The biggest concern: Users of social networking sites are primarily Caucasians age 20-40. For example, on LinkedIn, only 4% of users are African-American, and just 2% are Hispanic, according to the latest data from Quantcast.

As with all social networking sites, usage declines in older demographics.

Recruiting on those sites can cause problems, says attorney Pamela Devata in Workforce, because it could have a disparate impact on groups without a large social networking presence.

That may be especially true with LinkedIn, which lets users create online connections with people they know. They can then find other people by seeing their contacts’ contacts, their contacts’ contacts’ contacts, etc.

The problem is, finding candidates that way could leave HR with a very homogeneous group.

What’s the danger?

Not all HR experts have the same concern about social networking. As many of those who’ve commented on the story point out, the same complaints can be made about a lot of traditional recruiting strategies. For example, most newspaper readers are white, so therefore recruiting via classified ads could have a disparate impact.

The same goes for referrals, a time-tested hiring strategy. In 2004, an employer was sued by a group of minority applicants who claimed the company’s referral practices were biased.

Nearly all new hires were referred by current employees. Nearly all of the referred applicants were white. The company tried having the case tossed on the grounds that it was just choosing from the applicant pool made available. But the judge refused, ruling that hiring only through referrals had a disparate impact on some groups of applicants (Cite: EEOC v. Caril Buddig & Co.).

Use a variety of sources

So is recruiting through social networking sites really dangerous? It could be.

But probably not much more than some other recruiting methods. The best solution is to find applicants in a variety of places to get a diverse candidate pool.

What do you think? Is recruiting on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites likely to lead to legal problems for companies? Is the strategy worth the risk? Let us know in the comments section below.

While the president was speaking to high school students in Arlington, VA, a 9th-grader asked him for some tips on how to become the Commander in Chief.

“First of all,” Obama answered, “I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook,” because “it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.”

A lot of job candidates probably wish they’d heard and followed that advice. According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, 35% of managers say they’ve turned down someone for a job because of what they found on social networking Web sites.

No, according to one recent survey.

In fact, 43% of employers don’t use social networking to recruit and have no interest in starting, according to a recent poll by Smartbrief on Workforce. Another 29% haven’t tried, but are interested. Finally, 11% say they’ve tried, but haven’t seen any good results.

Just 17% of companies have successfully recruited through Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

What about you? Have you used those sites to attract new employees? If so, was it worth it? Let us know in the comments section below.

The biggest mistake is posting nothing but mini-ads for open positions, such as “IT manager needed” or “Any sales pros out there?”

Instead, HR’s main goal when using Twitter should be to give the audience an idea of what it’s like to work at your company. Look for tidbits that would make a reader want to be a part of your office on a day-to-day basis.

Here are some specific ideas for recruiting-minded Twitter posts, according to recruiter Jessica Lee:

1. Employee programs – Even if there’s nothing new in the works, spend some time regularly explaining telecommuting initiatives, volunteer efforts and other programs and benefits.
2. Career advice – Turn your Twitter into a resource for people looking for jobs in your industry. Even if you aren’t hiring right now, you’ll have a built-in following of qualified people once you announce an open position.
3. Links to articles by employees – Give candidates some info about who they could be working with.
4. Description of a good candidate – Let people know what you’re looking for in an applicant or interviewee. That will help candidates prepare beforehand.
5. Events and appearances – Let followers know when and where people from the company will be speaking and about recruiting events you’ll be attending.
6. New hires – When you’ve filled a position, share it with the audience. It shows you are hiring, as well as how proud the company is of its new employees.
7. Links to employees who Twitter – Recruit current employees to write positively about their jobs and provide links to their profiles from your account.

Craigslist recently added new sites for 140 cities, increasing the total number of areas in which the service is available by 25%.

The additions include 87 cities in the U.S., eight in Canada and 45 in other parts of the world, the New York Times reports.

Craigslist charges a fee of $25 per job posting in larger cities (and $75 in San Fransisco). But since most of the new areas are small to mid-sized towns, presumably job listings will be free for those sites.

