Social Networking: The Easiest Talent Hunt

The many social networks that recruiters have at their disposal to recruit from can vary in the types of talent they target. We all know Linkedin is great for a multitude of roles but what about Facebook, Twitter and the niche networks? Lets take a look.

I’ve heard various things about recruiting on Facebook but several large employers have told me they use it mainly to attract recent grads to entry level positions. Facebook is also good for nurses because it’s the social site where the highest percentage of nurses list their profession. So I think its best used to find entry level, healthcare and blue collar talent, but Facebook is still relatively new for recruiting and it has 1 billion profiles so we’ll see how it unfolds.

Talent Hunt with Social Networking

LinkedIn is good for executives at all levels, sales, marketing, and most professional services. One thing I have heard lately is that some tech talent (the really good ones) are hiding their profiles or removing them completely because they are being hounded by recruiters. I will also note that Linkedin is starting to target more recent grads who have to this point, not been as quick to add themselves as fast as older workers. But that will probably change since having a profile is pretty much a requirement for today’s job search.

Twitter on the other hand lends itself better to professions such as writers, social media experts, consultants, freelancers, marketing, advertising, and techies. Of course you’ll find a lot of recruiters on Twitter should you need to hire them as well!

Google Plus is a bit more of a mystery when it comes to recruiting but there’s no denying it is growing fast. Public profiles on G+ definitely have less professional information than LinkedIn but more than the public profiles on Facebook. To get a sense of who’s on G+ use a site like findpeopleonplus.com.

Pinterest, the fast growing image network, is great if you want to target women since 85% of their audience is female.

Tumblr, the blog network just acquired by Yahoo, is favored by teens. Best to use it to target summer jobs, retail and part-time gigs.

There are plenty of smaller niche social networks as well. Looking for a graphic designer? Behance and Dribbble can help you out. For more techies and programmers try StackOverflow and GitHub. You can even see how well these guys can code via profiles on those networks.

Want more? If you need to target “foodies” try foodspotting.com. Want gamers? Target Battle.net or GamerSN.com. And if you need to find journalists there’s a new site site called Muckrack that has over 10,000 of them.

As the major players like Facebook and Linkedin mature, expect to see more niche sites adding themselves to the recruiting mix. It happened with niche job boards, and it will happen with social networks.

Chris Russell is a veteran of the online recruiting industry. Currently he is the CEO and Founder of CareerCloud.com which helps connect job seekers to employers through social tools and mobile apps.