In the Gen Y space, social media recruiting (aka facebook, twitter etc) comes up in just about every conversation we have with recruiters these days. It seems everyone, I mean everyone, is jumping on the bandwagon.

As a new media company that strives to connect employers with Gen Y talent using innovative methods, we just had to find out for ourselves.

For starters, we polled our audience and found out that most Gen Y still rely on school resources, job boards and company web sites to find out about open positions (our survey runs until mid-Oct so these results are preliminary; stay tuned!) .

If that’s the case, then why all the hubbub about social media and recruitment?

One aspect that we discovered is that social media, in this case Twitter, is good for maintaining relationships. We used our @hiringbeat Twitter feed. With ~250 followers and approximately one tweet per day, we are getting as many as 20 clicks on some tweets. That’s equivalent to an 8% click rate, which is pretty good. Average email marketing open rates hover around 13% (according to Mailermailer) and click rates are a fraction of that (say 13% open an email and 10% click, that is equal to a 1.3% click rate).

What we also seeing is that our tweets, if they are good, are being retweeted by our followers, further extending our reach, touching people who may have never heard of us before.

So if you get your Twitter following up to 1000, then each time you tweet you could have hundred people or so viewing your jobs and finding about your events - a great way to maintain relationships with candidates!

To learn more about Gen Y using social media, download our whitepaper.

“Gen F.” Have you heard of or seen this term? A colleague recently shared an insightful post from Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 blog on WSJ.com, The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500, which spells out how the Facebook Generation – a.k.a. Generation F – will ultimately change the face of the workplace. Companies that don’t get it, Hamel argues, will miss out on attracting the best and brightest and may be setting themselves up for a harsh reality if the Gen F contingent is missing.

Gen F, Gen Y, the Net Kids, Millennials. Whatever you call them, the next generation workforce will comprise half of employers’ headcount budgets within the next 10 years. And if you’ve been reading my last few Talent Insights posts, you’ve also gotten the (not so subtle) sense that these young professionals thrive on social media and new technology. Add these considerations together, and I think Hamel pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Last month, more than 250 college students and young grads took our Web 2.0 Technologies Survey and told us some pretty telling things. The survey focused on collaborative and community-based online media – social and professional networking sites, widgets and gadgets, wikis, blogs, podcasts, video, etc. – and their role in the workplace.

Nearly all respondents, at 94%, reported using social networking sites. Yet when it comes to other new technologies, the largest numbers of Gen Y spend only an hour or less each week on sites liked LinkedIn, blogs and micro-blogs (think Twitter) and video chat apps like Skype. Interestingly, 20% of respondents said they use new media to make new business contacts or learn about career opportunities.

Factor in work and the numbers get more compelling, and employers especially should take note. Forty-two percent of Gen Y told us they use or plan to use social networks at work. A substantial 90% of this same group believes Web 2.0 technologies will make them more or just as productive at work, and nearly the same number – 82% – said they’d be happy to coach their older counterparts on new media if the training was needed. (Incidentally, our Facebook Fan Page members told us just as much, too.)

With cost control being top-of-mind for just about all of us, and given the tendencies of the Facebook Generation, employers have an opportunity to potentially boost productivity – and save money – by setting Web 2.0 and social media standards at the workplace. At Experience, for example, we all rely on Skype for IM and video conferencing. Personally it saves me time when I can just fire off a quick question to a coworker who resides two floors below me. Not that IM is cutting-edge revolutionary, but you get the point: simple measures add up and make a difference.