There's been much speculation recently as to when businesses are going to start hiring in bulk again, as well as when (and if) their workforces will ever return to pre-recession levels. The jury's still out on both of those cases. But in preparation, we have started seeing more and more discussion of recruiting best practices and the strategies that are going to help companies hire the talent that's the best professional and cultural fit from the scores of applicants out there. Not surprisingly, many are including social media as a component of their strategies.

Here's what we've been reading on these topics:

TLNT: Is Social Recruiting Maturing as a Technique? Lance Haun reported from the #socialrecruiting summit hosted by ERE on the social recruiting success stories from major corporations such as Microsoft and UPS. UPS launched a social recruiting campaign for its available jobs. On one of its Facebook accounts, UPS received 2,300 clicks to an application, 1,200 people's data captured, 50 fully completed applications, and 12 hires. In total UPS made 16 hires from its social media campaign.

Similarly, Microsoft ran social media campaigns on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and was able to determine which platform was best for evangelizing the company brand (Facebook), and which were best for broadcasting jobs and soliciting applications.

Computerworld: IT slowly hiring back after layoffs. According to TechAmerica Foundation, the tech industry has shed 215,000 jobs since January 2009. But some tech companies are starting to resume hiring, albeit slowly. In the first six months of 2010, tech employers added 30,200 jobs. Experts are predicting that the pace of hiring will remain slow throughout the end of the year, as many IT companies aren't yet ready for a drastic increase in hiring.

NYT Economix: Trend in Temp Hiring Doesn't Bode Well for Overall Jobs Picture. Although the hiring of temporary workers was moving at a quick clip early this year, the pace has since slowed. There were only 16,800 temporary help jobs added in August, a fraction of the jobs that were added early in 2010 and late 2009. Economists are weary about this trend, which indicates that employers aren't in any hurry to get people to fill positions and leads to questions about whether the economy will fall into a double dip recession.

Recruiting Blogs: 10 ways the world of recruitment is changing - now! Greg Savage lists 10 trends he anticipates will impact the recruiting profession that will need to be factored into business planning and strategies. These include: talent becoming wiser to the ways of the industry and taking charge of their job search; referrals surpassing job boards and word-of-mouth as the primary sourcing channel; and many jobs never being publicly posted.