HEADHUNTERS are increasingly relying on social networking sites to recruit prospective employees in the Information Technology (IT) industry, as a means to address the current talent crunch.
Easy solution

"When it's difficult to find the right candidates we rely on social networking sites. It's extensively used to recruit people for positions of specialised skills. This method is successful as we have recruited many candidates in this way," said N Harsha, HR manager with a reputed company.

Just key in

Orkut, LinkedIn, Facebook and Ryze are some of the websites that are regularly frequented by companies to hunt for the right candidates.

LinkedIn alone has more than 20,0000 registered recruiters who post their requirements in the website using keywords to specify desired skill sets.

If keywords posted by the recruiters match the words in the profile of a member, the company will post their requirements to prospective candidates.

Ongoing process

Recruiters include HR people from companies as well as independent recruiters. Community websites are also used for this.

"It's a continuous process. We pay a certain amount to one of the social sites we prefer and keep tracking skilled professionals. We can reach lakhs of prospective employees," said M Madhu, who runs a company that recruits software professionals for various IT companies.

"About 30 per cent of recruitments to key positions are done through social websites," he said.

"I was in search of a suitable job for two years. I got a break with an offer through Orkut. I got it after three rounds of interviews," said B Aiyanna, techie, Delta Airways.