SOCIAL NETWORKING AND RECRUITMENT

Definitely a growing and crowded space. Wired News has a decent overview:

It's long been said that who you know is the single most important factor in landing a job. Nowadays, it could also land you a check.

That's the idea behind a new online recruitment service that uses social networks to track down job candidates. Founders are betting that cash payments will inspire people to reach out to their friends' friends and colleagues to find promising applicants for hard-to-fill positions.

"Between close friends, there is a great overlap in network. They know the same people," said Hans Gieskes, founder and CEO of H3.com, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, startup that is launching an online recruiting service incorporating financial rewards at this week's DemoFall conference in Los Angeles. "But if you ask someone who is a new acquaintance, you've gotten into a new network."

H3.com -- which was founded last October and completed a beta test this summer -- is one of several startups turning to online social networks as recruiting instruments. Other services, like Jobster, LinkedIn and Accolo, are employing tools such as e-mail hiring campaigns, software for tracking prospective employees, and systems to measure how connected an applicant is to an employer, in an effort to modernize recruiting.

"The truth is that most people prefer to hire someone who is known by someone whose opinion they value and trust," said Konstantin Guericke, director of marketing for LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals that publishes job listings. "But there was never before a systematic way to identify inside connections to the hiring manager." (full article)