Don't be surprised to find your HR manager spending hours browsing networking sites like Linked In, Orkut, and don't tick her off either - instead look at the recruitment results. Increasingly, HR managers are looking to these sites to find prospective employees and one in two of the managers we spoke to, had successfully recruited through them.

Linked In is by far the most popular, while Orkut still is mainly a hangout for kids/young adults into their first jobs. As one HR manager out it: "If I were hiring for a BPO I'd go straight to Orkut, while Linked In is better when you are looking for mid level or even senior positions". In some ways the comparison is unfair as Linked-In is designed as a professional networking site where you can hunt for jobs, refer friends and look for hires, whereas Orkut is pretty much only a social networking site.

Linked-In has specific services that you can buy - such as Job Posts, premium (paid-only) memberships- that give you access to the complete profiles of the 15-million Linked In database, plus introductions to send a certain number of direct communications to prospects. Job Posts can be promoted by distributing the advert to your network and requesting referrals to prospective candidates - this increases the probability of getting a really good candidate since the referral comes from a trusted source. Applications received through Linked In are also likely to be of better quality since you can see work history, references from colleagues, and a list of potential references from your network.

The fact that people use work history to grow their networks on Linked In (the service prompts you to do so) so that it can throw up a list of former colleagues who are also on Linked In, whom you can then invite - also makes this a great place to verify details that a candidate has provided. Since you have the data on the years he/she spent at a company, you can use Linked In search to ID others who worked there at the same time - these people could be useful neutral reference points, provided that they belonged to departments/geographies that worked together.

A similar service is offered by India specific player TechTribe, which allows users to refer friends and apply for jobs posted by recruiters.

Another useful checkpoint when hiring, is to look for Blogs that the candidate maintains/contributes to. This is particularly useful if the job profile requires writing skills. Blog contributions are also useful signposts for attitude, political orientations, if these matter to your company.

One of the most unusual uses of tech tools for HR management comes from Big Blue IBM. An article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year talked about how IBM uses Second Life for orienting new employees located in China and Brazil. A HR avatar can give a talk and then respond to text questions from the new employees. Since many of the international employees preferred writing down the questions, the virtual meetings actually improved interaction.

A far less hi-tech approach, but which works just as well for recruiting, is on-line alumni networks. A HR manager with a Delhi based KPO says that, surprisingly, with the exception of Wharton, the top US Business Schools allow recruiters to post jobs, free of cost. Harvard Business School (HBS) , in fact has as easy-to-use recruiter dashboard that can be used to post jobs, receive applications and schedule interviews for fresh graduates and summer trainees. The recruitment section of the HBS site also offers data on compensation sector wise, career statistics by function as well as class profile data.

Users say that the quality of response is good, and helps create a good database of candidates to be tapped subsequently. Easy accessibility to the service plus the market pull that India holds right now on the international community means that it is feasible to use the service for hiring. One manager, who has successfully recruited for overseas positions, puts it, "Since these jobs typically start at compensations of US$75000- US $ 100,000, you are saving yourself quite a bit in head hunter fees."

Closer home, Cool Avenues offers recruiters a platform to reach over 25,000 MBA alumni through a Job Post service. Individual schools, even the top IIMs, do not really have a product that taps alumni networks for recruiters, though IIM A alumni can post jobs for their networks.

Alumni networks are a powerful tool, and networking sites allow you to set up groups quite easily. Corporate alumni networks can be a powerful tool for recruitment and even brand building. Infrastructure overheads are low plus existing HR teams can manage networks on professional websites without additional IT skills training. In a skewed recruitment market where a dozen jobs vie for a good candidate, Web 2.0 networking tools could be the ace in your pack.