The unpleasant truth is recruitment is perceived by most as a job and not a career. With formal training in the field almost unheard of, people simply embark on it because they couldn’t make it elsewhere. But that perception, for sure, is changing slowly and steadily. With recruitment firms mushrooming, proliferating and then gradually overtaking the biggies in the domain, many are now warming up to the idea of making a career out of it.

Recruitment agents mostly begin as trainee and are usually provided with on-the-job training and mentoring in the first few months. Like sales, the job is target driven. One’s progress depends mostly on attaining and surpassing targets that have been set. The set hierarchy sees one advance to the position of a senior consultant and then to that of a manager. Remember, recruitment is an indispensable part of every business operation.

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Needlehunt, a free beta product, is a new offering in the domain of candidate sourcing. Accessed through Facebook login id and password, for verification of identity, the site helps compare “the overall and work-related sentiments of their publicly available posts to determine if this person would be more open to a new opportunity.”

Once the keywords are entered in the search button clicked upon, it throws up a list of people matching the criteria. It extracts all publicly available information from all their profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Meetup, LinkedIn and even YouTube and WordPress for your perusal. From present to past positions, to qualifications and skills, it presents all the information in a consolidated and succinct manner. Besides exact matches, it also lists near matches. For instance, if you are looking for Copy Editors, it would also bring in profiles of Copy Writers, Editors and Sub Editors as well.

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Now that looking up candidate profiles on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, has become an established and accepted practice, how one crafts one’s image on these platforms has come to hold a lot of significance.

While LinkedIn pretty much was created with an aim to aid professionals connect with colleagues and industry people, Facebook was meant to connect with friends, acquaintances and family and Twitter to voice ones succinct opinions. But the last two have, along with LinkedIn, emerged as humungous pool of talent with time. An active recruiter would not just look at ones LinkedIn profile but his Facebook and Twitter profiles too. In the scenario, users on the lookout for the jobs should be extra judicious while using these sites.

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