With the increasing amount of attention on the utility of Web 2.0 tools in buisness and the growing investement in incorporating these tools day to day operations, I wonder how in general admin and hiring departments are adopting and using these tools (blogs, wikis, linkdn, facebook) to screen potential hiries? Do they evaluate a applicants blog? Their linkedin profile? Do they use this during the interview, pulling older blog posts to ask the applicant to further expand on their thoughts?

Given that a lot of bloggers spend a substantial amount of time in upkeep, design and authoring posts, it would seem as an obvious part of the interview. However, having gone through a few interviews over the past year and not one has done this sort of inquiry. Infact I have to bring it up and explain, but was confronted with what seemed like a blank look – indicating that either they don’t know what blogs, facebook, linkedin are, or that they were embarresed not to have checked prior to the interview. Others have also suggested that the entire hiring process is a complicated one. But I doubt that if a company can organize it in a fashion to require that from the begining both the hiring team and the applicant can manage to explore these topics during the interview and in some cases, could better reflect upon both the applicant and hiring division.