I showed this to one contingency recruiter and she is using it to help identify potential sales leads.

;-)

Let me ask you before internet how did you find candidates? Newspaper correct? And it was a risk to go on job boards. Well now this is the new way and it will keep going forward.

But there is a more fundamental problem I see:

The article, as with too many on ERE, in my opinion, is slanted towards highly educated tech savvy job seekers at ease with evolving tools and cutting edge technology. The reality is, most of us do not spend our lives searching for these people. The vast majority of the workers we seek are ‘regular Joe’s and Jane’s’ most of whom would not be equipped to deal with this recruiting approach.

My team hires 2500 people a year many of whom have no presence on the web beyond a resume in a job board (if that) and an email address. We find these people through ‘real networking’ not virtual; employee referrals; trolling resume databases and other grassroots activities. I suspect this is more in line with most members of ERE…sorry it’s not so thrilling.

I write this not to rain on Kevin’s parade and indeed some of his ideas can be used in more traditional recruiting. However before you go charging off to convince ‘the powers that be’ at your company that skype, facebook, streaming multi media, online chat et. al. are the future of recruiting, take a hard look at your candidate profile and ask ‘are my candidates really using this stuff?’

Just food for thought.

Great article. The challenge that we see with the current (and very Web 1.0) tools is that the candidate is just a resume stuck in a database. The fundamental shift with the new technologies is that the candidate is now empowered to showchase (in great detail) what they’ve accomplished, and what they are capable of achieving.

Soon the days of resumes sitting in big Monster-like databases hoping to be discovered will end.

Candidates can now create their profiles, manage them, and distribute.

I also like Jennifer’s comment - at the end of the day salary, benefits and culture will always play a big role. But I think what Kevin is describing has a lot to do with culture. Companies - using Web 2.0 technologies - have a better / more effective way of showing off their culture. All the ‘gadgets’ in the world won’t matter if you don’t use them to authentically represent what makes your company and the people there tick. That’s what attracts top quality candidates … an ‘insider’s view’ into the company’s culture & team.

A very on point article. It certainly drives home the point of the emerging use of Web 2.0 for recruiting.

Thank you for sharing and for providing clarity.

David

I would appreciate thoughts on trends toward changing the way companies look at how people want to work. The most obvious being opportunities for things like flexibility for remote connectivity, flex-time, job sharing and generally being truly accountable for their own productivity regardless of where they are and what time it is.

Granted, this environment is not conducive for everyone, but time and time again, we see that people are looking for more control over how they live. Work and life are not separate anymore; they aren’t even balanced anymore. They are integrated and so connected to each other that sometimes you can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.

What if we first review and revitalize a few internal policies before repackaging the same way of doing business? Migrating to Web 2.0 is something that companies won’t choose to do; they’ll have to do it in order to keep up with the dynamic recruiting environment. But before we rush to get into it, it might be prudent for companies to see what changes they can make from the inside out to make themselves more attractive to candidates. Then the real fun begins — launching that new perspective with Web 2.0.

Maybe we will see the ATS/CRMS being replaced or morphed into the CEP - Candidate Experience Platform. The CEP could provide the dashboard and vehicle for integrating the various modes of contact and the delivery of a wide range of multi-media insights into campus and culture, real-time interactions with potential co-works, and virtual experiences, such as simulations and job tryouts.

Recently I was exploring a career page for high tech jobs for a firm in Canada. About two pages into the text about the job I read: ‘We hope you are excited about this opportunity.’ Somehow, I feel a good majority of the potential candidates never made it that far. With today?s low tolerance for boring web pages, they clicked away, looking for Web 2.0

Keep writing Kevin. Give the recruiting community a continuous nudge into the present.