David Wilson at Social Media Optimisation points to a very interesting article in the India Times. In this article, HCL Technologies estimate that over the next two years, two thirds of their recruits will come from social media.
We all know that these days recruiters are quite likely to Google recruits … and that this could come up with their dodgy Facebook profile, or the inappropriate comments that they made on a forum. A few companies set up areas in Second Life to help with recruiting; others establish forums and live chat on their own sites.
And job-seekers have been told about how to manage their personal brand online, so that if people want to investigate them, they find finely tuned portfolios rather than raucous college exploits.
But this is new: using the social web to find the recruits in the first place.
Trawling blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook for potential recruits is quite different to using these to investigate potential new hires. Clearly it is limiting the pool of potential recruits to some extent, but if you want recruits who are up to speed with things technological, this may be an interesting source of supply. You may not be aware that Facebook was the 5th most visited URL in the UK, according to Hitwise …
That means there are a lot of people at Facebook. Some of them could be your next wave of recruits.
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye