Social networking is going to change the way we advertise - and apply - for jobs. While the boss may regard your office tweets as time wasting, it is fast becoming the way employers are spotting - and recruiting - new talent. Social networking has led to social recruiting and it's no longer viewed as a tool only to catch up with friends and family. It's even possible to send a public profile data from a business professional network directly to an employer using social networking sites. And this community is growing: LinkedIn, for example, has 100 million members, while Face book has 750 million, and Twitter 200 million.

It's no longer enough just to post your CV with a couple of sentences about your hobbies on your profile page; it's time to get proactive and use social networking to really empower your next career move. LinkedIn, for example, has predictive algorithms that can interpret when someone is looking to move on, when they update their profile in a certain way. In other words, you don't have to be looking to be looking and potential employers will know this.

And there's no better tool to keep up with this changing community than Outlook 2010. Outlook enables connections to social networking applications through the new Social Connector. The new feature lets users view updates and email threads from social networking accounts in the Outlook inbox. You can also synchronise contact information, and see all related content related to a person, such as email exchanges, status updates, and shared documents.

For jobseekers looking to engage with potential employers, it's easier to walk in their space without even leaving the office. Facebook and blog posts allow you to comment and contact any employer who is socially active. Also participating in professional communities or "talent workshops" does help get your foot in that virtual door. Joining industry-specific worksites is also a proactive way to keep in touch with an entire network of employers.

With improvement to the Conversation View, which was a more basic feature in Outlook 2007, Outlook also keeps conversation threads in order. The Conversation View automatically groups email messages by topic and collapses them under the most recent. This is similar to threaded messages in other email products and applications - although Outlook does offer alternative views, which most applications don't. Useful features include the ability to clean up email threads to remove redundant message or parts of messages, and you can opt out of an email thread by clicking an Ignore button.

However, if you are using this feature, it's a good idea to make the subject lines of your emails distinct as the filters will group your messages by subject line. This could mean that multiple messages with the subject line, for example, Recruitment, will be grouped together.

Outlook 2010 also supports Embedded Community using much more presence awareness and communications outwith email. Through Office Communicator, you can initiate instant message conversations and phone calls directly by simply clicking on a colleague's name when it appears in your In box. This functionality has extended across all Office 2010 suite and gives the user the option of using other, perhaps more appropriate, ways to communicate, besides email, without leaving the interface.

And while it might seem a long-shot that Twitter will help in your career search, for anyone who has an interest in media, public relations, PR or technology it's the vehicle they need to get onto. Just be careful that you don't share information which is private to you. Privacy data rules do seem to be tightening up and it might be in the future that different circles of friends and colleagues will be able to access only certain types of information, but for now sharing holiday snaps and karaoke nights on Face book with friends might also mean sharing with a potential employer might not be the right thing for you.

However using social networking sites can work both ways and there is nothing to stop jobseekers reading, and posting, blogs about potential employers. It's a bit like checking out the star rating of a hotel before you decide to book a room your trip. While you might only lose out on a couple of nights spending if you do pick a turkey on the tourist route, there usually isn't anywhere you can get home truths on a potential employer before making a huge commitment and signing a contract. However, there are more websites appearing that are dedicated to bean spilling and whistle-blowing. If an employer posts information about their company it must be an accurate reflection otherwise it will get negative reactions for the community.