The Society for Human Resource Management published a new study confirming much of what we know about social recruiting and offering some surprising data, too.

It's no surprise that most of the 651 respondents, whose job includes staffing, use LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter-in that order-to find "passive" job candidates. This is consistent with other survey data in the past couple of years. Eighty percent of respondents use these sites; those who don't cite legal concerns, such as finding out someone's age.

A surprising 57% of companies don't have policies in place for using social networking sites to screen candidates, and 72% have no intention of establishing a formal policy within the next 12 months.

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Discussion Starters:

• Why don't companies have a policy for screening candidates online? What are the potential drawbacks of creating a policy?
• What are the potential ethical considerations of screening candidates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter? How do these three sites differ as screening tools?