At E Week, they shed light on a new research done by Robert Half, International which believes that over the next three years, professional social networking sites will become a key part of the recruitment process for businesses.

By using connections, employees are able to find companies with opportunities that fit their needs. While looking for a job, the article states, it’s still important to keep making contacts in various other ways such as networking at conferences.

Some companies have started to use social media tools to find their candidates, such as our friends and Community 2.0 contributors, Mzinga. Check out their hiring process for this job here.

At Social Media Optimization, they point out that while most companies now use Facebook and MySpace to screen candidates before they come in for an interview. But this will shift, as a growing number of employees are being hired from social networking as the image below indicates. In addition to Linked In, there will be sites that are closed to the general public, but open to select people that will lead to the growth in social networking, such as university alumni sites. SMO sees these sites as the next to explode on the recruiting scene.