It's funny. So much energy has been spent worrying about this generation's "digital trail" on social networking sites and how that might impact their chances of getting into college or landing a job (I'll call this "the keg stand fears.") An article in today's New York Post illustrates how being an avid user of social networking sites is actually making young candidates incredibly attractive to companies looking to get the word out. From the article:

Whether a company is looking to recruit talent, sell a product or attract clients, they’re increasingly turning to social-networking sites - and they’re looking for employees to help them do it. Which means all those hours you spent prowling Facebook in college actually developed a marketable skill.

“Having social-networking skills is now like being able to use Microsoft Office - it’s a basic requirement,” says Paul Forster of the job search engine Indeed.com, where the number of jobs with “social networking” in the description has tripled since last year.

At the last company I worked for, we hired MySpace evangelists to help us spread the word. It was a funny screening process because we had to figure out what made someone a good candidate for this (their profile, number of friends or quality of friends, ability to come across as authentic when making a friend request?, hobbies or interests, musical tastes). What I learned was that if you can find someone really connected in a specific subculture, they will be the most authentic in helping you gain friends and cred within that subculture. So you may need more than one of these folks. And, don't forget this is a natural part-time job for teens...

Sort of related: News organizations are looking to tap into the Facebook "ecosystem" to reconnect young people with the news.

Posted by anastasia