We have transformed so quickly into a digitally connected world that not having a social media profile, or even the right kind of social media profile, will work against you. With increasing frequency, professionals in the recruitment community are becoming suspicious of people without a digital footprint. I can foresee a time very soon when the lack of a cohesive social media presence will make you invisible to corporate recruiters.

Developing and learning to manage your social media presence is one of the greatest tools for taking control of your professional destiny. Learn to take advantage of employers' internet-based recruitment tactics with a powerfully branded message across multiple social media sites, will help your career flourish; fail to stay current with the times, and you could be relegated to professional obscurity.

How Recruitment Affects Networking Strategy

Understanding how companies recruit will help you apply productive networking tactics to every aspect of your job search. Integrate these networking tactics into your professional life and you will increase your job stability, credibility, and visibility in your profession, not to mention give yourself the tools to better pursue entrepreneurial opportunity and the dreams that put juice in your life.

Recruitment strategy is obsessed with economy, speed, and value. The cost of hiring and training a new employee can run to more than $10,000, so the entire recruitment process is cost- and productivity-conscious. Consequently, the people involved in a specific search -- the hiring manager, HR, and recruitment professionals -- all want the same thing: good hires, fast hires, and cheap hires. The way they achieve this is logical, and understanding it can enhance your job search strategies with new tactics.

Step 1: Internal Promotions

Put yourself on the other side of the hiring manager's desk for a few moments. When looking to fill a position, you would obviously start the recruitment process by asking yourself, your peers, and your staff, who within the company can do this job? Naturally, you want to hire from within, because it's cheap, you are dealing with known quantities, and internal promotions are motivational.

Step 2: Who Do You Know?

When a hiring manager can't make an internal hire, she will next ask, "Who do I know, and who do my people know?" Recruiters will review all the resumes in the company's database and recall any promising candidates who have been picked up on their social media radar -- the world's greatest gift to employee recruitment -- which in turn makes it your greatest gift as a job seeker.

HR may also create an internal job posting (often tied to cash incentives for employee referrals) and actively consider people known to employees and the recruitment team, or who can be found through their involvement in social networks. These will include contacts made through online social networks and professional and alumni associations.

Step 3: Recruitment Advertising

It is only when these first two attempts yield no results that companies begin advertising job openings. Headhunters come into use only when all else fails, and as urgency or confidentiality dictates. But even when companies progress to advertising and using headhunters, they still prefer to hire people who come to them directly or through referral networks. For you, this means that the most effective job search tactic is networking, a skill that once learned, will serve you throughout your career.

Be Seen

Nothing happens in a job search without conversation, so much so that the prime focus of a job search should be to get into conversation with recruiters and hiring managers as quickly and frequently as possible. The people who land jobs fastest and with greatest ease are the people who are connected to their professions through social networking, because networking enables them to jumpstart those all-important conversations with recruiters and hiring authorities. Follow their lead by using integrated networking strategies, and you will be better equipped to find work in any economic climate.

Jobs will become increasingly hard to find for seekers who ignore social networking. If you aren't seen where the recruiters are looking, you are invisible.

An ex-Silicon Valley headhunter & HR Director of a publicly traded storage company, N.Y. Times bestseller, Martin Yate CPC, brings a lifetime of street-wise career management experience to his work.

The Knock Em Dead career management books unfold a new and unique approach to getting what you want out of life rather than becoming a powerless drone trapped in some high-rise salt mine.

With 17 career-management books collectively published in 81 domestic and 63 foreign language editions, he is increasingly thought of as the father of the new career management. Perceptive, direct and witty, you can join Martin here to change the trajectory of your life forever.

As Dun & Bradstreet says, "He's just about the best in the business."

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