I would like to tell you my story in few lines.It really feels strange that I got my job through a social networking website. None is ready to buy my story, but it is as true as the sun rising in the east. Everyone is amazed that I landed up with such a good job when others really have to slog it out scanning sites, looking for opportunities and mailing resumes. Things just don’t end here and have to keep waiting for the response. Luckily I joined the famous Indian student networking portal – www.collegespeaks.com, where I would regularly post comments in the ”Quotes” section and that helped me grab my first job offer even before I finished my college.

After the dot com boom a lot of jobsites came to the fore which could supplement the traditional hiring structure. Referrals also started gaining popularity. But still the job market was not completely untapped.Now comes the social networking way of finding candidates which many professinals and HR recruitment firms consider better than many job sites. So the questions- do you Orkut, or are you linked with LinkedIn, the most popular professional networking website, or is your face among the millions faces in Facebook, or have you had your space booked in MySpace, aptly fall in line in the series of questions that I have put up so far.

Social networking websites have suddenly caught the fancy of job seekers and the recruiters alike. The stats are not very much in favor of jobsites as they still account for 15-20% of lateral recruits in industries (Figures are in Indian context which may vary from country to country). Social networking Websites offer special avenues and special challenges simultaneously to both the entities- the seeker and the provider.

Mine is not the only isolated case to be sourced through a social networking site. If you make a search you will find a good number of people getting plum offers through various social networking sites. And a small fraction is of people like me who would never care to post resumes due to lethargy. Let’s see what job market is all about in the present day.

The job market consists of two types of persons. The proactive ones will search through different job sites emailing their resumes. Another category is of those whose resumes are not present on the job sites meaning a good number of quality man power is latent. But by engaging social network sites, the chances are very high that those latent potentials will be lucidly available. One can get in touch with persons who are not actively into the job market as per the organization’s needs and offer the proposal.

Social networking sites (SNS) also play an important role when you are trying to set up a new venture in a foreign land or an alien country. Sites like LinkedIn can definitely help you in finding the right candidate who fits the bill. These sites are basically for professional or business networking. So when you compare them with jobsites they have a definite edge on the number of profiles on a SNS over the number of CVs stored in the database of jobsites. Another important factor why companies are looking at shifting from jobsites to networking sites can be attributed to the good number of youth accessing the latter.

Communities, forums or user groups have a particular type of user base which consists of people having penchant for particular things. Take for example: Orkut has communities like Indian Journalists. If a media organization wants to appoint a journalist in India, he can visit that particular community and take a look at the profiles as per its requirements. Social networking site thus present a better idea about the candidate as people are more open in social networking to express their feelings.

The major factor that goes against SNS is credibility. Some argue that SNS are more credible than jobsites as the profile is in the public domain with all the references like friend lists, fans or testimonials. However, on the yardstick of credibility both hold equally and one must check through references in either case.

Apart from the question of credibility, investment- both in terms of time and money also goes against SNS. Generally, job portals return with results quickly as compared to SNS. E-sourcing requires special set of skills to effectively spot the right talent.

The recruiter and the job seeker - these are the two who enter into a new relationship. So the impetus is on both to help each other. The job seeker can use keywords and describe about him or her. And this one is a must- join communities where he/she thinks that prospective recruiters will come, but they according to his interests.

Hiring agencies, organizations should be careful that they get across all the necessary references before they finally decide upon the candidates. We must remember that hiring through social network is still in infancy. Thanks to Web2.0 and other technologies that are really making it happen.

Human resource is unequivocally the major asset of any organization and it involves a lot of things before a candidate is finally handed the offer letter. So it’s imperative that the organizations have to be diligent about the prospect.

The future seems very bright for the social networking sites. But nothing concrete can be said as when. Sites like LinkedIn have their profiles featured in the Google search pages. That is a big advantage for a prospective recruiter or a job seeker as they can specify the search details. Many companies have already started searching profiles in different sites that suits their taste. Experts believe in today's competitive world, it is important to target active as well as passive job seekers.Many other such sites are already are looking at options to make their profiles or user database Google searchable.

The trend of recruiting from social media sites is here to stay and will grow eventually as targeted hiring can take place for free and that too with a background check on all social media sites like LinkedIn and Orkut. Though the person commenting on the prospect can be found to be bias at times, the prospect might be also connected to other networking sites where they have a different set of people to interact with. The reviewer can visit other social media sites to know more about the prospect in question and form a conclusion by synchronizing all comments. Apart from recruiting through job portals, campuses and other mediums; social media sites are going to be one of the coolest ways to recruiting talent. Job portals are here to stay but for how long, we can just speculate.

So what say! Haven’t I given you a valid excuse to keep Orkutting? Happy surfing and start building your network, after all business is all about networking.