Jobvite is an eRecruitment platform that integrates with Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. I think it is making some transformational moves in the area of social media recruitment. I recently spoke with Jobvite CEO, Dan Finnigan. He joined Jobvite a year ago after serving as CEO of several other firms in the online recruitment space. At Yahoo! Hotjobs and before that, Career Builder, he helped establish online job boards. However, while at Hotjobs, Dan said that he came to believe that job boards would eventually struggle to compete with recruiting through social networks and on-line targeting of passive job seekers.

Dan said this transformation has already started. According to their recent survey of over 400 recruiters, 80 percent of companies use or are planning to use social networking to find and attract candidates this year. Dan said that many companies that are leading edge players in social media such Digg, Zappos.com, TiVo, and Mozilla are using the Jobvite platform for recruiting.

Jobvite is a SaaS offering used by companies to manage their entire recruiting process and support their word-of-mouth job marketing. Jobvite covers the complete hiring process from post to hire. It supports external recruitment, applicant tracking, employee referral and internal mobility with a single clean interface. Jobvite also provides a career site, integration with social networking and custom reporting. Recruiters and employees can target job opportunities to qualified people in their networks and spread the word virally through Jobvite.

Through one of the most interesting features, employees can send personalized job invitations, or Jobvites, to contacts in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, as well as Outlook and other email programs.  When you send a Jobvite to contacts in your social networks, matching technology recommends the appropriate people in your network for the job.

Below you can see a pop-up window from a job posting that connects to Facebook to send a Jobvite. As you can see from the illustration, you can ask Jobvite to send it to the best match filtered by: job, title, location, or industry. You can also send it to everyone. These filters allow you to avoid spamming some of your network and focus the invitation and referrals to those most appropriate. It automates what you might do yourself.

You can follow a similar process with LinkedIn (see below and Twitter). Dan said that they focus on the profiles in each case and they are constantly working on new ways to better filter the selection process.

Dan showed me an example of Jobvite in action at the TiVo jobs site. There is a Jobvite icon on each individual job listing that allows you to select the social media channel and send the Jobvite invitation through email and/or Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Twitter.

This social media integration takes more recruitment into the referral mode, away from the broadcast mode. Dan said that currently about 20% of all hires come through referrals but these are the highest quality. With today’s economy this is likely even more pronounced. Job boards are flooded with many more applicants, often ones that are less relevant to the job. This creates a lot of wasted effort for recruiters. Referrals are more likely to bring forward people who are both skilled and less likely looking for work. I can believe this as every job I have ever gotten from watering lawns at age ten to my most recent employment has come through a referral.

Part of the transformation aspect of this comes from the enablement of anyone in the company to send a Jobvite. Companies have had employee referral programs for some time but this is the first time that I know of that social media has been harnessed to support these efforts in a formal manner. People outside the company can then become involved as Jobvites can easily get passed on. They likely become more focused as they move through the viral marketing process. The benefits could be exponential. Jobvite also tracks the progress of a Jobvite so you can see what works and who to reward.

Jobvite does not simply cover the front end to recruiting but the entire process from position creation to on-boarding. Despite the downturn, companies are still hiring, Dan said that in April 2008 4.9 million people were hired in the US. In April 2009, the number dropped to 4.2 Million. However, that is still a lot to deal with. And now most companies have reduced staffs and budgets to deal with these recruitment needs. Leveraging social media can help address these needs. Recruitment appears to be another area where the Web originally had a great impact and now social media is ready to take it to another level of effectiveness.