COMPANIES that are determined to win the war for talent – and to employ the best of the graduate crop – ought to keep a close eye on e-technology. Social-networking sites and cutting-edge initiatives on the internet, such as Second Life, are being promoted as recruitment tools – and some companies are warming to them.

Second Life, the computer-generated world in which people interact through their “avatar” identity, has already hosted some virtual-recruitment fairs and Andrew Wilkinson, chief executive of TMP Worldwide, a recruit-ment-advertising firm, said the initial results were promising.

Wilkinson thinks e-technology is tilting the recruitment balance in favour of jobseekers by allowing them to research companies and even pay them a virtual visit before applying for a job. But e-technology is a threat as well as a boon to potential recruits because social-networking sites such as Facebook are being used to make checks on candidates before job offers are made.

Donna Miller, European HR director at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, recently argued that looking up applicants on Facebook and MySpace was akin to going into someone’s house and searching through their bedroom drawers.

However, many employers are only too keen to rake though a prospective employee’s cupboards – a study by Career-builder.com found one in ten recruiters use social-networking sites to check out candidates, and two-thirds of those recruiters rejected candidates on the basis of what they found. Careers advisers are warning people to be careful about what they post on sites such as Facebook and also suggest that people restrict access to their Facebook profile. Otherwise those naked, drunken shots from Ibiza and that light-hearted little comment about your chief preoccupation being finding new ways of skiving might come back to haunt you.

Some graduates think firms that check out candidates on social-networking sites are unethical but others say it is naïve to think employers won’t tap into such easily available information.

A survey released last week by the Association of Graduate Recruiters revealed that three-quarters of 277 graduate recruiters surveyed this summer believed that social-networking sites would be important in the future in terms of reaching their target audience. More than 90% also said they thought that inter-active features, such as blogs and podcasts on websites, were “quite or very important tools for attracting the best talent”.

Companies that are using social-networking sites to help with recruitment seem pleased with the results. This year T-Mobile, the phone company, created a site on Facebook to connect 42 new graduate recruits. Although the graduates start work only this month, they have been in contact since they were appointed in May.

Penny Davis, head of HR operations at T-Mobile, said that setting up T-Mobile’s own Facebook group had helped both the new recruits and the company. Getting involved with T-Mobile during the four months between appointment and starting work was one of the advantages.

The networking site also eases the passage of new recruits into the company by circulating information and advice. Everything from whom you might share a flat with in London to what to wear on the first day at work can be dealt with.

Jo Gidley, Sainbury’s graduate and campaign recruitment manager, saw the same benefits this year when one of the supermar-ket’s graduate recruits set up a Facebook group for 50 fellow recruits.

“Graduate recruits often travel over the summer or are in temporary work,” said Gidley. “Social networking allows us to keep in touch with them. We want them to feel like colleagues before they start.

“We’re now looking at other ways of using networking sites as part of the recruitment process. However, we are being cautious. Statistics from the Association of Graduate Recruiters suggest that 50% of graduates don’t want employers to engage them on social-networking sites. We don’t want to encroach where we’re not wanted.”

Some argue that the greatest underused internet resource in recruitment is a company’s own website. The professional-services company Deloitte also put some graduate recruits in touch with each other before their employment began, but it did so through its own website.

Sarah Schillingford, Deloitte’s graduate-recruitment partner, noticed the same benefits as T-Mobile and Sainsbury and said the prestart networking was to be extended to all Deloitte’s graduate schemes.

Schillingford said Deloitte was also looking at the latest online recruitment tools but had yet to be entirely convinced of their merit. “Face-to-face contact is really important in recruitment.

Still, we are constantly looking at what’s new – change is taking place at a phenomenal pace.”

TMP’s Andrew Wilkinson would agree with that. The British arm of TMP is planning a Second Life recruitment fair for a few clients. “It’s a pilot,” said Wilkinson. “However, TMP subsidiaries in America and in France have already run their first Second Life recruitment fairs and have had enough success to be planning their second.

“Companies taking part in these e-technology innovations get publicity for being cutting edge and they can target particular groups. Already there are lots of people – and not geeks – for whom the virtual world is fascinating and who are spending significant periods of time every day in Second Life,” he said.

While Second Life for many is just a place to interact, some companies are using it to build up brand names, test products, sell goods – and recruit.

But will Second Life recruitment fairs prove more than a passing fad? Wilkinson said it was too early properly to compare the effectiveness of Second Life with other methods of recruitment. Most clients were “unfamiliar” with innovations such as Second Life and had to be coached in their potential uses, he said.

Reassuringly, unfamiliarity is not confined to middle-aged technophobes. Rob Bradley, 24, is one of T-Mobile’s new graduate recruits. A child of his time, Bradley is well acquainted with Facebook. He has his profile posted and is smart enough to have restricted access to it. But even Bradley has not heard of Second Life or of avatars. Like Wilkinson said, it is early days.

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