Blogging for talent: the latest high-tech tool revolutionizes the hunt for the right candidate.

When it comes to trying something new, Microsoft often races ahead of the pack. Three years ago, the tech company introduced several corporate recruitment blogs, launching an idea now becoming part of Internet culture and adding another tool to employers' arsenals of staffing strategies.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Recruitment blogs are gaining acceptance with employers who find them fast, interactive and able to give job seekers a good feel for a company's work and culture. These online tools allow corporate HR departments to follow Generation X and the YouTube generation right online, using blogging to find job candidates and hire them. Blogs are catching on at different kinds of companies in different ways.

Microsoft uses its online tools to impact and influence its public image, reach a broader audience from around the world, and create a diverse workplace with varied skills and talents.

HR generalist Priya Priyadarshini, a former international recruiter for Microsoft, calls blogs "a great way to connect with your audience. It is about building a community, showing them we care and also adding a certain level of transparency and dialogue."

She says the company's recruitment blogs add an "element of humanity" to the hiring process and give the high-tech company an edge in the competitive world of finding the best person to fit each job. They also offer a way for the employer to enhance its "brand visibility and credibility," says Priyadarshini.

If potential job candidates are interested in working for Microsoft based on what they see on a specific blog, they can then contact the blogger, and that could begin the recruiting and interviewing process. That is the kind of two-way personal touch that Microsoft encourages, Priyadarshini says.

Making Contact

Plenty of companies are entering the virtual world to find the right candidates for their jobs. Many employers look at Microsoft's success and seek to emulate the flow of information and ideas that blogging can spark at their companies, too.

At Best Buy's headquarters in Richfield, Minn., Joshua Kahn plans to follow Microsoft's lead this fall by launching a blog to get potential candidates in the pipeline.

To do it Best Buy's way, Kahn envisions a blog that will highlight job opportunities, including corporate, finance, marketing, web, human resource and design-related positions. The retailer's blog will "tell the stories of what it's like to work at Best Buy, far beyond what a job description gives you," says Kahn, a senior "pipeline generation expert" for Accenture HR Services who works on-site at Best Buy's headquarters. "It is an opportunity to present the work environment at Best Buy in a real way," Kahn says.