Nabbing that perfect hire reflects well on your employees. For sure, an ambassador affect kicks in as employees tout your organization as top-notch to work for.

You’ve spent a lot of time pouring over the resumes for a critical job opening at your company. Some fit well, others are the proverbial square-peg-in-a-round-hole applicant.

Time to ramp up the recruiting process.

Approval comes from above to initiate a spiff to company employees for referring apt candidates.

Granted, relying on employee referrals is a great starting point: like-minded people can reduce the unknown factors of the new hire immensely.

However, an article in the Canadian HR Reporter, Problems with Employee Referrals, puts forward a few pluses-and-minuses in “using the workforce” to search for a candidate.

THE GOOD …

… existing employees are unlikely to recommend someone they wouldn’t personally vouch for.

… candidates who aren’t necessarily applying to every online job posting available.

Nabbing that perfect hire reflects well on your employees. For sure, an ambassador affect kicks in as employees tout your organization as top-notch to work for.

THE BAD …

… organizations…can become “inbred” with employees who are too much alike.

… Some people feel employee referral programs are more helpful to employees’ friends and relatives than the organization.

SOLUTIONS …

Set a policy regarding the referral bonuses that says the new hire must stay put for a given period of time before payouts are made.

Also, it only makes sense to give some feedback to your employees if some of their referrals aren’t meeting your requirements.

Oh, and in keeping with full transparency, make sure you tell a referral that your employees are being paid a bonus for rounding up candidates.

In the end, it’s probably best not to fire up an employee-referral system as your only recruitment method. On that note, be sure to check out our web-based recruiting software; it’s by over 2900 companies in more than 60 countries.

College students who spend hours a day on Facebook might not be wasting their time, several studies suggest — they might even find jobs through social networking.

That’s because savvy employers, according to new report, are increasingly recruiting through social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.

The report, published in the Daily Pennsylvanian —  the student newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School — cites one study that predicts the number of recruiters using Twitter alone will quadruple this year.

Meantime, applicants are doing the same. LinkedIn reports that students and recent college graduates are the site’s fastest-growing user demographic.

The Daily Pennsylvanian article quotes Shannon Kelly, an associate director of Wharton’s Career Services program, who notes that social networking sites give employers immediate and personal access to job-seekers.

And that can give companies a leg up on their competitors.

“More and more companies are using social media platforms to showcase business culture … it’s no different from hiring a public relations company,” Kelly tells the paper.

Wharton junior Jacob Schulman wound up with two unsolicited job offers via Twitter.

“I wasn’t proactively searching for jobs,” he says in the Daily Pennsylvanian article. “I was just following companies that I liked.”

Seems like a serendipitous outcome — Schulman gets an offer from a company he’s genuinely interested in, and the company has a candidate who’s already proven he’s serious.

Human Resources professionals at most companies are always faced with the challenging task of finding just the right candidates for any open position and that task is even more difficult in today’s economic environment.

Human Resources professionals at most companies are always faced with the challenging task of finding just the right candidates for any open position and that task is even more difficult in today’s economic environment.

High unenployment has dramactically increased the number of job applicants for many firms and created a larger pool of possible candidates on targeted recruiting searches.

Many larger companies aleady employ recruiting software to help them sort, categorize and evaluate potential recruits. That software has been too expensive for small and mid-sized companies. Until now. Smaller companies can now get the same HR recruiting, tracking and organizing packages through web-based services for a fraction of the cost.

The advantages are obvious. If smaller companies have the same tools as the big companies, they can take advantage of the larger pool of talent that is currently seeking work. By being able to access and assess more potential employees, the smaller company has a much better chance of finding the right person to fill any vacancy.

Using web-based employment recrutiing software, enables smaller companies to post jobs, accept applications, evaluate and sort candidates and more.

The Internet has become the go-to source for job seekers. With web-based recruiting software, it will soon be the primary source for job recruiters.