Social Networking -Buzzword in Recruitment

Social Networking is the Internet's latest darling. And throughout the last year it has been moving quickly into the professional arena of recruiting and staffing. The loudest of these entrants is LinkedIn and Jobster. Jobster was first and loudest but LinkedIn and others are making noise and you can bet there will be many more coming soon, including existing recruitment software and services powerhouses adding this functionality to their offerings.

Networking enables you to:-find high quality prospects who (a) have not applied for one of your openings, (b) are not familiar with your organization and/or (c) may not even be looking for another opportunity;-pre-qualify them or make an initial evaluation of their potential contribution to and fit with your organization; and-pre-sell them or begin a private conversation (away from the meeting or online forum) where you endeavor to convince them that it’s in their best interest to consider joining your organization

While social networking is one of the current mainstream media buzzwords, in the recruitment and staffing space it's all about helping employers to find and better match candidates to open job positions - and build a talent pool. Whether social networking is the answer is yet to be seen.