“A massive amount of hiring” in the future will come from social referrals, according to social media expert Bill Boorman.

“Social referral is about reach,” and very different from recommendation referrals, where candidates are recommended by third parties, explains Boorman.
 
“Nearly everybody you are connected with - has an average of 130 Facebook friends, 220 LinkedIn connections and about 20% cross over - so a reach of 300 connections on average,” says Boorman.
 
Boorman said that research indicated that 70% of those connections were potential employees. These were made up of current colleagues, former colleagues, competitors, people you went to university with or school with, or people who live locally
 
Boorman predicted that the “big game changer and probably the biggest challenge to agency recruiters from social media would come “once the social referral stuff starts working properly”.
 
“You could be connected to someone in accounts, and a job could come up in accounts and technology enables us to plug into that network. It will take a while to get it working properly, but being able to plug into social reach in the right way - this is going to be something where a massive amount of hiring is going to come from.”

To hear more from recruitment’s social media guerilla, see the new issue of Recruiter, out tomorrow.