there is also something on this one for them to consider but it does require a profile page where job seekers can look at job streams. It claims to offer a service that will attract the ˈpassiveˈ job seeker. That is the one who is quite happy in their current position but would jump at the chance for the right move. These people, quite rightly, don’t like getting spammed and accordingly this site will solve the issue. How, I’m not quite sure, especially in the case of recruitment agencies. Once they have a sniff of someone’s skillset all manner of "exciting opportunities" magically appear.

I might be being a little hard on a website that is after all only looking to help get people a job. All I would say is that it’s a good job it’s free as there is some stiff competition out there not least from Facebook itself but LinkedIn as well.

Conclusion

A recruitment site that uses social networks is a recruitment site (I think), answers on a postcard please.