Candidates Are Finding New Tools to Research Companies, It’s Time For Recruiters to Adjust with the Times

The SkillStorm Blogging Contest!

Submission #2

Subject: Recruiting

There is no doubt that there is a saturated market of candidates right now. As recruiters, we are put to the test of finding the best candidate everyday. In this economy there are more candidates than ever and we have to find other tools to find the best.

Candidates are finding different ways to contact companies. It’s time we find different ways to contact candidates. In today’s world we all have a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and whatever social network we haven’t thought of yet. That’s where the major question comes into play; do these sites work?

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has said the site has over 200 million subscribers. That is 200 million potential employees, hiring managers or leads. One in four people with internet access visited Facebook in the month of February this year.

Think about how much time you spend on Facebook a day. Imagine if you didn’t work and sat at home without a job or were at work and didn’t like your job. What would you do? Maybe spend an hour or six on Facebook? I think so. So, we have to find a way to start utilizing these numbers. Twitter is one of the most popular websites and 35 million users are on LinkedIn. CareerBuilder has 32 million resumes posted on its job boards. Facebook and LinkedIn alone have more users on board than CareerBuilder.

Many will say that the people on Facebook and LinkedIn aren’t looking for new opportunities, but what have we learned? The people who are working can be our best asset because either they themselves are looking for better opportunities or they can put us in touch with people who are looking.

Companies have already moved towards marketing on these social networks. As recruiters, we have to come to embrace this new way of recruiting. It may take a little extra work on our end, but think about all your friends on Facebook or Twitter. They have friends and their friends have friends; so that tough-to-fill .Net Developer job could reach more people than the amount of resumes you’ll see in one day. Wouldn’t that extra work be justified with the new people you put to work? It seems social networks are changing the way of business and we have to adjust with the times.

Contributing Author: Luke Bosso

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