It will be cricket, cafeteria and jokes the first month, but grin and bear it, for it has the potential to becoming a great productivity tool. This was Mr Vivek Paul's advice to HR managers at a session on ‘Social Media' at the National HRD Conference here today.

Mr Paul, former Vice-Chairman of Wipro and now a Consulting Professor at Stanford University of Medicine, is now also the promoter of KineticGlue, a company that helps companies build their own social media networks.

Enterprise social media, he pointed out, has become an alternative organisation model and for the first time corporates are moving away from the army type of hierarchy. The strong links that can build a network are as important as the weak links in the network that can break it.

If companies are sceptical about ‘bad postings,' he says, the trick is to get each employee to upload a photograph on the social media site. “This is an automatic filter and you can see postings will be done with care.”

Joining him in the discussion, Mr Steve Cadigan, Vice-President, Talent, LinkedIn, spoke about how social networks such as LinkedIn connect talent with opportunities on a massive scale.

The JOBSYMBIN (Jobs you might be interested in) feature in LinkedIn, for instance, has millions of followers, not only to switch jobs but also to recruit talent for their companies.

LinkedIn, a professional network site, currently has 135 million members and more than a million groups across the world.

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