I didn’t realize that Mashabe was analyzing the seeming exact opposite related to Job Seekers via the post – How Job Seekers are Using Social Media to Get Real Results. I like that title and equally enjoyed the post. The rather amazing part was the comments made within the post; real experiences of Job Seekers who found jobs via Social Media, of course bringing into focus the companies they were interviewed, or are now working for.

It is nice to see, not that we don’t know that these sort of results already exists. Of course, from these employers perspectives, they must have a very good understanding of Social Media Recruiting strategies (what to say, do and how to go about it). And some of the comments from those Job Seekers demonstrated that they did enjoy the direct engagements with the employers and the hiring process; potentially more than if they had used traditional recruiting formats.

One of the comments highlighted how they viewed the website of the future employee and viewed videos of the team and how they work. Yes, corporate videos work too, as they likely throw your company in a different light. And the truth is, you don’t have to break your marketing budget to get a decent video created and uploaded on your corporate website.

And if you want to be a bit more creative, then have a look at what Bob Hazlett did to get a job. He went a step further, and bough cheap social ads on Facebook. Although this was not a perfectly original idea (a chap has done this before to land a Microsoft gig), it is refreshing to hear that this could work for anyone. You just have to take the risk. Read Rob’s comment on Mashable below:

I got the attention of 2 companies, who would have never even considered me because I didn’t live in their city, with a simple ad. I went to Facebook, created the ad which targeted directly to folks that worked at these particular companies and asked for a contact in HR.

The ads read something like “I want to work at <insert company> – Hi, my name is XX, I’m a <digital marketer, social media, web strategist, programmer, designer, etc>. I’d love to work at <insert company>, can you help me out?

I set a small budget of about $5/day and sent the ads to my online resume located at http://onehalfamazing.com/resume. I had 2 interviews within a couple of days and spent a total of $12 to land both of them.

Maybe soon, we will see more success stories gushing out from the mouth of Job Seekers. And moreso, maybe some more companies will start talking about Real Results from Social Recruiting.

Are companies getting useful results from Twitter in sourcing and placing candidates? By all means.

While the trends and cultural openness in the United States will likely assist us to see more public reports of successes with Twitter (with key statistical evidences), it might take a few years before UK companies begin to talk about how this tool is adding value to their sourcing needs.

The argument made by some Social Recruiting specialists in the UK, is that companies here tend to be more secretive about what is working for them, so they don’t share that information in case their competition are watching. Valid reasoning? Hmm.

Last summer, I wrote about how LinkedIn save Microsoft Europe over 60K of agencie fees and also the case of a US Cellular’s recruiter, who used LinkedIn more in 2009, after the company’s hiring budget was slashed.

Anyway, most recently TweetMyJobs (touted as the the largest Twitter job board in the world) announced that InterContinental Hotels Group filled positions—from a Finance Manager to a Bar Server—around the world via Twitter.

What this implies is the width of the positions, from a Senior Finance Role to an actual Hospitality position. And also noteworthy is they placed these people in different parts of the world, likely making the attraction and hiring process seemless. The news continues:

In January 2010, the company posted more than 1,000 open positions via TweetMyJOBS and received more than 18,000 highly-targeted views from job seekers looking in specific job categories and geographies for both corporate and hotel positions.

These are some interesting figures and I am certain more companies will start publishing data like this in the next few months – likely from the US.

Twitter is pushing over 50 Million Tweets Each day, with Millions of people currently logged in and engaging, as I publish this post.

First off, quite enjoyed the piece by Chris Muktar, founder at Wikijob.co.uk on Digital Recruiting, where he explores innovations and how companies adapt (or not) to the new ideas around and about media and in this case online recruitment / social media.

He argued that in reality, nobody knows anything. You cannot know what will happen next with new ideas; what will surely work.

He tried to present a very honest and pointed evaluation about the general perception related to adopting new trends:

It seems once again that people aren’t sure what to do. Is it Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn we should be advertising on? How effective are these channels? The message again seems to be that nobody really knows anything, and people just want to be seen to be doing something, regardless of whether it works or not.

My guess is that we will be identifying better ways to track and measure the success rates of the use of Social Media in Recruiting.

While the main aim is to attract talent quicker and smarter and usually at lower costs, we should also appreciate the conversational aspects – an area that will continue to promote and enlighten candidates and audience at large, on employer branding and reputation – again at seemingly lesser costs.

According to reports by the Association of Recruitment Consultancies Conference, social media networking is set to partially replace traditional recruitment methods in the near future according to a recent meeting of recruitment agencies and end clients,

At the event, Stephanie Lee, Sourcing Specialist for European Staffing for Intel Corp UK explained that Intel had a reputation for only employing ‘geeks’ and in order to rectify this image, had developed a ‘social media vision’.

Recruiters also learnt that the use of social media was spreading to other major organisations such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has a particular image problem at the moment for potential top flight candidates. Mark Bainbridge, Head of Recruitment Marketing at the bank, explained that it planned a forthcoming social media ‘hub’ through which candidates would flow from other social media platforms

It is likely that by the end 0f 2010, more companies will have figured out a way to integrate social media as a sourcing strategy, and we will be able to better track metrics and analytical data.

KODA wants to bring social networking and job recruiting together into one unified service, claiming that it is “more professional than Facebook but more personal than LinkedIn”.

Today, Koda annouced it has raised more funding, an additional $1.5 million injection of private angel funding.

Since launching in mid-2009, KODA’s employer network has grown to more than 450 organizations including Fortune 500 companies. KODA currently has thousands of young job candidates who have created profiles that allow employers to learn about their unique attributes – the characteristics that typically aren’t revealed until the interview process begins.  In turn, employers can provide a complete picture of their organization, culture and strategic differences on their own profile pages.

KODA’s focus is on Gen Y and young professionals. Some will say that this won’t fly among older candidates. But, we all knew that Facebook was founded for students at Havard University, before it grew to other US Universities, before it expanded globally and now – all persons of ages and location, can access and use Facebook to connect with others.

If KODA can think beyond the US, and probably get a domain name that is more global (not a .us), that could add better value to a potential International adoption.

Will this evolve into a global social media platform for social recruiting? Time will tell.

This is a major increase from January 2010, when Twitter had around 39 million tweets per day. According to Twitter:

Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

How does this affect Social Recruiting? The point is that people are having conversations via Twitter, sending tweets and retweeting. It is becoming more clearer that this will surely be the future of recruiting, and potentially the Job Board of tomorrow.