Most recruiters, corporate or agency, have finally developed career sites and use the Internet for attracting, sourcing, and communicating with candidates and clients. The website is the bedrock of an effective recruiting practice, and while it may still be possible in local or niche markets to avoid it, for mainstream and volume recruiting a website is essential. In this article I am assuming you already have a decent website that has interactivity, video, audio, and other graphic material and updates frequently. That is old news.

But, to get a jump on your competition and to attract the savviest candidates, it takes more than a good website and good recruiting skills. Here are four essential tools for success.

Tool #1: Facebook or MySpace

You should have a personal and a corporate presence on a social network. I have only listed Facebook and MySpace because they represent the largest share of the social networking world in the United States and a significant percentage outside the U.S. If your organization has global operations and recruiting needs, then there are networks for China, India, and many other places that you should also consider.

College students and most other young professionals turn to these networks for information about you, to ask their friends about you, or to join a community of practice that you have created.

IBM DB2 developers have a Facebook community developed and maintained by IBM. KPMG in South Africa has developed a Facebook page to attract and communicate with potential candidates.

The U.S. Army, faced with massive recruiting challenges, has numerous Facebook and MySpace pages. Some of the pages act as testimonials or provide videos of real people talking about why they joined the Army. Other pages are focused on fun experiences such as simulations of driving a tank or on gaming.

However you use these networks, you will be exposing your brand to thousands of potential candidates who, at least to some degree, will judge their potential work experience by the quality of the content. That’s why these pages have to be done thoughtfully and have to connect to the type of viewer and what they are expecting to see and hear.

Tool #2: LinkedIn

I separate LinkedIn from Facebook and MySpace because it is not really a “social” network so much as a simple way to link people who know each other together in a web of interconnections. These interconnections can be useful when they are leveraged well, and LinkedIn has developed special applications for recruiters.

You should all get a copy of Bill Vick’s excellent guide to using LinkedIn for recruiting. LinkedIn allows you to build a network of people who know you and each other. By working to populate this network with the kinds of people who you either would like to recruit or who can help you find those you can recruit, you can leverage your success many times over.

And by learning methods such as those taught by Shally Steckerl you can use LinkedIn as a structured, searchable database of potential candidates.

LinkedIn is a versatile tool and can be used for marketing, search, and connecting. This is what makes it as essential tool for your toolbox.

Tool #3: Your Personal Blog

Developing a blog puts you ahead of almost all other recruiters by building your brand and your organization’s brand. Blogs have become the most authentic course of information for candidates. They like to read the personal stories and hear about your organization from your perspective.

Most candidates are wary of official corporate career sites because they realize how controlled these sites are and they understand that a public relations expert wrote the copy. What candidates are hungry for is authenticity and personality. And this is what blogs have in abundance.

Yet, every time I tell recruiters to create a blog I hear groans and complaints. I hear things such as, “My organization won’t allow us to blog.” Or, “I don’t have time.” Or, “No one can read all the blogs that are out there.”

While I can’t do much to help you overcome internal organizational bans of recruiting blogs, I can suggest you think about creating a personal blog outside of work that can build your brand and help you source good candidates.

Blogs can be updated once a week or so and entries can be quite short. Good blogs keep each posting to a single idea and add pictures or video to maintain interest. Devoting an hour or two a week to a blog is far more useful than spending that time pouring over unsolicited resumes or cold calling.

Tool #4: Twitter

Twitter is the most recent and least understood of these tools. It is a mini-blogging tool that allows you to write 140 characters at a time and send the message to a candidate’s mobile phone or website as a message or as an SMS. Over 2 million people have Twitter accounts and the number is growing very fast. Twitter can be used in a variety of ways to improve the recruiting experience and as a sourcing tool.

Jason Whitman from IT.Toolbox has written a few blogs pointing out ways Twitter is being used as a sourcing tool. Art’s Blog from Bullhorn, a major supplier of recruiting software for the agency world, also gives some ideas of ways to use Twitter for recruiting.

Use Twitter to push out job announcements to potential candidates, stay connected to a special group of people, or keep those top candidates in the loop. It’s free and easy to use. And, because so few are actually using it, you will have a real advantage for a while over everyone who is isn’t using it.

Staying current is never easy, but at least it can be fun. Experiment, play, and see where these tools take you. I think you will like where you end up.

Through speaking, I not only help companies understand the latest recruiting trends, but I also learn from hundreds of professionals about what they see as hot topics, emerging trends, and how they are approaching them. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on what recruiting trends will top the agendas of Global 500 recruiting managers in the next 12 to 18 months based on my interaction with more than 300 organizations around the globe this year.

