Careerbuilder Goes Social; We’re Dubious

Careerbuilder is diving into the social media sphere with the launch of BrightFuse.com, a “talent community” where jobseekers can showcase their skills. Kinda like LinkedIn, except, well, run by Careerbuilder. Take that as a plus or a minus depending on how you feel about Careerbuilder.

Even Careerbuilder’s own employees haven’t really gotten into the thing, as far as we can tell. Here’s Michael Erwin, senior manager of corporate communications at Careerbuilder.com.

We did a search and found that a random sample of other CB.com employee profiles are even less detailed (Erwin, for example, actually bothered to upload a photo) and many are “friends only.”

Do you really need another networking site? Apparently not even CareerBuilder thinks so.

One thing BrightFuse seems to offer, unlike linkedin, is that it’s free to search by company. (LinkedIn users need to subscribe to view the full names of people who work for a certain company.) This feature may make the service more attractive to recruiters—if anyone gets on the site and uses the dang thing.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.