Recruiters must adapt to the relentless challenge posed by social media or die, last week’s meeting of the Recruitment Society heard.

In a stark message, Jon Hull, senior HR manager, of FTSE-250 company RS Components, said the use of web tools such as Google, Linked-In and Twitter was transforming the recruitment landscape.

“The days of the generalist recruiter are nearly over as candidates have so many ways of finding jobs. Unless you differentiate yourself from the competition, you don’t stand a chance.

“Those who use the technology to understand the market and customer needs, and add value will survive and delight the customer.” Hull said that he could find 50 senior candidates on Linked-In in 30 seconds, and could contact them within a few hours.

Luke Mckend, industry head, local/careers at Google UK, Google UK, said the opportunities for recruiters to take advantage of digital technology were “massive”.

Mckend said the key was to “follow the user” as this would give recruiters valuable insights into the market. He pointed to a five-fold growth in recruitment related queries using Google between January 2005 and January 2009. But, he added, it was also important for recruiters to know where these queries were coming from. Using a free tool — such as Google Insight for Search — could do this.

For example, there were 1.1m users searching for public sector jobs on Google per month and 100,000 in finance. And reflecting how badly it had been hit by the recession, of the UK cities, Birmingham has seen the highest growth in job-related queries through Google. Similarly, queries from mobiles were increasing.

“Traffic to social networking sites had also increased as people tried to make connections to secure their future,” added Mckend.

Stephen Fowler, UK sales manager for Arithon and author of recruitment blog Recruitment Views, said that blogs could form an important
marketing tool for recruitment agencies, although at the moment he claims only seven did so. Blogs help recruiters stand out from the competition, attract candidates and help build a reputation in the industry, he said.