List of online communities to maximize recruitment potential

Posted on | November 18, 2009 | View Comments

Often, finding the right candidates or customers require recruitment teams to go far and wide. For some customers or circumstances teams have to tap into communities which already exist e.g. Institute of Engineers, women in Space Research, CIOs in the insurance industry. Traditionally this could be an expensive, time intensive process and would require to make several telephone calls. But thanks to the Internet online communities exist and can simplify the process.

Obviously in these circumstance using LinkedIn alone isn’t enough. To find the right candidate recruiters need to find candidates who aren’t necessarily looking for opportunities but would consider a tempting offer. Here is a list of communities which you can tap into:

Professionals

• ASmallWorld: It’s an invite only community of high value people from consultants to models and entrepreneurs. It has them all!
• CourvoisierTheFuture500: Includes a group of high value people, awarded by Courvoisier and The Observer for their work in creative, science, business etc. Many of the people involved are consultants and consider new opportunities.
• Doostang is similar to LinkedIn but a good source for candidates from exclusive top schools and recently graduated candidates.
• Xing and Viadeo provides access to professionals mainly in the UK and in Europe.
• AffinityCircles is social networking for member-based online communities, such as alumni associations mainly in the US.
• Naymz aims to simplify the process of managing and building an online professional network.

Connecting with people abroad

• Bebo is a UK based site, with younger audience now around the globe, including the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India and the Netherlands.
• Hi5 is a social network in over 30 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
• MiGente is social network geared toward the Hispanic community mainly in the U.S.
• Orkut is a Google owned property, absolutely fantastic to get in touch with individuals and organisations in Indian and Brazil.
• Mixi is a Japanese-language site with over 10 million users with a lion share in Japan.
• Kaixin is a fast-growing social network in China that attracts college students and white-collar workers.
• Tianya: Another fantastic community for the Chinese market. The website includes user blogs, classifieds, photo hosting, news, sports news, and university information, as well as a club that enables politicians to campaign, answer questions from constituents, and gather grassroots support.
• CyWorld is another community with has large numbers of users in Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan.

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