Why Employers Need to Embrace Social Networking

I recently read a note posted to a recruiting discussion list saying, in part, that candidates who have time to be active on social networking sites aren’t working and aren’t of interest to him. I couldn’t disagree with the author more on this point.
I suspect that the author was thinking about the typical Baby Boomer or Gen X candidate when he was writing his post. But 95 percent (that’s the actual number) of college students and recent graduates are active users of Facebook. As these candidates progress through their careers, they will continue to be active users of social networking sites because those sites are as much a part of their lives as is TV for Gen X’ers. Even the busiest of Gen X’ers watches TV and the same holds true for Gen Y’ers: even the busiest of them uses social networking sites.

People, we can think that sites like LinkedIn and Facebook aren’t making a difference or aren’t important to the candidates that we serve and therefore us or we can understand that we have reached a tipping point in how this new generation interacts with each other. This isn’t about play anymore than using the telephone is about play. This is about their basic connections with each other.
They don’t email each other or even instant message each other nearly as much as they did even a year ago. Now if you want to connect with a friend, you’re going to log into Facebook and email or instant message through Facebook. The reasons are numerous, but one is that Facebook emails are hardly ever spams as they’re easily traceable and take a bit of effort to send. Gen Y has figured out how deal with email overload, even if us “oldies” haven’t and maybe never will.
Either embrace this new and often better way of communicating or confine yourself to only serving a dwindling number of Boomers and X’ers.