In CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s first public appearance since Facebook’s IPO on May 18 — with the stock losing roughly half its value, employees selling options, and many questions about the company’s core business model and whether it will be able to leverage its social graph as an advertising vehicle — he made a big push to position the company as a magnet for more talent.

“I think it’s a good time for people to join and it’s a great time to stick around,” he told a packed house at TechCrunch Disrupt as he was interviewed by Mike Arrington.

For a while now, Facebook has been seen as a major recruitment magnet, although there were questions about whether the company would see a mass exodus post-IPO. There have been some key executive departures, and some of Zuckerberg’s comments today may not be about employees leaving in droves, but it does point to how important keeping and recruiting talent remains for the company.

He himself has pledged to hold on to his shares in Facebook for a minimum of a year and is encouraging his employees to do the same (although there will be another big release of options coming soon).

In the meantime, he says Facebook is pushing products that boost morale and make it more of a magnet for existing Facebookers and would-be hires. The centerpiece of this is not so much code for the basic platform, but apps that run on it.

“Launching apps drives morale inside and outside the company,” he said. “People come and say, ‘I want to work at this place because you built that.’”

He says that everyone in the company is responsible for their own lines of code — including himself.

Zuckerberg is also trying to give a “Building a mission and building a business goes hand in hand,” he said. “The primary thing that we are doing is the mission.”

Check out our full coverage of Mark Zuckerberg’s chat at Disrupt SF below.

Zuckerberg Says “On Mobile We Are Going To Make A Lot More Money Than On Desktop”

Zuckerberg: Mobile Users More Likely To Be Daily Active Users

Zuckerberg on Facebook’s IPO: Stock Performance Has Been “Disappointing”

Mark Zuckerberg: Our Biggest Mistake Was Betting Too Much On HTML5

Zuckerberg On Facebook Hiring: It’s A Good Time To Join And A Great Time To Stick Around

Mark Zuckerberg: A Facebook Phone Just Doesn’t Make Any Sense

Zuckerberg Talk Drives Facebook Stock Up 4.6% In After Hours Trading

Zuckerberg: Spotify, Airbnb, Nike+ And Runkeeper Are Killing It

Facebook’s Zuckerberg On Being Under The Radar: I Would Rather Be Underestimated

Zuckerberg Wrote All 2178 Words Of Facebook’s S-1 Founder Letter On His Phone

The Best Sound Bites From Mark Zuckerberg’s First Interview Post-IPO [VIDEO]

Zuckerberg On Instagram (Now 100M Users Strong): “No Agenda” Except Supporting App’s Growth

Zuckerberg Shows He’s The Right Man For The Job, Now That Job Needs Doing

Crunchbase

• FACEBOOK

Company: Facebook

Website: facebook.com

Launch Date: February 1, 2004

IPO: NASDAQ:FB

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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