With social media becoming so influential and spreading throughout all the different business functions and applications, companies will require more and more people with deep social media understanding. Or as Brian Halligan, the CEO of Hubspot, said: “if you change your approach, you also need to change your team.”

Kodak is applying a “t-shaped profile”: people need a broad understanding of the traditional marketing background (brand, communication, PR, metrics) and a deep understanding of social media.

Brian Halligan is hiring – in accordance with his business model and business objectives – only DARC (Digital Analytical Reach Content Creator) people. No traditional marketing skills and background are required, instead “hire people who speak digital without an accent. Hire people that blog, have twitter followers and are on G+.”

It certainly shows the significance of Klout, Peerindex and other influence or engagement measuring tools. We all know they are not perfect but they are a good starting point and they will become even more influential. In the recruiting process, they certainly enable the hirer to get a good overview of the digital engagement of the candidate. That is not only relevant in the recruitment process but also when choosing agencies. There are so many Heads of Digital that have a Klout score of 10, which is just a contradiction per se.

It was suggested to me that there might be some roles where it is preferable to have people with a low Klout score or low social engagement. And it’s true, there are roles where it is not as essential as in Marketing yet, but an understanding of social media and therefore participation is important to truly be able to assess social media and its impact on the world. Klout obviously doesn’t measure the engagement on closed social networks such as Chatter, but it will be equally important for hirer and candidate to assess the impact made on these forums as well.

Social media also brings a massive opportunity to job seekers with only little experience: if they participate in social media, it is an advantage, if they blog about their dissertations (Sacha Chua made a case about that on the ERE Social Recruiting conference in 2009) they can create important connections and show their social media engagement. It is doable and beneficial. The world is changing and the talent we need is changing.

Felix Wetzel is the Strategy Development Director for Jobsite and author of the ‘People, Brands, & Random Thoughts‘ blog.