Network and win a job offer !!

Corporates, HR pros and recruiting officers are visiting Social Networking sites to identify individuals who can be hired.
Those who have good profiles and come across as enterprising are approached informally first - this makes it easier to filter a person before making the whole process too formal.
Most of the recruitment officers were students at Colleges when Orkut, Facebook and Myspace hit the Web, and though they weren't quite sure what to make of the social networking site at first, they flocked to it -- just like millions and millions of their peers.
Today, Orkut, Facebook and social networking pioneer My Space are Internet juggernauts with more than 160 million users and more signing up every day. Which recently got many people thinking, maybe those networks might be more than just a handy way to stay in touch with friends.
"My manager and my supervisor didn't know much about them. But I showed them around the sites and they thought using them could be a great idea," says Sriram V, an employee with HCL. Not surprisingly, they aren't alone.
Locally and nationally, recruiters and employers are increasingly turning to Orkut, Facebook and MySpace to help them find and hire talented professionals.
It's an unexpected use for sites originally launched for strictly social purposes and targeted almost exclusively at young people. But some recruiting officers say the huge memberships at Orkut, MySpace and Facebook give them almost unlimited access to millions of potential employees.
"You really can find candidates out there," he added "It's the new version of cold calling," says G Manohar Reddy, a software engineer with Wipro.
But as the number of recruiters and companies looking at these sites grows, many questions remain unanswered about how content on Orkut, MySpace and Facebook can be used in hiring or firing.
There's no mystery to the appeal of Orkut, MySpace and Facebook to recruiters and other employers. The sites' popularity, and the vast scope of their user base, make them a fast, easy way to find young professionals.
Orkut with over 70 million, MySpace with more than 100 million users, and Facebook with more than 60 million, are the three dominant forces in the world of online social networking, and as their users grow older, the sites figure to become more useful for business.
Facebook, for instance, reports that half of its current users aren't in college and that its fastest-growing demographic is those 25 and older. It also dominates the university scene, with 85 percent market share at four-year colleges.
"These started out as a social networking tool, allowing you to connect with like-minded individuals," said Kulwinder Singh, Head- Global Marketing and Communications.
"But they've become a tool for companies like mine. My guys will go out there and search with it. People put the companies they've worked for on their pages, and if we know we're looking for an accountant, they'll look out for an accountant. What it does is allow you to reach out to people who are not actively searching for jobs." He added, "It's kind of a warm point of contact, which I've found very useful." His clients stand to benefit. "I have had that Facebook account since college," he said.
"It was just a fun thing. I had no ideas of using that as a networking tool as far as getting a job," says S Rituraj of Flip Mind.
John Diwakar, a Btech graduate said his page never had much in the way of objectionable content on it anyway. But John now says the fact that he knows potential employers may be looking at his site has changed the way he uses it -- not to mention his standards for what can and can't be posted there.
On an average, nearly seven per cent of the hiring happened through Orkut, LinkedIn or Facebook in the city.
"The power of the brand in the social media is important to new generation kids who spend about one-fifth of their lives online. So, how do I appeal to the new generation?"
In the eighties it was the ‘popularity’ of the company that mattered to candidates, in the 1990s it was the safety and the security that the company offered. But now it’s the power of the social media that’s overtaking everything else.
However, social networking sites as a medium for employer branding may only appeal to a section of recruiters, said Sunil Kharidehal, a software engineer at Oracle.
"We cannot simply trust the information displayed on social networking sites. To get in touch with experienced professionals, job sites are the best option. But if the company wants to recruit freshers, this is a good option as many youngsters and college students have their profiles on these sites," opined G Sugunakar, a recruitment officer at Eureka Technocrats.