The Latest Trends in Corporate Recruiting

Based on conversations with recruiting leaders, questions asked during seminars, advisory requests, and best-practice research, expect to see an increased emphasis in:

• Upgrading employment branding. Nothing is hotter around the globe in recruiting than employment branding. Firms throughout Asia, in particular, are increasingly adopting employment branding as a wildly important activity for 2009. The success of Google, a firm that has built the world’s strongest employment brand over an amazing five-year period, has led others to focus on this impactful long-term strategy. Key focus areas include increasing media coverage, increasing visibility online, building your “green” brand, and countering your “negative” employment brand. Firms to watch: Facebook, Google, Yum Brands, Tata, E&Y, Enterprise, U.S. Army, and Sodexo.
• Reinvigorating referral programs. Despite the growth of career-related Internet sites, the highest volume and quality candidates still come from well-designed employee referral programs. While heavy adoption was initially hampered by cultural issues around the world, today such programs are proving highly effective everywhere. Key focus areas include proactively approaching key employees for referrals (program targeting), leverage non-employee referrals, making reward systems more comprehensive, immediate, and visible, and last but not least, helping employees leverage social media to restore relationships, make new relationships, and build stronger relationships. Firms to watch: AmTrust Bank, Edward Jones, Whirlpool, and Amazon.com.
• Renewing the focus on quality of hire. As a result of strong research by organizations like staffing.org, recruiting leadership has begun to refocus its efforts on identifying factors that increase the quality or the on-the-job performance of new hires. Key focus areas include improved quality of hire metrics, calculating the performance differential between average and quality hires, and identifying sources that produce high-quality hires. Firms to watch: Aimco and Wipro.
• Reinforcing the business case for recruiting. As budgets tighten and slow economic growth continues, recruiting budgets will face constant constraints. Instead of whining, many leading talent organizations are seizing the opportunity to reposition themselves as non-transactional organizations. When the focus in recruiting is placed on non-transactional, more systemic issues, such organizations can work with the CFO and risk management to demonstrate the importance of supporting recruiting even during times of reduced hiring volume. The key focus areas include predictive modeling, dollarizing recruiting results, and showing the dollar impact of vacancies in revenue generating positions. Firms to watch: Aimco, DFS, Wipro, and Google.

• Utilizing social networks. Although using social networks as a recruiting source has been a well-discussed concept for a while, few firms have found productive ways to truly leverage social media sites. However, as new approaches are developed that more accurately align with the paradigm of social media audiences, recruiting on social networks will become more mainstream. Focus areas include encouraging your employees to be more visible online and using networks to identify innovators. Key networking sites include Facebook (global), MySpace (global), Friendster (global), LinkedIn (global), Twitter (U.S.), Multiply (Asia), Mixi (Japan), Cyworld (Korea), and Xiaonei (China). Firms to watch: E&Y, Zappos, CIA, Yum Brands, Google, and Facebook.
• Utilizing video. While it may be hard for some to fathom, 1:1 and 1:many video has become a very popular communication medium, surpassing all other forms of Internet traffic. Second only to employee referrals, the most impactful tool for effectively demonstrating the excitement and passion at a firm is online video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then moving pictures demonstrating what it’s like to work at your firm would have to be “priceless.” Focus areas include posting on video-sharing sites such as YouTube (global), Youku.com (China), and sharing employee-generated “unscripted” videos on your corporate site. Firms to watch: Deloitte, Microsoft, and Google.
• Upgrading succession planning. A common practice becomes much more critical as global growth and large-scale retirement loom on the horizon. Focus areas include replacing retirees, improved succession planning metrics, adding external candidates to your plan, and fast-track leadership development. Firms to watch: Intuit, Eli Lilly, Deloitte, and TVA.
• Using employee blogs for recruiting. A practice that is finally beginning to enter the mainstream is employee blogging to support recruiting efforts. The very best firms use blogs not just to spread their message but also to answer questions and to make their company appear more “real” and approachable. Key focus areas include blogs by employees other than recruiters and micro-blogs. Firms to watch: Microsoft, Google, and Sun.
• Using mobile-phone recruiting. As mobile phones with amazing features spread throughout the population, recruiting managers are beginning to realize that they can be a powerful recruiting media. Key focus areas include text messaging, mobile video, and mobile-accessible corporate careers sites. Firms to watch: Google and nearly any firm in Asia!
• Revitalizing corporate jobs page. Recruiting managers are beginning to understand that pitifully dull and dated websites drive away innovators. Focus areas include providing personalized information to the visitor, Flash video integration, blogs, podcasts, and virtual Q&As. Firms to watch: Microsoft, Google, and Deloitte.
• Using a CRM model for hiring. I’ve been touting the values of the CRM (customer relationship management) model for years. More firms are beginning to understand the value of improving the experience at each “touch point” with the candidate. Key focus areas include relationship recruiting, automated applicant profiling, automated event calendaring, and robust lifecycle metrics. Firms to watch: U.S. Army, GlaxoSmithKline, and E&Y.
• Hiring innovators. Rapid product copying and the high visibility of innovative firms like Apple and Google are forcing recruiting managers to modify recruiting processes in order to successfully recruit innovators and game changers. Key focus areas include relationship recruiting, pre-need hiring, and tolerant/inclusive screening and interviewing processes. Firms to watch: IBM and Google.
• Recruiting globally. Recruiting managers are beginning to learn how to differentiate multi-national recruiting from true global recruiting. Key focus areas include global sourcing, globalized websites, and globalized employer referral programs. Firms to watch: Infosys and IBM.

