Mediaboss Marketing

1 November 2012 Last updated at 20:07 ET By Raj Samani Chief technology officer, Europe, Middle East and Africa, McAfee

Hiring practices within many modern organisations today are placing greater emphasis on the social networking presence of candidates.

This tactic may be used to uncover potential indiscretions, or an attempt to assess the true 'value' of the candidate.

This very public shop window for candidates is a relatively new concept and extends the initial definition of the term "Social Network" that was originally presented in a 1954 research paper, Class and Committees in a Norwegian Parish.

The paper draws a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.

The social network, as we know it today, is mapped through technology and the advent of social media websites, affording us the luxury to maintain our social ties that go beyond our ability to simply remember our personal links.

Subsequently, the theory known as "six degrees of separation" that was a popular term to describe the work of Stanley Milgram, examining the average path length for social networks, needs to be dramatically reduced to account for the advances in technology.

However, the fundamental differences in our social ties today, as opposed to just over a decade ago, are the very nature of these links themselves.

A good friend of mine once said to me, that you attract those people with whom you have common interests, otherwise known as interpersonal attraction.

Very rarely do we see individuals revoke a recommendation of a former colleague

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Social media's job shop window