As the wave of social media crested over individual users and began to wash onto the beaches of business, it was unclear which business function would face the quickest erosion of tried and trusted practices. While we were eagerly using message boards and online communities to change how we maintained relationships, influenced opinions, and even found new friends, there were few early indications as to which aspect of corporate America would be the first to harness the energy and possibilities of this trend.

And the winner is… human resources. There has been no more widespread adoption of social media benefits across the enterprise than in the process of finding, recruiting, attracting, and keeping top talent. Say it ain’t so – the department that in some companies still relies on time-clocks is leading change?

You want disruptive influence? How about spending less than $200 to fill a position that would have cost $30,000 – $40,000 to fill via traditional recruiting services. Such was a recent experience using LinkedIn. This single tool has provided both enormous efficiencies in traditional hiring processes (promoting openings, finding candidates, screening applicants, checking referrals,) and massive cost savings (recruiters, job boards & newspaper ads, HR staffing). It is almost single-handedly killing the job board industry.

Then there are the social media tools that help HR stay current with salary trends. Glassdoor.com leverages the newfound willingness that people have towards sharing their pay information and general opinions about their employer. The implication for companies is twofold: 1) a quick and easy way to access highly specialized and regionalized pay data; 2) an opportunity to get a different perspective on the ever changing workplace culture. Both were difficult pieces of data to get previously.

And one of the newest trends in HR is to use social media participation itself as a qualifier for potential new hires. Brazencarreerist exists to connect companies to talented bloggers on the premise that individuals with the discipline, assertiveness, and confidence to regularly publish their opinions on the web will translate into a highly effective workforce.

So while customer service, product development, and marketing functions all are still trying to figure out where to tie-in to the social media madness, HR has found the biggest and most consistent ROI thus far. HR winning a race to be progressive?? It really is a new world.