Donít be a ëTwití over Recruitment!

Recession-hit employers are turning to social networking sites as a cost-effective way to find new staff. Professional recruitment consultant David Mains, director of Enigma People Solutions, believes that those restricting their candidate search to the Internet could be making an expensive mistakeÖ

An award-winning hi-tech recruitment consultancy has warned recession-hit employers against turning to online networking sites as a means of slashing recruitment costs.

David Mains, director of Enigma People Solutions, a specialist recruitment consultancy for the IT sector, believes that the explosive growth in the popularity of sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter has ìdazzledî the business world.

Mains said: ìOver the past 5 years, the growth in popularity of online networking has been staggering. The business world has been dazzled by these growth numbers and gone crazy for social networking without taking the time to really understand it.

ìGiven the hype surrounding the subject, you could be forgiven for thinking that social networking sites might offer a cost-effective way to find new employees – but youíd be wrong.î

Enigmaís co-founder Ben Hanley argues that the best any single online job board or social networking site can offer you is access to a limited pool of candidates. Those outside that network are lost to you.

ìThe true ëgolden candidateí may not use any job board or online network – personal referral may be the only recruitment technique he or she values. A restricted pool of candidates also increases the temptation to make a ìsquare peg for a round holeî appointment, where the person hired doesnít have the full range of skills required,î said Hanley.

However, warns David Mains, the biggest danger in exclusively using online networks to source candidates is the lack of a quality filter in the applications you then receive: ìThe social networking revolution is a relatively new phenomenon and is still very open to abuse. Taken at face value, thereís virtually no way to know whether the information posted in a candidateís online profile is true or not. This information requires validation – and this, in turn, requires the help of a professional recruitment consultant.î