I know, I know - the last thing any of us need is some new acronym-defined term to describe a phenomenon arising from the way the internet is changing the world.

But the Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) is one you really should know about, because it defines a concept which will increasingly affect recruiting, especially in countries like Canada where we have some of the highest internet-adoption rates in the world.

FFT is defined (on Wikipedia) as follows:

"The Feiler Faster Thesis (of FFT) is a thesis, or supported argument, in modern journalism that suggests that the increasing pace of society is matched by (and perhaps driven by) journalists' ability to report events and the public's desire for more information."

First used in an article on Slate.com in 2000, FFT is largely used to describe the absorption of large amounts of politics-related information, by large groups of people, in a very short period of time. Thanks to online journalism - including blogs - political candidates can go from 'totally unknown' to 'everyone's talking about them' in as little as 48 hours.

But FFT is applicable far beyond political journalism. Thanks to blogs and sites like Facebook and YouTube, if a Formula 1 car crashes and the driver dies, even people who never watch car racing know about it within hours; if the previously-unknown Miss South Carolina makes a speech in which she says "The Iraq" and refers to South Africa as a continent, millions of people know who she is within 48 hours, and suddenly she's in the top 10 most-Googled names.

So what does this mean for recruiters? Two words: Employment brand.

All information travels faster and farther than it used to, but BAD news travels at the speed of light - and what happens on the internet, stays on the internet. Which means that if your organization has a customer service or employee disaster, it can affect your employment brand broadly and quickly - and it won't go away overnight.

Consider Verizon Math.

In 2006, a guy named George Vaccaro tried to get Verizon to fix his phone bill: Verizon's contracts promised a rate of .002 cents per minute but had been charging .002 dollars.

However, he ended up spending hours and hours with various Verizon customer service people, largely because no one at Verizon understood decimal systems - including their marketing department, who'd created materials using ".002" synonymously with "2 cents".

The whole thing became so hilarious to this guy that he created a whole website about it. He posted all his email communications to and from Verizon, but it wasn't until he posted an mp3 recording of his actual phone calls with Verizon that the internet started to wake up - hearing George try to explain basic mathematics to one customer service person after another (none of whom ever managed to understand it) was hilarious, especially to the computer geek-types who are instrumental in disseminating information of this type.

He posted the recording of the phone call on YouTube. YouTube removed it - but not before it got more than 1,000,000 views in a matter of days. There were t-shirts, video parodies, satiric articles - it was everywhere.

Verizon lawyers came down hard, but the damage was done. Even though all of this happened in 2006, 'Verizon Math' still lives on as a generic term for any company which regularly bilks customers or provides egregiously bad customer service.

What does this have to do with recruiting?

Well, it immediately became more difficult to find candidates for Verizon customer service roles - who wants to work at a company where everyone is stupid? And who wants to tell their friends they've just gotten a new job at Verizon, the laughing stock of the internet?

In the longer-term, Verizon Math is still costing Verizon Wireless serious money: they have to offer $24/hour plus bonuses, benefits and relocation packages in order to get customer service people. (Other US telecom companies pay more like $15/hour, and relocation packages are unheard-of.)

Bottom line? The Feiler Faster Thesis is just another reason why it's imperative for the HR/recruiting function to be cognizant of and connected to the overall business strategy and communications department.