The internet has been buzzing lately about a new social networking tool aimed towards the job-seeking population: Taleo TalentExchange. I decided to sign up for the site and poke around a bit to scope it out for the readers.
The signup process itself is pretty straightforward. You just have to answer some of the most basic info questions every site asks for and you're good to go. Give them your e-mail, assign a password, verify, verify, and you're good to go. Then of course comes the part where you have to assign yourself a 'prop'.
Props are the lifeblood of TalentExchange, as they are what set it apart from other popular job sites. To start you can give yourself one prop, which is a basic description of one characteristic of yourself. From then on you can only give props to others, and to do so requires you to go through Facebook and tag your friends with props in hopes they will join the site and do likewise for you.
Honestly, this whole props thing seems more advantageous for the website than it is for their users. The props are supposed to build your reputation in the community, thus making it easier to find jobs, but I have a hard time believing that companies are going to put much stock in these mutually-beneficial blurbs. For one, I can tell my friends what kind of prop they should give me, and for two, why would a company care about what a bunch of unemployed people think about another unemployed person?
Besides the props, you can create something called a UniversalProfile (UP), which is the basic information of your resume in a standardized format. I downloaded mine to Word and was disappointed that they never gave me the option to format the resume in several different templates. It came in an overwhelmingly bland style, and would certainly not be considered a resume-creator tool. It did come with a QR code (those black and white maze squares people scan with their smart phones), but I haven't been informed of any potential uses for it.
Now I figured that the UP would at least come in useful for easily applying to jobs in their search engine, which is powered by SimplyHired, but this was not the case. Every time I tried to apply to a job (shhh don't tell my editor), I was required to go to the company's website and fill a new application there, thus completely voiding the UP of any value I may have had for it. It's possible that some companies do accept the UP's, but I tried a handful and didn't find any.
All-in-all, I think this is an interesting attempt at engaging people in their job-searching endeavors, but I don't think it works very well. The props are nothing more than promotion for the company on Facebook, I can't even connect to people through LinkedIn or other sites, and the UP isn't packing much oomph. I wouldn't bother signing up for this just yet, but if they can figure out some of the deficiencies I mentioned, this could become a very useful tool in the future.
