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Software and online services help recruiters mine their contacts for candidates and referrals.
For all of the technological gains of the past decade, relatively old-fashioned tools such as networking and referrals still drive the process of identifying and hiring qualified candidates.
But now some online services seek to take networking and personal connections from the HR toolbox and marry them to technology. "Social networking technology" refers to software and webbased services that enable users to leverage their personal relationships for networking, hiring, employee referrals and references.
HR professionals are trying products such as Visible Path, which measures the strength of relationships by analyzing company e-mail accounts, and Linkedln Jobs, an online job board that allows users to visualize how many "degrees of separation" lie between them and potential job candidates.
But social networking technology has attracted a few critics. Privacy advocates are alarmed by the prospect of software that churns through employees' e-mail. And skeptics remind HR professionals who have caught the social networking technology bug that while these services may make generating names of potential hires a snap, transforming those names into candidates remains the real challenge.
Making Contact
The Internet has opened up a whole new way of networking for job candidates. Online sites have sprung up to help connect people and jobs-putting technology behind the old concept of "it's not what you know but who you know."
Linkedln.com is one of the more popular professional online networking sites currently in use. (For a list of other sites, see "Getting Connected" on page 96.) New users register on the site and supply their name and location, then identify the kind of work they do and disclose whether they're a full-time employee or a consultant. There is no cost to join, and Linkedln offers privacy protection, including a pledge never to sell your information to a third party and never to share your contact information with another user, unless both of you choose to contact one another.
By joining the Linkedln community, you've essentially added your name to an enormous electronic Rolodex. And once you're in, you can search the extended network of contacts to find out who your contacts know. Linkedln allows users to search for contacts by ZIP code, job, even...