Yahoo HotJobs recently announced a new pricing option for companies that post openings: Instead of paying for each ad, they’ll be able to pay based on candidate response.

Calling the model “Pay Per Candidate” pricing, Yahoo says the format will give businesses greater control over their budgets and ensures they only pay if the ad attracts qualified applicants.

Employers can set up a customized questionnaire to filter out candidates who don’t belong (and not be charged for them). Also, the system allows companies to set a cap on the number of applications that are allowed to go through.

Recruiters do have to pay up front, by purchasing “credits” from Yahoo. But credits aren’t deducted until a candidate submits an application or clicks through to the company’s Web site. And unused credits can be transferred to other job listings.

Hot Jobs is the first of the “big three” job boards (the other two are CareerBuilder and Monster) to announce a switch to pay-per-applicant pricing. Experts predict the model will become more common as job boards try to compete with cheaper recruiting methods like Craigslist and social networking sites.

Not putting the proper care into building the page could cost a company some qualified candidates — after all, no matter how applicants hear about a job, they’ll almost always head to the company’s Web site before doing anything.

Here are four big mistakes many companies make on their Careers Web page, according to CTO Joe Rotella, speaking at the 2009 Society for Human Resources Management conference in New Orleans:

1. Using a generic e-mail address to collect applications — People want to talk to people, Rotella says. It looks better to the candidate if they’re directly e-mailing the HR manager or a recruiter instead of sending resumes to “sales@company.com” or “hr@company.com.”
2. Hiding the important information — The most useful or most interesting information should appear on a page before the user has to scroll. Keeping the pages arranged correctly involves working with IT to test the site on different browsers and configurations.
3. Ignoring what the audiences wants – The key question when making any decision about the site should be, “What does the target audience want to see?”
4. Dumping all the information into an FAQ section – Rotella calls FAQs the “junk drawer of the Web.” All relevant info should have already appeared in other sections, he says.

Candidates are often more honest in their LinkedIn profiles than in the resumes they send employers.

At least that’s what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said at the recent Social Recruiting Summit held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

The reasoning: Resumes are read only by a few people in a company who know nothing about the candidate. On the other hand, candidates might have hundreds of LinkedIn connections, and in theory, know or have worked with all of them.

Reid’s point: It’s hard to lie publicly in front of current or former colleagues.

Of course, LinkedIn profiles aren’t really replacements for resumes — most users don’t put the same detail into a profile, and there aren’t many versions tailored to different types of positions.

But some experts recommend finding a candidate’s profile to quickly make sure there aren’t glaring discrepancies in the info you received.

The latest — and possibly most narrowly focused — is Just Drinks, a job board for people looking for work in the beverage industry.

We aren’t just talking about bartenders here — the site includes everything from sales and marketing to manufacturing to finance and HR. The common thread is all the jobs are for companies that make and sell wine, beer and other beverages.

Odds are you won’t have use for this particular site, but it’s appearance is representative of the state of online job boards: More and more recruiting sites pop up every day, many catered to a niche group, giving recruiters more options for attracting talent.

When you’ve got a job to fill, look to see if there are any applicable niche boards out there.

To apply to work for the city of Bozeman, Montana, candidates are asked to list “any and all” Web sites, chat rooms and social networking groups they belong to (“including but not limited to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.”) — along with their usernames and passwords.

Many hiring managers Google applicants’ names or look for them on Facebook, but actually wanting to log in to their personal profiles is something new entirely.

Why does the city want that access? According to city attorney Greg Sullivan, it’s “to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the city,” The Consumerist reports.

Sullivan also said the city doesn’t look at “the things that the federal Constitution lists as protected things” (whatever that means).

The story has drawn a lot of attention, especially considering there’s a debate going on about whether hiring managers should even look at candidates’ profiles, let alone obtain log-in information.

Do you think any employer has the right to ask for usernames and passwords from applicants? Should social networking profiles play any role in the background check process at all?

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.