Other Trends to Observe

Although these trends aren’t red-hot, they are emerging areas where a few firms have taken the lead and have produced noticeable results. These are certainly not going to become mainstream for most firms during the next year, but if you are an innovator, keep a close watch:

• Virtual-reality recruiting on SecondLife
• Video games as recruiting tools
• Online assessment tools
• Using contests to identify internal and external prospects
• Simulations for candidate assessment
• Inclusive recruiting (replacing diversity recruiting)
• Remote interviewing
• Remote college recruiting
• A renewed focus on internal redeployment
• Boomerangs (bringing back key ex-employees)
• Recruiting at professional events
• Using credit card/sales leads to find prospects
• Using analytics and modeling to predict future workforce needs
• A new focus on the use of contingent workers in the weak economy
• “Remote” college recruiting
• A focus on contingent hiring
• Improving on-boarding to build the employment brand
• Reality TV shows as a recruiting and branding mechanism

Not-So-Hot Areas

Here are some areas that vendors and consultants talk a lot about, but in many cases, there is little innovation to report:

• Outsourcing recruiting processes. Protecting your own recruiters makes this option less attractive as budgets get tight.
• Video resumes. It’s still hard to get managers to view them.
• Competency modeling. Too time-consuming to undertake during tough times.
• Large job boards. Always mediocre, and their value is shrinking.
• Retention. In a tight economy, only the very best will consider leaving.
• Speed of hire. As unemployment rises, there is less pressure to make rapid hiring decisions.

Final Thoughts

These are just my thoughts. If you have identified any additional trends, let me know (johns@sfsu.edu) or post them on the ERE forum.

I have chosen four blogs/websites that I think are useful to recruiters and add new knowledge and perspectives. Each blogger that I have chosen is also an author of a book or two and is a researcher in his/her area. They all are looked upon as experts by their peers.

This list could be much longer, of course, and I know I have missed some other equally good blogs.  If you have a favorite, please send me a link and let me enjoy it too. I will do a new column from time to time and add more to the list.

Value Networks is a site that adds depth to the discussions we have about social networks. Verna Allee, the principal behind this site and discussion group, is known all over the world for her work in mapping networks – in other words, graphically showing us how people interact and with whom in a value chain. She has written several books on knowledge management and on social networking and has been a regular faculty member at my Future of Talent Retreat. Her website discusses and provides tools for value network analysis, which is a methodology for understanding, using, visualizing, optimizing internal and external value networks, and complex economic ecosystems.

While this may sound overwhelming, the site contains rich information about social networks and how to understand the interactions and interrelationships between the members of a network. The methodology is being used by many organizations to better understand how their customers interact with them and each other, how suppliers interact with customers, and how employees network both within and outside the organization.

There are many applications of this technology that could be applied to such things as mapping candidate interaction or tracking who networks with whom on your social networking site. There is also a Google group associated with this organization that might be of interest.

Jay Cross, the guru of e-learning and informal learning, has a fabulously interesting and entertaining blog discussing a wide range of topics generally around learning. If you are in a talent management role or have extended interests in learning, this is a good blog to make a regular read. Jay has written a few books on learning, coined the term e-learning many years ago, and is a regular on the speaking circuits. He is very knowledgeable about talent issues in general and often has posts that relate to the generations, demographics, and other areas of interest to recruiters and HR professionals.

His book on Informal Learning states that most organizations invest their training budget where it will have the least impact. He shows how most of us learn by doing, experimenting, or by getting someone to coach us.  You more than likely learned to be recruiter by jumping in a doing it with a little help from a more senior recruiter along the way.

Bob Sutton is a professor at Stanford and the author of a number of books that most recruiters and HR folks would enjoy. One of my favorites is his book entitled, Weird Ideas that Work: 111/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Performance.

This book is really a series of short articles or essays on topics highly relevant to recruiting. For example, weird idea number-one is, “Hire ‘Slow Learners’ and weird idea two is, “Hire People Who Make You Uncomfortable.”

His latest book is called the No Asshole Rule, in which he talks about the need for successful organizations to eliminate ruthlessly any managers who are assholes.  A fun and very relevant read for most of us!

His website and blog bring almost daily facts and commentary on management, human resources, recruiting, and related issues. It is a great source of information and ideas as well as a wealth of good material for discussion with your hiring managers.

His blog continues the discussions and is full of humor and current interest topics.

Many of you may have heard of Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto and the writer of two bestselling books, The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class. He focuses on issues such as immigration and demographics.

His latest book, called the Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, explains that globally more than one-third of all workers are employed in the creative sector.

