It's no surprise that companies use social media to research job candidates. A recent survey by Microsoft confirms this, showing that 70% of recruiters and hiring managers use social media to review online information about potential hires.
Fortune Magazine, in their article How LinkedIn Will Fire Up Your Career, called social media the future of recruiting.
SocializedHR, a Silicon Valley start-up currently in private beta, is hoping to make that future happen. Their first product is the Social Identity Report. Targeted for use by HR departments, recruiters and hiring managers, it is a "social forensics" tool that automates the process of tracking down public, online information on job candidates.
The Social Identity Report scans Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, other social media sites and the broader web to create a synthesized profile of a job candidate's online identity.
By automating the process, SocializedHR replaces time-consuming manual searches and provides a thorough view of job seekers' social identities.
Social media tools like SocializedHR can't guarantee a great hire. But having a consistent and automated method for uncovering the social identities of job candidates will help HR departments and hiring managers make better hiring decisions.
For job seekers, the emergence of social forensic tools like SocializedHR highlights the growing importance of personal branding and online information. With companies increasingly turning to the web to mine for prospective job candidates, it is important to have a compelling and relevant online social identity.