Wherever there is change, it is almost an immutable law there will be winners and losers. Recruiters are no stranger to the threat posed by change. In the past many so-called experts predicted that job boards would be the death knell of traditional agencies. Today, of course, staffing companies are massive job board users.

Few people now believe that job boards will be the death of agencies, but could the seemingly inexorable rise of social media sites be the next potential wrecking ball not just for agencies, but for job boards themselves? This was a key question discussed at a meeting of the Recruitment Society held in Birmingham last week.

On the face of it, easy access to millions of candidates makes it much easier for companies to identify and then to recruit staff themselves. LinkedIn, which already has 63m members worldwide and aims to have up to 500m, has become an essential tool of many in-house recruiters. Many companies now have their own Facebook page, while MySpace and Twitter also have their fair share of supporters.

As Jon Hull, resourcing manager at RS Components, one of the panel members at the Recruitment Society meeting said: “If you want to find an accountant in Liverpool with 10 years’ experience, you can. And what’s more,” added Hull, “you know that by talking to them directly you will probably get 15-20 others too.”

Geoff Newman, chief executive of Recruitment Genius, a company that posts vacancies on up to 60 job boards simultaneously, said that far from representing a threat to agencies, networking sites were an opportunity for them “to make an absolute fortune”. Agencies should revel in the social media age by adopting a consultancy type of role, he suggested. “Agencies can make a lot of money by helping clients who don’t understand social media,” said Newman, who is also managing director of Kent-based recruitment agency Acorn Recruitment.

For example, where agencies could potentially add value was in advising clients on the cultural nuances of social networking. Whereas it was acceptable for hirers to use Facebook to contact users about jobs in the US because the distinction between the social and the professional was blurred, this was unlikely to work in the UK where the distinction between the two was clearer.

“It is better to use Facebook to build communities and trust, so that potential jobseekers have the knowledge to make a positive decision, ” said Jon Porter, managing director UK and Ireland, TMP Worldwide.

However, Tom Marsden, director of professional services at Alexander Mann Solutions, said there was no point in fighting the trend towards social networking. Job boards and agencies have limited amount of space to manoeuvre. He suggested their only choice was to compete either on cost or by becoming more specialist.

“Specialisation is going to become increasingly important in the agency and job board market,” he said.

Porter argued that agencies still had a place, but again, only if they added value. “It’s about agencies who understand the market. We only want to engage people who understand the market and can add expertise,” he said.

Jerry Collier, an RPO expert who has worked at Kenexa and AMS, said that hiring mangers could be the losers. He said that hiring mangers often didn’t take a sufficiently “scientific approach” with very few evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of different channels.

He cited one example where a hirers had hired one candidates from 350 applicants at a cost of £70. On the face of it that was good, but it didn’t take account of “the phenomenal amount of time and effort” involved in dealing with that number of applications.

Chris O’Brien, from online recruitment communications agency Enhance Media’s social media division, suggested that job boards faced a significant threat from social media. He said that according to research, 55% of online jobseekers in the UK used social networking in the first week of their job search. “Job boards are going to have a big challenge,” he said.

While the rise and rise of social sites makes potential recruiters of us all, the jury is still out on whether this necessarily means the death knell of recruitment agencies or job boards. As Marsden said: “It’s about hiring the right people for the right job not the number of clicks or traffic. You have to follow the whole process through the whole recruitment life cycle and convert it not only into the number of people you hire but also their effectiveness.”

It’s about hiring the right people for the right job not the number of clicks or traffic.

Collier added: “Sometimes we forget that recruitment is all about relationships.”

While social media will undoubtedly play an increasing role in recruitment over the next few years, those who embrace change but adhere to these two fundamental principles are likely to continue to have a place at the table.

Key facts
LinkedIn 63m users worldwide, growing at 3m per month. Aims to have 350-500m users
Facebook More than 400m users worldwide
Twitter 50m people Tweet every day
According to Enhance Media, 55% of online jobseekers use social media in the first week of their job search