We often discuss how you can use social media to find a job. But this works both ways of course. Whether you’re an entrepreneur with a small company or a PR executive at a large enterprise, you must be aware of how and why social media can be an effective tool in finding employees. Mashable has a great article about 5 ways that social media is revolutionizing talent acquisition. Read the entire article and you’ll see how social media recruitment is a trend you should be following.

Here’s an interesting email from a career counselor posted by Andrew Sullivan on his blog. The key piece of advice seems to be that you have to go outside the normal channels if you want to be successful on your job search. Sending resumes to job boards only gets you so far.

I feel for the guy, but he should break the rules more often. Having been unemployed myself for months, I understand the frustration. But having worked in career counseling for a few years, I know how to look for a job. Most people don’t, and would do better if they did.

Don’t waste too much time with job boards unless you are someone with a very specific technical skill looking for a job that requires that skill. Do contact employers directly and consistently, and contact them before they have job openings. The old nostrum that “if a job is posted, it’s been filled” is generally true.

The reality is that 80% of jobs are filled via personal connections and relationships. It really is like high school; people hire people they know and like. Think of everyone you know, even your worthless brother in law, as a potential connection to a job, either directly or indirectly. Your resume should be the last thing an employer sees, because the first thing they should see is you in person.

The writer goes on to give 5 useful tips of how to approach a job search. Check them out.

Andrew then posts responses from other readers. This one caught our attention.

The career counselor nails it. I’ve been looking for a job for about two months now and have come to the conclusion that Human Resources is, without question, the most useless, bureaucratic, least efficient department in ANY organization. HR has, ironically, perfected the extrication of any sort of human contact imaginable when applying for a job – no names, no contact info, no phone numbers, no nothing. I even went to one job fair where an HR rep for a company refused to accept a resume I was trying to hand her. “We only take resumes online for jobs posted,” she said.

You can’t just go through the motions. Get out there and bypass HR whenever possible. Keep networking – relationships matters!

Whether you’re looking for a new job or you’re in a company with an HR department, knowing about the HR operations can give you a big edge. A recent article on Yahoo! Finance explains some of the current dynamics in the HR world. One issue is that HR departments are shrinking, so they also have fewer resources and rely on outside help.

One issue involves catching their attention at a time when HR departments are getting flooded with resumes. Your cover letter and your resume need to be targeted to the desired position.

With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, HR managers are inundated with responses for every job posting. In fact, some companies are hiring outside firms to post jobs and sort through resumes, presenting only a dozen or so qualified candidates for consideration. How to make the cut? Be sure your resume and cover letter highlight the skills asked for in the job posting; HR tosses applications that don’t meet all the basic criteria. And ask yourself what in your background fits the company’s needs, says Mike Wright, senior vice president of outsourcing sales with Hewitt Associates.

Another angle: Approach an in-house recruiter or hiring manager before they post a position. Try using business-oriented social-media sites like LinkedIn.com to meet contacts, says O’Donnell. Judi Perkins, founder of FindThePerfectJob.com, says she found most of her clients jobs this way. When you score an interview with HR reps, take it seriously — you never know how much say they have in the process. And ask them what qualities they look for in employees. “You really need to sell them on your abilities,” says O’Donnell.

There’s also all sorts of privacy issues in the workplace today as well. Just assume that HR is watching you, and that your actions in and out of the workplace can impact your career.