Some cities are more attractive to this class of worker and they are the growth cities which act as talent magnets. His work is almost required reading for any recruiter and his theories explain many of the unemployment and talent scarcity issues recruiters face.

Have you tried to attract a stockbroker to Fairbanks, Alaska? How about a ballet dancer to Omaha? Where should you live if you want to prosper over the next decade? What cities will attract the best candidates and why? His blog keeps you up-to-date on the latest trends and research.

Hope you enjoy these and have a great summer.

So many recent news articles proclaim that social networking and blogging are the keys to effective recruiting. The vibe of these stories is that if you aren’t already using these activities, your fate in the war for talent will be to become another battlefield casualty. You are a dinosaur and deserve to be extinct.

Whenever something new comes along, there tends to be a lot of hype, based on the “promise” of what it may deliver. Think ATS and job boards. It’s a lot like elephants trying to procreate: there’s a lot of hooting and hollering and dust getting kicked up at the start, and then nothing may happen for a very long time. And if it does happen, it’s going to be difficult and painful.

Social networking, and its sibling, blogging, are in such a state today. People are excited about the prospect of reaching hordes of people, and apparently some believe this is the new requirement for recruiting success.

Boy, are they wrong. Reaching hordes of people through media stopped working some time ago. Remember newspaper ads for jobs? The Internet was supposed to change all that. Things were going to be different.

The Internet is interactive, and if it wasn’t at first, then Web 2.0 will resolve any problems that remained. Ah, yes, interactive, like job boards. My goodness, I almost forgot how effective those are, so effective that we must have a “relationship management system.” Because now we have so many relationships (all genuine and heartfelt) that we need social networking.

What’s Wrong with Social Networking?

Before we delve into what is wrong, let’s start with what’s right about it. It’s a way to connect with people in a manner that was not possible before. With any social networking site, you can make a lot of friends and share experiences, information, articles, and a whole lot more, including jobs. Better yet, your network can distribute your jobs far and wide. You can also search your network for those elusive passive candidates.

All is good, all is great, and we have found the promised land. But wait, something is not right. As they say in Israel, why is the promised land the only place in the Middle East lacking any oil?

What’s missing here? For starters, how many people in your network have you spoken with more than once? There’s a reason the average person has only five close friends, and it’s not because Facebook hadn’t been invented. It’s difficult to maintain close contacts with more than a handful of people. The fact that people have hundreds of connections on social networking sites only represents an improvement over a Rolodex, not that we’re suddenly more social.

What do you really know about the vast majority of people in your network, without having to open their profile? Ah, but that’s not the point, because you now have access to a pool of people like never before. With a few clicks, they can learn about your jobs and you can uncover their skills.

If it was only that simple. As many have discovered, it may work on occasion to tell your network about a job you’re looking to fill, but do it too often and your messages become spam. As for finding candidates, social networking sites lack sufficient descriptions of skills to be anything more than possible leads that require massive effort to turn into hires. It is not a scalable model. It may work for an executive search firm or for the difficult high-level positions, but for most others, it is unworkable.

One cannot show that X hours spent social networking will result in Y hires. For those vast numbers of accounting, finance, sales, engineering, and just about every other mainstream position, a recruiter cannot expect to accomplish much, or anything, by social networking.

It’s another weapon for the arsenal. Undoubtedly so, but it’s a single-shot rifle with an inaccurate sight when what’s required is a machine gun.

The Saga of Blogging Bob

I have a question. Who is going to write all these blogs? And when are they going to write them? If recruiter Bob comes into the office Monday and starts blogging away instead of recruiting, he’ll probably be invited to seek his fortune elsewhere. Management likes to see you do the job you were hired for (bosses are like that). So, if Bob wants to stay employed, he’ll have to blog from home.

Of course, Bob loves his job more than his family, so blogging from home is no problem. He’ll just stay up late and engage in stimulating conversations with all kinds of interesting people online, which is going to make him a stellar recruiter. Oh, except Bob isn’t a very stimulating conversationalist, or writer. And he occasionally feels the straightjacket of his job description is confining.

Bob has other interests, you know. He’s an individual. It is possible that Bob’s expressions won’t articulate the corporate position as effectively as his employer might hope. And it’s possible that maybe, just maybe, a reader might confuse Bob’s views with his employer’s during a late-night blogging session.

The boys over in Legal want to chat with Bob. No problem, says Bob. More fodder for the raging debate in Bob’s blog.

Through his late-night blog, he’s become a master-debater. He’s reaching such heights of success that he’s above trivial considerations like legal liability. He’s bulletproof Bob! Formerly a recruiter with a blog, now a famous blogger who used to recruit!

He’ll get his own byline in major recruiting publications. Stop by Bob’s booth at the next recruiting conference and get a free Bob-ble head. He’ll be on the speaker circuit with bleached white teeth. He’ll date spokesmodels. He’ll be so busy “going global” he won’t have time for recruiting. But he’ll tell everyone how to leverage technology in recruiting, and that blogging is the one true path.

