Facebook is considering launching a job board. How you react to this information in a Forbes' blog post may well impact your success in your job search some day soon:

Facebook Jobs Could Kill LinkedIn's Momentum

So, will Facebook eat LinkedIn's lunch re job search and recruitment? Never underestimate the power of the 900M-active-monthly-users Gorilla!

Can I tell you what the percentage of the time my tech exec clients say they steer away from Facebook? Approaching 99%.

Time to play catch-up ball! Already Facebook has job apps such as Glass Door and JobVite. With a new job board/aggregator, it will be a force to be reckoned with. Don't think recruiters haven't noticed the huge database that is Facebook. They have, and companies are already using Facebook to build a recruiting and employment-brand presence.

LI is still the #1 source with 89% of companies having hired people using LI. Only 26% have hired via Facebook. But those numbers may be about to change.

So get ahead of the curve. Establish a public profile on Facebook where you can post mostly professional activity. Or, if you have a personal profile that adds to your brand rather than subtracts from your hireability, begin to insert professional updates.

Being on Facebook doesn't have to be ugly! And it may well get you a job one of these days.

Has anybody told you...

You MUST have a 1-page resume. Not true! The Career Directors International survey of recruiters, HR managers, and career coaches/resume writers shows that most people care more about the quality of the material than the length of the resume.

You MUST not go over two pages. NO, see reason above.

You MUST have a QR code on your resume. NO, so far there is no indication that this practice is catching on in a big way; if you put one on your resume, only some will click through.

A video resume is the way to go. NO, with 25% saying they would not view one and 13% saying they would, don't go out of your way to make one.

You don't need to be on social media. NO, Only 27% of people said they don't or rarely use social media to check out a candidate before deciding to interview them.

So, what should job seekers do in a positive direction?

• Get on Facebook!
• Get on Twitter!
• Create a branded 100% complete LinkedIn Profile! Add apps!
• Write a resume of 2-3 pages that has excellent content.
• Visually present information so that the resume can be scanned in 1-2 minutes.
• Extend your online identity footprint; make your content on other sites support your personal and career brand as expressed on your resume.
• Take advantage of online opportunities for visuals: LinkedIn's slide app, Pinterest, youtube, etc.

Get in gear for the new job search with these suggestions!

Many things may happen before a recruiter or hiring authority ever sees your resume. These are some: s/he Googles your name, searches for you on LinkedIn, checks Facebook to see what kind of person you are, checks Twitter for evidence of thought leadership.

Then, if you pass those screens, s/he will typically, if hiring for a large company, see an Applicant Tracking System-generated form that has automatically sorted your resume into standard categories (summary, work, experience, education). If at that point you have passed muster, s/he may actually look at your nicely formatted Word resume or the ASCII/Text you submitted.

There are ways to optimize your online identity and resume submissions to improve your chances of being considered for a job. We've talked about some of them earlier in this blog. But what, fundamentally, do you have to do at every stage of your career attract the interest of employers? Show your work results.

Seth Godin has a gift for asking profound questions in a simple way and with few words, an anomoly even in the world of short-form blogs. One of his questions has to do with the answer to "Can I see your body of work?"

He says, "Few people are interested in your resume anymore. Plenty are interested in what you've done." So, how and where can you tell them what you've done, if your resume isn't the first thing they look at?

1. Your own website. Grab a URL from GoDaddy that is your name or your name + your professional identity:  JimJames.com or, if that's been taken, JimJames_Agile.com. Build out a simple 5-page blogsite using Typepad or Blogspot. Home page: your headshot and your branded value proposition. A second page with a beautifully formatted branded executive resume. A third page with selected leadership initiatives, project highlights, or success stories. A fourth with Testimonials about your work. A fifth with your blog. (Yes, the more we know about current competitive job markets, the more blogging - or active tweeting - can help you convey your thought leadership.) And PUT YOUR CONTACT INFO ON EVERY PAGE.

2. Put your branded executive resume with Challenge-Action-Results success stories after every position up on Google docs. Then publish it to the Web making it searchable by search engines. Google docs also lets you share Presentations and Spreadsheets to enrich your presentation of your brand.

3. Build out your LinkedIn Profile. Make it 100% complete and then use some of the apps that allow you to showcase further the value you bring to the table. PowerPoint Presentations, videos, your Twitter feed, reading list etc.

Doing these three things will give you a good foundation to build on as you progress in your career. Keep these items current. You can do this by keeping a record of your projects or inititives with their results and periodically uploading it.

Your identity on the Web should be on-brand and on display on as many professional properties as possible. Godin, with his signature cut-to-the-chase communications, says that if you don't have achievements to convey, you perhaps need a different job.

So, celebrate the work that you and your teams do. Let people know about it. Go public. Ensure that the recruiter or hiring manager going through the steps of an online search on your name pre-qualifies you before ever seeing your resume in hard copy!

You'd be surprised, but only about one out of 10 of the technology executive clients I speak to have a built-out online identity - that is, they show up in more places than just LinkedIn. The time is past when a progressing executive can afford to be invisible on the Web. In fact, a built-out Web presence can serve as a critical competitive advantage, whether you are in a job search mode or not. The one thing to remember is:

EVERYONE GOOGLES EVERYONE!

This is even more true of recruiters and hiring authorities. In fact, the executive resume may well be one of the last pieces of marketing content they see, following the LinkedIn profile, FaceBook, Twitter, and whatever else they turn up in a Google search of your name.

This fact is actually good when you consider that you are able to present yourself and your career brand in full-color 3-D. Let's look at the sought-after candidate of the future:

• He doesn't just have a 100% complete LinkedIn profile, he takes advantage of everything LI can do. He adds a PowerPoint presentation to convey subject matter expertise or achievement. His Twitter feed on LI shows that he is in touch with what's going on in the industry and function. A video he embeds in his profile gives viewers a chance to see him in action and hear his voice. His Groups activity demonstrates once again that he is a player. He provides insightful Answers.
• She has a Twitter profile and a significant following of at least hundreds of interested followers. Her tweets are a record of her professional interests, expertise, and resource sharing.
• She skillfully blends professional and personal on her Facebook page, ensures that Timeline has a clean record of her comments, and puts up a profile on Monster's BeKnown.
• He uses Slideshare or Sliderocket to store PowerPoint presentations.
• He is on YouTube giving talks on his areas of subject matter expertise.
• She may have tasteful photos on Flickr that show more of her life, including travels, family, etc.
• He has profiles up on Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, and other similar sites.
• He has an about.me page with URLs to properties where he can be found online.
• She has her own personal website or blogsite where you can see her resume, testimonials, projects, leadership highlights, etc.
• She blogs regularly on professional issues and comments on other people's blogs.

Perhaps a Google of Bing search will also turn up entries from press releases, published materials, speaking engagements, etc.

It simply will no longer be enough to just have a resume if you are embarked on a job search or seeking advancement within your own organization. So begin now to build out your online identity so that a search will find on-brand content you want people to see. If you do so at the dawn of 2012, you will have an edge on the competition.