They way we hire people is to learn about them. We read their resume, we interview them, we check their references. Normally, we don’t know the people we hire. The hiring process is a learning process.

Social media is changing this. We are going to hire people we know. We’ll know them because we will follow them on Twitter. They will be fans of Facebook. They will be in our LinkedIn groups. We will engage the people we hire long before we need to hire them.

Learning about people is how we used to do it. We didn’t have a way to meet or engage them before. Today and in the future we will know the people we hire. Social Media allows us to interact with the people in our industry, our competitors, our customers and community experts. We’ll talk to them, read their links, and ask their opinions. When the time comes we’ll already know exactly who we want to hire and they’ll know us.

Would you hire someone you didn’t know if you didn’t have to?