Had a very interesting conversation with my regional chamber today.  While talking about an initiative to showcase St Louis as a technology hub (we're great for enterprise-size information technology divisions), it occurred to me that social networks should be focused on regional spaces.

All recruiting is local, and while blogs can give a recruiter an advantage in a niche industry and in a city, a regionally-supported social network would take user-group recruiting to a whole new level.

Building networks isn't as easy as joining one, but if you know how to do it, and you are smart about the population you're going after, you could use the hubs as a lure for large companies.

"Hello, Mr. CEO - every metro areas says they have lots of great technology employees, but here in St Louis, we've built a candidate-centric social network for business analysts and project managers.  We have over 1000 people who are connected to each other through this social network, and we can show you how to communicate to this pool of talent for your hiring needs."

The beauty of it is that there aren't many people who can build a network like this in the recruiting space.  Those that can, like Jason Davis, Dennis Smith, Steven Rothberg, and Dave Mendoza, are busy on their own projects.  That leaves just a few of us with the experience and the contacts to make it work (and I know all four).

In St Louis, Charlotte, Kansas City, and Seattle, I already have SEO-enriched domain names to set the networks up.  All you need is the person to manage it and show you how to recruit talent locally.