Social Media Headhunter

I'm reading through RecruitingBlogs, and yet another uninformed yahoo says social media is worthless for recruiters. In this case, David Ryan writes

If I need to find a pediatric nurse in Dallas, social media cannot do this. Facebook, titter etc....totally useless. I cannot understamd how is is that there is so much koolaid going around. No hiring manager or recruiter is going troll facebook or twitter looking for a pediatric nurse in Dallas. So silly.

David - try a basic search string like site:twitter.com "pediatric nurse" + "dallas"

http://twitter.com/susantpreston - pediatric nurse
http://twitter.com/NINTINK - pediatric nurse

How about a pediatric trauma specialist?

http://twitter.com/smedic185

You now have three names to check in with, follow, monitor, look for referrals (for those who don't put pediatric nurse in their profile, or may live in a suburb of Dallas). If you want to get fancy, you can use more advanced boolean terms and bring up names and companies and compare those to your database or find contact info. Other recruiters are doing this.

Look, a recruiter of pediatric nurses! - http://twitter.com/NurseJobSearch

You could also check MySpace, where people list their profiles and oh by the way is heavy with health care practitioners. Got a Stopwatch?

http://www.myspace.com/nurseypoo5

There's one! Took .33 seconds.

Look folks - if you don't know how to use social media to source names - the fault is entirely your own. That you can't find people doesn't mean we can't. It is a sourcing and messaging tool for recruiters, and the best ones are learning.

Insert Blatant Product Pitch for Twitter Recruiting and MySpace recruiting ..ed)

It took me longer to write this than it did to find those names. Imagine what I could do with the hour you spent trolling through the job boards.