Well, the future is now when it comes to this topic. The social network sites are going to have a dramatic impact on finding strong sales candidates. First, this may be slightly off topic, but MarketingProfs.com offers up this article – Facebook: Changing Advertising Forever:
At the November 5 launch of Facebook’s new advertising platform, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, presented his vision for the future of advertising:
“Once every hundred years media changes. The last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.”
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As Zuckerberg said later in his speech, “People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”
Now change the topic from advertising to sourcing candidates and the quote is still prescient. Now combine that thought with Steven’s post over at CollegeRecruiter.com:
But 95 percent (that’s the actual number) of college students and recent graduates are active users of Facebook. As these candidates progress through their careers, they will continue to be active users of social networking sites because those sites are as much a part of their lives as is TV for Gen X’ers. Even the busiest of Gen X’ers watches TV and the same holds true for Gen Y’ers: even the busiest of them uses social networking sites.
I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of this sourcing channel for all future hiring activities. I suspect the social networking channel will become the primary tool for finding candidates in the very near future.