by Julie Griffiths The explosion in popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook shows no sign of slowing down, so it is not surprising that some employers see them as the new frontier in their search for talented graduates.

Podcasts on YouTube and blogs by previous graduate intakes are some of the ideas that companies are developing.Podcasts on YouTube and blogs by previous graduate intakes are some of the ideas that companies are developing.

Peter Gold, founder of Hire Strategies, which specialises in social media, says Twitter is particularly popular for recruiting university leavers. “It is easy to set up and more immediate, especially with savvy graduates who do not have email addresses and just use their mobiles and Twitter,” he says.

Many large recruiters, such as Ernst & Young, the accountancy firm, use Facebook to keep interested graduates abreast of application deadlines and recruitment events.
BSkyB is being more strategic. Instead of having a generic Facebook page for graduates to visit, the broadcaster targets its advertising at those of most interest. For example, adverts for its supply chain graduate recruitment scheme will appear on the pages of students doing relevant courses.

Helene Williamson, a future talent consultant at Sky, says that Facebook even enables the company to focus its ads on students with a particular field of study listed on their profile. “It adds value where we are trying to engage specific skills,” she says.

Within six months Sky will have moved into YouTube for its graduate hiring in creative areas, enabling applicants to upload items for assessment.

PricewaterhouseCoopers posts videos on YouTube where students can find out what it is like to work in the accounting firm’s tax department, for example. Its website holds regularly updated blogs from its graduates.

The firm has also launched a private application on Facebook for its 1,000 new recruits to network with each other before they join. Jennifer Covahey, a graduate who joined the firm in April from America, says the application “allowed me to meet my colleagues before I started”.Accenture, the IT consultancy, is planning to launch a Twitter presence but Annabel Nichols, UK head of graduate recruitment at the firm, believes that social media are likely to remain just one element of engaging with graduates. There will be graduates who do not want to use social sites to job-hunt, she says.