Well, with all that blogging success, Bob’s going to need a paycheck. Thank goodness for social networking. I hear it’s the only way to find a job these days. It’s time for Bob to get LinkedIn.

Blogs are hot. Recruiting blogs have sprouted up on a regular basis for months, and competing writers now vie with each other for readership and “followership.” The majority of readers of blogs are Gen Yers, and they are the influencers and indicators of what the future of media may look like.

A survey published last fall by Forrester’s Charlene Li indicates that “24% of Gen Yers read blogs, which is twice as often as the 12% of Gen Xers (ages 27-40) and three times the 7% of Young Boomers (ages 41-50) that read blogs.”

What makes blogs so compelling?

It’s not hard to understand. We live in a sound-bite era. Over the past two decades, people have increasingly turned away from long books and in-depth writing toward short, action-oriented pieces. Books such as Who Moved My Cheese, that are written at a high-school level or lower, are wildly popular. Television led the way by nurturing a generation that reads little and watches video a lot. Hence the popularity of YouTube and magazines such as Discover, BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company. They have made the short article almost a requirement. Only a handful of publications with small circulations such as The Atlantic or The New Yorker offer readers in-depth articles longer than a few thousand words. Don’t get me wrong, here. I am not complaining (well, maybe a little), I’m just describing what is a reality.

Given this, the Forrester survey findings are not surprising. Gen Y and the younger portion of Gen X are the prime target audience for blogs. And, when they are well written, blogs are a powerful way of reaching younger employees, candidates, and fellow recruiters.

Our industry has a lot of great blogs that are, again not surprisingly, written by Gen X or Gen Y recruiters.

RecruitingBlogs.com recently published the results of its annual readers’ ratings of recruitment blogs, sponsored by ZoomInfo. Here are the winners of that contest in 10 categories, and I urge you to take a look at each one of them. They all follow the rules for an effective blog that I outline below.

1. Overall Recruiting: Six Degrees From Dave
2. Recruiting Blogosphere: Recruiting Animal
3. Third-Party Recruiting: Hiring Revolution
4. Best Recruiting Technology: I, Donato
5. Job Hunting: Wired & Hired
6. Corporate Recruiting: WirelessJobs.com
7. Sourcing/Research: CyberSleuthing
8. Group: Xtra Cheezhead
9. Recruiting Industry: Six Degrees From Dave
10. HR: Gautam Ghosh

Effective blogs are tuned to their readership in many ways, including their tone, style, and even their look and feel. But the following four critical elements have to be in place for a blog to gain the traction that it needs to get a high level of consistent readership.

Short and Fun

First of all, each posting must be short. Entries longer than 500 words are not going to be read, probably not even skimmed, by the average reader. The best entries are most likely 200-250 words and contain lots of white space and breaks. Once in a while, a longer post can be effective if the writer is telling a story about something exciting or has the ability to maintain some level of suspense. But even then it may be better to break the story over a few days to bring readers back.

Pictures and short videos are also useful. Jim Stroud, a recruiter at Microsoft, publishes a fun blog filled with humor and videos that exemplify what I am talking about.

Personal

Blogs gain a great deal of power when the writer is a real person. Heather Hamilton at Microsoft pioneered the idea of writing naturally and honestly. Good blogs are not overly edited or sanitized by the corporate PR department. They may have mistakes or reveal personal facts about the writer that lead the reader to feeling some identity with him or her.

Here is a great example from a recent post by HeatherLeigh: “Marketing plus potty humor.”

“If you don’t appreciate potty humor or clever marketing, don’t watch this.

And, can I tell you how proud I am that this was referred to me by my mother? Yeah, sometimes moms rock, even though I am sure they prefer to remain anonymous (and, right now, she is thanking her lucky stars she has a different last name than mine).”

Story-Based

Tell a story. We are all more likely to become engaged when there is a personal connection, some incident that arouses interest and hooks us into continuing to read.

Here’s an example from Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author of the best-selling book The No Asshole Rule. As I read this, I want to find out what he said and what happens in the end. Here’s an example from Bob Sutton:

“I was listening to a great show on the other day on Fresh Air, where Terry Gross interviewed Bob Sullivan, the author of Gotcha Capitalism. I started getting quite agitated by the interview, as Sullivan talked about all the ways that credit card companies, hotels, and especially, cell phone companies ‘get us’ with hidden charges and related sleazy practices (listen to it here).”

We all tell stories, relate past incidents, and build relationships around shared experiences. The same applies in writing a blog.

Authenticity

Many blogs gain authenticity simply from their personal nature. We all tend to believe people who have a face, a personality, and are, to some degree, known to us. But, on the other hand, it is also useful to link to other blogs, websites, people who reinforce the posted message. If you look at the example above from Bob Sutton, you can see the links to the NPR show and to the book itself on Amazon.com.

