Simply Hired, the largest job search engine, today launched the first personalised job search experience by integrating with Facebook. Job seekers can now utilise their Facebook profile and friends on SimplyHired.co.uk to access customised job content to land a job.

Using this new capability, users who login with Facebook are able to discover jobs based on their current or previous work titles, location, interests and their friends’ companies on SimplyHired.co.uk. From the search results page, job seekers will be able to browse friends’ companies and search for job openings. This changes job search from a passive to an active process by suggesting relevant jobs and helping users tap into insider knowledge about a job from their friends.

Beta testing of this feature has already doubled user engagement on SimplyHired.com, the U.S. version of the site, for users who opt-in. This release includes additional features that allow users to see a company directory listing where all their friends work and jobs at companies they like. Users can also see companies where they have the highest number of friends and other relevant job-related information. These features are available in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and India.

“Simply Hired is showing what’s possible when you make it easy to find jobs through friends,” said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook Developer Network. “Personal relationships and professional networking have always been the best ways to find a new job. By integrating with Facebook, Simply Hired is bringing this to life online and helping users tap into their social connections to personalise the job search process.”

Traditionally, half of all hiring has been done via referrals. According to a recent poll conducted on SimplyHired.co.uk, 73% of respondents currently rank Facebook as the social media site they use most often, with 43% of respondents devoting at least half of the time they spend searching for a job on social media sites such as Facebook. A pervasive social graph now enables the referral process to come online.

“Personalisation is the next generation of job search,” said Simply Hired CEO Gautam Godhwani. “Today, Simply Hired takes another significant step toward making job search simple by combining the largest social graph with the largest job database. Finally, your friends can help you find a job online.”

With UK unemployment at 2.51 million, its highest level since 1994, more people than ever are looking for jobs. As social sites have now eclipsed email in online usage, they will increasingly become an essential tool for job search.

About Simply Hired

With more than seven million job listings worldwide, Simply Hired (www.SimplyHired.co.uk) is the world’s largest job search engine. The company powers jobs on over 10,000 network partner sites, and operates global sites in 19 countries and ten languages on five continents. Simply Hired has raised $22.3 million in funding from venture and individual investors including Foundation Capital, IDG Ventures and News Corporation. The company is privately held and is based in Mountain View, California.

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