Facebook 'better than print' for recruiting IT staff

Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites have become the top tool for hiring IT staff, a new survey among recruitment companies reveals.

According to 58 percent of IT recruitment firms polled by the Association of
Technology Staffing Companies, an industry body, such sites are more useful
in finding staff than traditional print advertisements. And 49 percent said
they were now more effective than internet banner advertising.

But seven in 10 recruiters said job boards provided a better quality of candidates,
and two in 10 preferred cold calling. Only 9 percent saw social networking as
providing the most appropriate candidates.

Atsco said that the headhunters were favoring special interest groups on the
sites to find candidates with the right background and knowledge, over the "scatter
gun" approach of finding the right people through print advertising. It
admitted, however, that print and online recruitment advertising would remain
an important way for employers and recruiters to build brand value and target
senior level appointments.

Ann Swain, chief executive at Atsco, said the success of social networking
sites as a recruitment tool was a result of their being interactive, as opposed
to the one-way communication of print advertisements. She said they offered
"a dynamic, two-way dialogue between recruiter and candidate" rather
than "another passive form of advertising."

"Social networking sites make it very easy for recruiters to become trusted
advisers to candidates and genuinely get to know them," she added. "Candidates
often reveal far more about themselves on these sites than they would do on
the phone or in interview."

But the survey also revealed that recruitment firms were risking their valuable
databases online. Only a quarter of staffing companies currently write restrictive
clauses into consultants' contracts, asserting ownership of databases and contact
lists constructed by staff on social networking sites.

As "the lifeblood of the recruitment industry," these databases needed
much more security, Atsco said.

"This is currently an area where contract law is lagging behind social
trends and an area of risk that the recruitment industry needs to pick up on,"
Swain said.