Social job board, Jibe, officially launches

Jibe taps into your LinkedIn and Facebook network to help you recruit

We all want to make the best hires possible. As a matter of fact in the world of startups, having the right people can be a matter of meeting your goals and creating a product that catapults you to the superstar status your company deserves, or languishing in obscurity with a second rate product. 

A new recruiting site aims to help match you up with the best and brightest. The ones that will fit into your culture well. The ones you can vet with recommendations from your current staff.

Jibe, a social networking based job site based in Manhattan, launched this week, after being in stealth mode since this past spring, when at the time, the company had raised $875,000 from Polaris Ventures and Zelkova Ventures. People can sign up to the site using their Facebook and LinkedIn logins. But be aware that Jibe will access everything - from your profile picture and "any other information" you've shared. 

and On the recruiting end, this social aspect may be of use for companies when it comes to finding references. Basically, it will let you see who, of the people that are in your company, is connected to the candidate.

Jibe will also be making this graph available for universities. So if you want to hire from your alma matter, or a school with a reputation for turning out world class C++ developers, then you will be able to find the right candidates with no trouble at all.

Sadly, the service is not truly free on either site. As an employer, you may post a job for free. But in order to see the candidates, you have to pay a fee of $15 per applicant. The company that pays the most fees gets put on a leaderboard. This leaderboard is supposedly a motivator for companies to pay the fees, though I don't see it. 

A job seeker has to pay $5 for 500 credits, which equates to 10 job applications. Or if a job seeker is actively connecting with others, they win enough points to bypass this payment. For connecting his or her Twitter account, a person gets 200 points, for LinkedIn, another 200 points is earned.

As you can see, Jibe is betting on this double-payment system by charging both sides. 

But is this the best recruiting tool for your organization?

Yes, making an applicant expend credits could ensure that only serious applicants apply for positions. But paying to see candidates, obviously puts a limit on your ability to see more of them, especailly if you're on a budget. When you have to pay to see every candidate's profile, you could easily spend hundreds of dollars, without seeing the full details - which may mean, you spend $15 just to find out the candidate is hardly even worth putting a call out to.  The site also seems to filter by location in its searches, so you will have a hard time finding a candidate who is willing to relocate.

Other job sites, like Elance, let employers see a ton of information, like portfolios of prior work, skillsets, etc., before a employer has to pay a fee.  Other sites, like Jobster and JobFox, both work on a flat fee plan. Other options include MyWorkster, for people hoping to make use of their alumni connections and, of course, like LinkedIn's Job Seeker Premium Account, which charges a monthly fee instead of a the per application model.