Social networking services can help you build a database of potential employees and your business's brand at the same time.
Social networks have multiplied in recent years as leading tools for finding and connecting with likeminded individuals. And though the "social" in social networks seems to speak more to making new friends, these networks are equally important to businesses, which can leverage them to find new employees. The use of social networking tools for business purposes is simply called business social networking, and it's a process by which you can search and communicate with people who have similar interests and similar goals as you and your business.
Many of today's social networking services have job boards or an ability to "push" a job description out to a subset of an online community. At the very least, you can join as a member and search keywords to find people who are 1) interested in your company's product or service and 2) may be interested in a new career opportunity with your type of firm.
Using these tools, you can build a prospect database for future employees while doing some brand building for your business. The primary function of these services is to help you find people interested in the things you're interested in. In the case of your business, you'll search for people interested in the types of products/services you produce or even the type of company you run.
Most of these networks are initially free, but in some cases, more robust features will require a fee. When registered, you can jump in to type keywords that will help you identify people with the skills you seek, or company names and job titles that you're interested in connecting with. (For example, you can even type in your competitor's company name to reveal a list of its employees who are part of the social network you're using.)
If you have an applicant tracking system (ATS) at your business, you can download names and contact information to help build your prospect database. (This also can be done in a resident email client, such as Outlook.) And if your ATS has the capability, you can produce e-mail campaigns every few months to those network members who have opted to hear from you. Most ATS systems have e-mail campaign capabilities, and allow you to send a personalized "newsy" e-mail to each person in your database. Send a "Here's what's happening at Our Company this month" type of newsletter or cut to the chase and send a description of a critical job opening in your marketing department to those social network members with "marketing" as a keyword noted in their descriptions.
There are many social networking services out there. Here are several that are particularly useful for businesspeople.
LinkedIn allows you to search online members' employment histories and find out if they are open to new job opportunities or just wanting new business. The object is to build a network of contacts who are one, two, three, four degrees away from you, etc. Membership is free, but you can pay a fee to upgrade and contact members directly without going through the contact "layers" or "degrees" online.
ZeroDegrees is another online subscriber community that offers candidates a platform to profile themselves and offers employers a keyword search capability into those profiles. Users also can use their network to find new business partnerships. Their angle is to connect you with the 10,000 people who may be associated with your first 100 connections, so that you experience first-person (or "zero degrees separation") relationships. Membership is free.
Orkut (owned by Google) is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends. They provide an online meeting place where people can socialize, make new acquaintances, and find others who share their interests. Membership is free.
Weblog search engine Feedster is a rapidly growing Internet search engine and advertising network that provides information to consumers and large Internet websites in need of targeted media. Feedster provides a fresh index across over 20 million feeds several times per hour, adding millions of new documents daily. Keyword searching on this site will lead you to authors of articles or weblogs about similar products or services to yours. Hence, they could become candidates for you.
Ryze charges $9.95 a month for a gold membership that gives users advanced search capabilities and allows them to set up groups that are focused on industries or geographic areas.
Dodgeball.com, which was purchased last year by Google, lets users "check-in" their locations at, say, a bar, club, restaurant, or other local gathering spot, then transmits that information as a text message to the mobile phones of selected other Dodgeball.com users in the area. The goal is to spark in-person connections among friends, acquaintances and friends-of-friends. It aims to connect mobile users when they're on the move and away from their PCs. College- and graduate-level candidates can be found by joining Dodgeball and participating in the chatting.
OthersOnline.com offers the user a toolbar from which they can check to see who else is reading or interested in the topic or website the user is currently surfing. It also provides a dropdown, which allows users to access instant messenger (IM) or e-mail details of other individuals including a link to their MySpace profile or other social website. What this means is that every time you search Google, you see the people who relate to those same keywords, plus their Web pages, and you can connect with them instantly by IM or e-mail.
MySpace is a place where you can create a personal profile about yourself using a unique username and password. You can then share it with a private community of your choice or with the general public. You also can view others' profiles, job postings, movie news, games, horoscopes, etc. Recently MySpace added IM capability, so users can instantly message each other from within MySpace.
There are many other social networking services you can try out. Grow your own network of future employees this way, and establish an employment brand along the way.