Really good blogs use lots of links and associations to add depth and credibility. By doing this, the author builds trust.

Dave Mendoza, in his award-winning Six Degrees from Dave blog, illustrates all of these points. He uses video very effectively, links widely, uses humor, and introduces personal information in a way that makes him a real person.

Writing a blog is not hard, but it requires understanding these basics. It also requires the author to be engaged, have fun, and reflect his excitement to the readership.

Quite often, recruiters ask me to recommend today’s best books and blogs. I’ve compiled some links to blogs that are a bit out of the recruiting mainstream and are not written by recruiters. These blogs provide you with a slightly different view of things and often from a wider perspective as well.

Out of the hundreds of books that are published every month, only a very few make my list. I try to recommend books that I will refer back to and that carry a message that isn’t faddish. The three I list here are all keepers.

Blogs

The Future of Work written by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware contains powerful commentary and research on how the way we work is changing. They document everything from work/life balance to telecommuting and explain the trends and issues that crop up.

These two have been working and documenting the changing workplace for several years. They have case studies and numerous examples of new styles of organizational structure as well as new ways that people are working. Every recruiter is going to face candidates and hiring managers who are in conflict over work styles, time, and place. This blog may help you (or them) better understand and find solutions to these clashes.

Fast Company, the magazine that probably best documents the emerging world. It covers everything from how we are changing work, travel, food, and clothing to how talent is changing. It offers excellent and insightful information on a range of topics, including talent and recruiting.

For insight into how the generations clash and mesh, Russ Eckel’s blog Generations at Work is essential reading. Russ discusses everything from the emerging millennial culture to mentoring.

Perhaps the funniest and most controversial of generational bloggers is Penelope Trunk (who will be speaking at the ERE Expo Spring 2008 in San Diego). Her blog, Brazen Careerist, is also the title of her recent book. She offers Generation Y career advice that is bold, fresh, and definitely her own! Take a look and see what you think.

For those of you interested in social networks Fred Stutzman, a PhD student in Information Science, authors an excellent blog called Unit Structures. His posts are deep and thoughtful and have links to many other blogs and resources of information on social networking.

Another commentator and researcher on social networks is Danah Boyd, a PhD student at the University of California at Berkeley. Her blog, Apopenia, has recently carried a fascinating discussion on the sociological difference between Facebook and MySpace.

Books

Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

Penelope is the blogger I mention above. Her new book has been selling like hotcakes as it is the first I have seen to begin defining how young people are approaching the search for work.

Although written as an advice book for young job seekers and college students, it offers insight and fun commentary on our current employment practices and on what is emerging as the 21st century view of work and life. She outlines 45 new rules for success, many of which I am almost certain you will either agree with or absolutely disagree with. Penelope leaves little room for the cautious person in the middle. Her views are powerful and challenging.

Career Distinction by William Arruda and Kristen Dixson

This book’s subtitle sums up its main message: Stand out by building your brand. Similar in theme to speeches and books by Tom Peters, it advocates the concept of developing a strong personal brand.

Chapters cover topics such as how to define your “brand community” and how to tell your brand story. They help you understand how to use career-marketing tools and assess your online identity.

With the growing use of search engines to look for people and the rise of social networks, it is critical to know what your online identity looks like and what people are going to find about you. An interesting and useful addition to your knowledge as a recruiter.

The Future of Work by Thomas Malone

Most everyone who works in a corporation participates in discussions about work, hierarchy, org structure, and leadership. He predicts that we will move to much less centralized organizations as we move into this century. He discusses how technology has already reduced the need for central structures and how it has opened up the possibility of decentralized communities and organizations defined by markets.

Along the way, he discusses the future of work and workers. He advocates defining jobs much more broadly and allowing people to cultivate new skills through experimentation and discovery. He says “let a thousand flowers bloom” in order to foster the creativity and innovation that will keep organizations competitive. If you have time to read only one book as this year draws to a close, consider this one. It is easy to read and filled with solid research (Tom is a professor at MIT) as well as thought-provoking ideas on the future.

I hope you find some of these useful, and I am always looking for some recommendations of good blogs and good books from you as well.

I read around 50 blogs on a regular basis and find myself scanning more and more of them. They are replacing newspapers and even magazines as a source of information. Some blogs are taking over the product review business and give you and me the chance to express our candid opinions about products and services we use.

This means that, eventually, blogs will comment on your recruiting process, your career site, and even on how people were treated when interviewed by your organization. They bring what used to be private, or at least fairly contained, to a much wider audience. Hence their power and their potential to do harm.

Right now, most blogs focus around a topic or profession. For example, the majority of recruiting blogs are written for fellow recruiters with only a handful aimed at candidates or potential candidates.

When you think about that, it really isn’t unusual, as the motivation people have to write blogs comes from a desire to share information or to state an opinion. It’s a bit of a shame, though, as blogs can also be powerful for marketing and influencing.

