Social Networking-the next step in recruitment evolution

Irish recruitment agencies today are going through an evolutionary period where the next logical choice step in sourcing and contacting candidates is being made. The choice of whether to use job boards or social network sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook  or Twitter is becoming distinctly clearer.

Recently a number of Irish recruitment agencies have chosen to dispense with some of the job boards as a result of poor service provision and an inflexiblity which has led to its own demise and begin to invest further time an effort in the current phenomenon of social network sites which have the added advantage of providing an exponentially larger base of contacts and reference sources.

Job boards which previously had been seen as a vital supplier and contributor to the recruitment industry are growing in perception as largely inflexible and in some case had set themselves up in direct competition to the very companies which they had depended on their very existance for.

Social networks such as LinkedIn in particular are seen more and more as the next logical evolutionary step and are proving their worth as an accessable and flexible approach to both contacting global talent and a useful tool in both business development

It remains to be seen whether the job boards can rise to meet this challenge or whether they will become just another casualty of the downturn.

On their most recent form their prospects are not good. They have alienated some of the most influential recruitment firms in the country and have altered their perception amongst their client base as being not only less competitive and less responsive but in some case as being irrelevent.

The future as it stands so far for job boards is not bright and they may ultimately be regarded as being as redundant a tool of recruitment as the fax or telex.