Jeremiah (@jowyang) tweets that social media hires are up - and wonders if the economy is picking up.  His regular posts showcasing who is promoted and hired are a boon to the industry, and he's been kind enough to include me on that list. 

Incoming calls and interest from the client side has certainly increased, but the types of positions have a heavy sales focus as of late.  Most calls from from executives who have not been successful finding what they wanted, and are looking for expertise (it helps that I do what they are looking for).

When I first started SocialMediaHeadhunter.com and branded myself as the SMHeadhunter, I wondered about the size of the market.  There's niche recruiting, and then there's tiny crack recruiting - and with social media being, well, social, there's the danger that everyone I would place has a significant presence online. A company can find my candidates easily, so why would they hire me?

The answer is noise.  It's not easy hiring the right person for any job, and even if you know the industry well, we all have significant blindspots.  Even bloggers who have done this going on 10 years don't realize just how big this universe is, and the old adage that you only know who you know is more true now than ever.

In my own town of St Louis, large groups of online folks from Twitter to blogs to Facebook don't realize they're a small subset of a larger group.  There are hundreds of millions of folks online - and understanding how to map out a community and contact the right people is a skillset few have.

So yes, business is on an upswing, but It's hard to draw conclusions to the general economy.  Recruiting is actually harder in a down economy, so we're a poor marker.  And the assumption that social media is a luxury probably contributes to the idea that more social media means a better economy.  It's far more likely that social media hires are a recognition that this tool can cut costs, but only if you have a full-time person.