[Today's guest post is from Gunjan Pandya, a writer of Search Engine City. He is also a guest writer at Search Engine journal.]

We use social networking sites to keep in touch with our friends, business groups, and family. You may be surprised to know that recruiters may leverage Facebook to find new employees for their companies. In the world of the glorious Internet there are so many social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Friendster, Hi5 and many more. But here are some tips on how to find employees for your company through Facebook.

Creating Your Profile

First things first, you have to create your profile on Facebook and fill it up with things about yourself and your company. It’s also a good idea to update it frequently.

Creating a Business Page/Career Page

To get new employees, it would be helpful to make a business/career page. Be sure to include all the necessary details about your business and always keep your list of openings up and current sor potential employees can see. Click here to create your business pages on Facebook.

Joining a Network

Before you join a network on Facebook you have to think about where you want your employees to come from. I.e. If you want employees from London, it would be smart to join the London network. To join a network click on Account>>Network.

Searching Within a Network:

After you join networks, you have to think about which kind of people you want to find, like SEO, Web Designer, or Web Developer etc. If you want to find SEO in London then enter the keyword “SEO” in the search box; you’ll probably get results of the SEOs in the London area.

Friend Requests and Messaging

Now, it’s time to start adding people as your friend. After searching people from a specific area, you have to send them a friend request with a message. In messages you should mention why you want to add him as a friend, what your company is doing and job requirements, so he/she can understand.

Setting Up an Interview

After getting a reply from those people who are interested in your job, then you have to setup an interview for those candidates. Creating a list of those candidates may also be helpful until you decide on the end finalization of the candidate you chose.

These ways can help you use Facebook for recruiting employees. Big and small companies alike can find employees they need on Facebook.

Straight From the Recruiter’s Mouth

We also had the opportunity to ask a few recruiters to hear their experiences with using Facebook:

Heather Gardner, a Silicon Valley recruiter, comments:

“It’s one of the best forms of true web 2.0 communication you can have with your connections. I have found quite a few folks on Facebook that are NOT on LinkedIn or anywhere else online - Facebook’s user base is still larger than LinkedIn! Facebook offers me ways to be of value to the folks I connect with by offering links to useful information like web links, photo’s, video’s, etc. The IM feature is also a FAST form of communicating with those in my network - it’s far less sterile and web 1.0 - which I find LinkedIn to be.

Facebook is a good branding tool for me. I want to be the recruiter with a personality that builds relationships over time. As much as I want to get to know my “passive” candidates, I also want them to know me right back.. In the long run, people who I form relationships with are more apt to trust me therefore more readily pass candidate referrals, business referrals or approach me before embarking on a new career hunt. I want to be their long term career partner. The only way to achieve this is by offering my network value right back. Facebook definitely helps with that.

Facebook allows me to use third party applications such as the Twitter application. One Tweet that I posted on Twitter was feed into my Facebook profile. This resulted with a Facebook IM producing an order for a Admin Assistant at a large Silicon Valley employer.”

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Coming from a police family, I have always had enormous respect for law enforcement and the job they do, and after having just seen the Facebook application for the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in Great Britain, I am even more impressed.

This just goes to prove that Facebook CAN be useful. Take away all the pokes, games, fortune cookies and other time-wasting applications and you can actually come away with something useful in the end.
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