Internet users are leveraging social media for a wide variety of purposes. From complaining about being bumped off a Southwest flight to providing real-time natural disaster reporting, the social web is increasingly changing the way we communicate with each other online. This shift has important implications for the way companies and candidates will connect during job recruiting.

Over the next several years, I believe the social web will become increasingly useful for companies and candidates to learn more about each other through direct recruiting conversations. The ultimate benefit of these discussions are that better employment matches can be made based on the criteria most important to each company and individual. LinkedIn, the professional networking site, has given us an excellent foundation upon which the future of online recruiting will be built. By encouraging members to fill out data-rich standardized profiles, candidates can learn about the background of employees at companies of interest. These online profiles not only help candidates narrow down their list of target companies based on their individual employment criteria but also enable a comparison between their skills and positions of interest. In a similar manner, employers can review profiles to find prospective candidates with qualifications matching their current and future recruiting needs. For both groups, there is an ability to gather information for the purpose of establishing mutual fit before an employment application is ever completed.

Despite the foundational benefits of online profiles, the lack of currently available social functionality creates some challenges for recruiting. Anyone with a Facebook account has discovered the benefits of being able to instantly chat with a friend. As a prospective candidate, it would be equally valuable to chat with an employee at a company of interest to ask some key questions. Recognizing this need, many companies already send a group of employees to recruiting events to provide interested candidates with a variety of perspectives. Cost considerations and employee availability make it almost impossible to get a representative group of employees to speak to each and every candidate question. By using the power of the web to virtualize these conversations, companies can connect prospective candidates with employees of similar backgrounds in real-time recruiting discussions.

In order to truly gain these social advantages, there needs to be an important shift in the way networks are managed. Both LinkedIn and Facebook place the individual at the center of the network. As a company focused on recruiting talent, the goal is to recruit the best available talent. Similarly, individuals are focused on finding the best available opportunity. Unless company employees are already linked to prospective candidates, the ability to engage in mutual discovery for the purposes of establishing fit is suboptimal. This dynamic suggest that in order for recruiting solutions to be effective, the company will have to be at the center of the network and individuals will focus on connecting with a company as opposed to individuals at the company.

-Omowale Casselle

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay, a social recruiting community that connects college students and corporations.