Here is an excerpt from an article written by Ryan Kohler for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Failure to use social networking sites when promoting a job might be akin to bypassing a gold mine.

Here’s why.

In a business climate where the unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent, companies are undoubtedly seeing a vast influx of job applicants. With this type of response, it may seem unnecessary to invest extra time and effort into further promoting jobs via social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, with the end game of securing the right employees for the organization, HR leaders would be remiss to discount the power these sites have in connecting them with the types of individuals they’d want to hire. Moreover, when coupled with a system that automatically screens applicants, social networking sites can become a cost-effective method of garnering the right employees without doing a whole lot of work.

Facebook: An HR Leader’s ‘Friend’?

Announced at the SHRM conference earlier in the year, BeKnown — a professional networking Facebook app from Monster.com — is designed to enable managers to use Facebook as a key part of an organization’s recruiting strategy.

But will it be a success or failure as a talent acquisition tool?

Likely the most important aspect of this new app is the ability to create a network of professional contacts, which can be kept separate from the connections among friends and family, which make up most Facebook social networks. According to Monster.com, users will also be able to hunt for jobs and see who in their professional network is connected to a job or a job opportunity.

As a system for corporate recruiters, Monster has extended the concept of “job pages” to let anyone who “claims” a company profile to post jobs to their BeKnown network and then customize the company page to build a corporate brand. Job postings are free to list for first- or second-degree connections, but there’s a fee to expand the posting to reach more job seekers.

Just look at the numbers: Facebook has more than 500 million active users worldwide, and the average user has 130 friends on the site and visits 40 times per month, spending an average of 23 minutes on each visit.

Some common reasons HR professionals cite for leveraging Facebook in their recruiting strategies include:

• The ability to recruit passive job candidates who might not otherwise apply or be contacted by the organization.
• It’s less expensive than other methods of recruiting job candidates.
• To increase employer brand and recognition.
• Can target job candidates with a very specific set of skills.
• To target a specific job level to recruit or contact, such as entry-level, managers, executives, etc.

HR leaders are acquainted with the fact that many of the best hires are employee referrals — a friend of a friend of a friend. These trusted “friend” relationships are the basic structure of social networking sites.

In addition, Facebook puts some of the power in the hands of employees, providing a format for them to share job openings with friends on a mass level. This can be especially beneficial for small to mid-sized companies that don’t have an army of employees to bring in referrals.

The “share” tool enables them to share jobs with select friends or, for wider reach, post job openings on their wall for their entire network to view.

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To read the complete article in which Kohler also discusses LinkedIn and Twitter, please click here.

Ryan Kohler is the CEO of JobMatch LLC, creators of iApplicants.com, which provides application tracking software to more than 1,000 employers across the United States. He can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.