I always come back to Heather Hamilton at Microsoft who has been writing a blog to encourage people to apply for jobs at Microsoft for several years. She is a great marketer and subtly influences people to think about working at Microsoft. I think we need to see far more blogs on this type.

I know that recruiters face some real issues in getting their legal and marketing departments to agree to blogs, but the effort would be well spent. They can help avert negative publicity by addressing issues in a proactive way. They can promote what’s good about your organization and showcase opportunities. They are an authentic voice in the sea of marketing hype that most candidates have to plow through.

If you are writing a blog for your candidates or potential candidates, I would really like to know about it. I am going to do a column soon on how to get your blog approved, and I need any tips I can get.

On the Periphery

Most intriguing are the blogs that are on the periphery of recruiting but help us to better understand the people and issues we face in recruiting.

The best of the bunch is the blog by Penelope Trunk who has written the book Brazen Careerist. In that books she provides career advice to Gen Y and in doing so explores many of the myths and truths about both Gen X and Gen Y.

If you read the reviews on Amazon from readers of her book, you will quickly discover how controversial she is. Half the reviewers say she is full of you-know-what and the other half love her. As a Gen X writer herself, who focuses a lot on Gen Y and what they want from work and life that is different from what she wants, she opens up a Pandora’s box of issues that need talking about. Her open attitude and tell-it-like-it-is style make this a very refreshing book and blog.

Just about every recruiter I know is a member of a social network. Most likely, they have joined LinkedIn, as it has become the de facto social network for recruiting. It has the most business-oriented members and reaches a global membership.

For recruiters focused on younger people and college students, Facebook and MySpace are popular choices. But these are only the tip of a very large iceberg. Wikipedia lists over 104 different social networks, but perhaps fewer than half are really suitable for recruiting purposes. These public networks are great for finding potential candidates but do not do much to help build relationships.

I have recently written about Ning, the site that allows you to create your own social network for anything. Ning was created by Marc Andreessen, who not so long ago created Netscape Navigator, a service that opened the Internet up to folks like you and me.

Ning has been an opportunity for several ERE readers to develop social networks for their candidates and employees and thus begin exploring how relationships can be fostered using networks. Ning, or sites like it, have the potential to revolutionize how we communicate and maintain relationships with candidates.

It is so easy to use that even I have created several networks. While Ning may not be the eventual platform of choice for recruiting, it opens the door to what is coming. You will see more and more networks being designed by the current ATS and HR software vendors and many organizations will also develop their own networks.

Recruiting is moving rapidly from a find ‘em and screen ‘em profession to a find them, court them, stay in touch with them, and sell them profession. These networks will power that change.

Marc, always at the very edge of change, is well aware of this and also has a blog where he discusses Ning, social networking, and the future of software and technology. It is not directly related to recruiting but it is well worth spending some time reading if you want to be on the leading edge.

Jason Corsello, an ex-analyst (if there is such a thing) and an executive with the Center of Excellence at Knowledge Infusion also writes a blog, The Human Capitalist. He explores talent management, talent-related software, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and a lot more. It is a well-written blog from a person with in-depth expertise in the human capital and talent management arena.

All new technologies arrive before we know how to best use them. We are in the experimental stages with both blogs and networks, and staying informed is very critical to eventually figuring out how to use them wisely. I hope these leads will be useful to you.

Passion is perhaps the most important component of performance. Blogs are providing a new window into what drives individuals that we’ve never been able to see on a resume.

In the course of building my own teams and recruiting for other companies, there was always a certain intangible quality I sought that was one of the strongest indicators of on-the-job performance.

In the interview process, you could see this intangible quality in their eyes when they talked about what mattered most to them. In the offer stage, you could see it when they answered “hell yes” to your job offer (vs. acting wishy-washy about it, which is usually time to pull out). And on the job, you could see it in the zest they applied toward the tasks at hand.

When I found someone with that certain “spark,” I could count on that person to go above and beyond traditional job duties, work harder and smarter, stay later, and think creatively to develop solutions to the challenges at hand.

Why Passion Has Been Hard to Find

What makes recruiting so difficult at times is that poor performers often have great resumes. Identifying someone with passion from looking at a resume, which is very likely to look and sound very similar to any other resume out there, is close to impossible.

In one instance, a past co-worker sent in a resume to a company I was working in. His resume looked outstanding, but I remembered from working with him that he never showed up on time, couldn’t stay organized or on task, regularly flaked on his co-workers and left them hanging, and was eventually fired for performance reasons. I knew from people who had previously worked with him that this was a pattern that had manifested itself throughout his career.

Yet here was his well-formatted resume that looked outstanding?on paper. I knew he could fake his way through the interview process, and maybe even provide references from people who were less affected by his poor performance.

It was in that moment that I understood how disastrous hiring decisions get made. Which is why a resume actually means very little to me, other than to ensure that a candidate has a stable work history (not a job-hopper, although my definition of this has changed over the years) and is achievement-oriented.

