If Facebook ads are any indicator of the health of the economy then it must be great. For the past 2-3 months I have noticed an increase in the number of job ads. I think the cause might be one or a combination of the following:

• More employers are using Facebook to advertise open positions which could mean the economy is doing better. Yay!
• I switched jobs from a Visual Studio SDET to Bing Mobile SDE back in October. The “developer” label probably draws more employer attention than the “tester” label.
• The Microsoft keyword in my profile certainly helps. It’s like going to a big name school. Society assumes it must be good. In the big scheme of things it’s pretty silly to base potential success off of that attribute alone.

Here are some of the job ads I have seen so far: Various social game sites like and - they advertise using the domain which appears to be their informational recruiting site.

It’s not uncommon for 2 or 3 of these to show up on any given Facebook page. The Marchex ad always catches my eye. Their tag line reads: “Tired of Reorgs.” Which probably catches the attention of most Microsoft employees. I think ads on Facebook are going to start to look more and more like this though. They will continue to get more personal in nature. I know I click on more Facebook ads than Google ads. When something is so relavent it sparks my curiosity. I don’t know that Facebook will take away Google’s AdWord revenue but I think they are in a pretty good position to compete for AdSense revenue. IMDB.com also advertises positions on Facebook. They didn’t take the “reorg” approach but went with the commute. The 520 bridge which connects Seattle to Microsoft can get backed up. Personally, I am not “tired of the bridge” as their ad said since I don’t live in Seattle. Their ad was clever but not clever enough to take my address into account. Finally, the last ad that caught my eye had the tag line: “Stressed At Microsoft?” The ad was for counseling services at . Between the competitor’s job ads and counseling ads a cynic might say Microsoft isn’t the place to work. I wonder what kind of targeted ads I would see if I worked at Google, Amazon, Facebook or Apple? For Amazon I am guessing “Tired of the Pager” would make a pretty catchy tag line. I am sure the others have quirks their competitors use to attract talent but I don’t know enough about those companies to venture a guess.