Expensive, important investments typically send people to the internet. House hunters turn to websites and social media platforms to help them find the right home in the right neighborhood at the right price. Car buyers, too, take to the internet to find just the right vehicle. So if digital tools are vital for consumers making major purchases, it’s no wonder that recruiters turn to search engines to find the right talent. 
Recruiting products company Jobvite released its latest Recruiter Nation Survey in September, which reports that 92 percent of recruiters use social media to find top candidates. The trick for recruiters is getting past what seems like an intimidating search for an elusive needle in a massive haystack. They need a practical and precise way to turn up promising candidates. Kelly Dingee, director of strategic recruiting at Staffing Advisors, offers some suggestions.
Dingee recently conducted a Business and Legal Resources webinar titled “Digital Profiles—The New Resume: How to Search Online Profiles for Recruitment Success” (HR Laws can listen at http://www.hrlaws.com/audio/YM6051) in which she offered some tips and explained why going digital is important even as employers and jobseekers cling to more old-fashioned tools such as traditional resumes.
Resumes not going away
Dingee says the vast majority of human resources and recruiting professionals would answer an emphatic no if asked whether the traditional resume is dead. “It’s something that is normal in our world,” she says, but “it is awful to do … we all struggle with it.” Jobseekers with many years of experience find it especially difficult to keep a resume updated.
So even though traditional resumes present downsides for jobseekers—who have to worry about formatting and getting everything ordered correctly—and for recruiters—who have to review piles of resumes—they’re not going away. The old-fashioned resume is “really something that’s still required when everybody applies for a position,” Dingee says. “Very few companies don’t require it.”
But since the late 1990s, digital profiles have been growing in importance. Almost all job candidates—even the passive ones—have claimed their space on the internet, and businesses have grown up to help employers turn an internet candidate search into a successful hire. “So in some respects, profiles are the new online, digital resume,” Dingee says.
LinkedIn remains the go-to network for both recruiters and jobseekers. Dingee says the career site is a great place for people to build profiles, showcase examples of their work, and network with other people. It’s not the only choice, though.
Dingee says she frequently goes to about.me, a site that allows people to introduce themselves and show their talents in expansive ways. But recruiters have an ever-increasing array of other sites to consult. She suggests recruiters keep on top of the constantly changing world of useful internet sites by checking Search Engine Journal. She points to a September article listing a number of sites useful to recruiters.
Social networks can be useful
In addition to career-oriented platforms, Dingee says she often turns up possibilities by searching the more social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Those sites can provide a great way to find people with the interests she’s looking for, but they require a recruiter to put on blinders to avoid inappropriate discrimination.
When using those sites, “you’re going to get a more well-rounded picture of people, but you really need to make sure you don’t put on your ‘judgy’ eyes and that you’re really looking at them based on a business standpoint,” Dingee says. Recruiters need to focus on the keywords they’re searching for and take care not to be swayed by the other information that shows up.