I actually prefer the resumes you might find on a site like LinkedIn, where an individual can manage their reputation as well as their experience summary. Yes, the comments that are put on their profile are moderated (i.e., the candidate can choose what goes on there), so you take them all with a grain of salt.

But you can often get a window into how passionate they are when their past co-workers use words like “visionary,” “above and beyond,” and “thought leader,” while also sharing specific experiences they had with an individual. The level of detail is what I usually key in on; I’ve found that poorer performers’ recommendations are more generic, like “this person was great to work with.”

What Blogs Tell You About Passion

Today, TechCrunch estimates that there are over 50 million blogs on the Web. Some of these are targeted toward family and friends, while an increasing number are work-related.

Just look at a blog like SystematicHR, written by an HR consultant at a major consulting firm, to see how a person’s passion for their work can be demonstrated on a blog. This is not a personal-glory blog like many of the ones you see out there. This person is clearly so passionate about the issues facing modern HR departments that he feels compelled to blog about it on almost a daily basis. And the intelligent content he produces is helping shape the dialogue and thinking about how we mobilize our workforces, tap into new talent pools, and apply technology toward our business challenges.

At the recent Talent Unconference, I had the pleasure of meeting the individual responsible for this blog, who I’ll keep anonymous. It didn’t surprise me at all when I saw that same intangible spark that I had always looked for on the face of and in the conversation with this individual.

What This Means for Recruiters and Recruiting Departments

Clearly, just having a blog isn’t enough to determine whether someone will be a top performer. But it is an indicator, which means that there could be implications for recruiting departments that want to capitalize on this growing phenomenon.

Eventually, recruiters may become as good at quickly identifying top, emerging thinkers in the blogosphere as they are at scanning through piles of resumes for specific keywords and skill-sets. They may become as adept at doing a blog search on Google Blog Search as they are at mining active candidate resumes on Monster and CareerBuilder. Any strategic media research projects to identify potential sources of talent might start including blogs that employees read.

With a degree of irony, many of the candidates are beginning to consider their blogs as replacements for their resumes. As you can see by the responses, a few employers are starting to take notice. Like many new technology trends, some of the earliest adopters are in technology-related industries.

This will change and expand over time. In the gaming industry, both Electronic Arts and Red 5 realize the passion that bloggers bring to the table and are both becoming skilled at finding top candidates’ blogs in their industry.

Most recently, Red 5 launched what was perhaps the world’s most innovative recruitment marketing campaign targeted partially at an audience of smart bloggers they had identified.

At Microsoft, recruiters and other employees are encouraged to blog to spread the word about careers at the company and to evangelize new products. A new entrant to the recruiting space called Blogging Systems is helping employers like MetLife and Boston Scientific create communities of talent and interact with other bloggers.

If you’re looking for top performers, blogging may help recruiters identify candidates with a passion for what they do, which can translate into more returns for your organization.

Blogging is not the only indicator of a potential superstar employee, as the content being produced needs to be intelligent and not all-consuming for the blogger. But in a competitive market for talent, every potential advantage in identifying top talent needs to be explored, and the recruiting potential of blogs and bloggers is still relatively untapped.

Just a year ago, there were fewer than a dozen blogs that related to recruiting or talent. Today there are probably over three dozen and more appear every day.

Gen Y recruiters regard them as mainstream and so do many Gen Xers and Boomers. Vendors of talent systems and services feel pressure to have a blog to showcase their awareness of the market and of the customer.

They are an inexpensive and fast way for an unknown recruiter or vendor to reach an audience. This, however, does not mean that blogs are well-written or even interesting. Some are just rants or raves and, unfortunately, most are not very good.

I define a good blog as having three characteristics:

1. It must be concise and to the point. It should be something I can scan in two to three minutes and take away a nugget or two. I dislike long blogs, full of opinions without data or facts or links. If someone wants to write an essay, they should publish it as a white paper or an article. Blogs are for quick reading.
2. It must offer fresh insight into a topic or take a current idea or trend and offer a different view. I don’t want to read blogs that are just a rehash of other people’s thoughts or diatribes about them.
3. It should provide links to websites and other blogs where I can learn more about whatever the blogger is discussing. This is either to reinforce the content, validate it, or provide opposing thoughts. It should let me quickly determine through these links and references whether what is said is an opinion or a fact.

Most mornings I spend 30 minutes or so scanning the various blog entries that have come in overnight. Sometimes I miss a day or two, then have a bit of catching up to do, but the time spent usually pays off by making me aware of something new or by jolting me into thinking about an issue in a different way.

The blogosphere enriches and overwhelms. It is very hard to know whether what is written is a fact or an opinion. Ideas are thrown out without the oversight provided in more traditional media by a producer, editor, or director.

This requires that you read blogs written by reliable, trusted sources and that you calibrate what you read with your own experience.

Here is my incomplete and fairly short list of blogs that I like. All of these blogs relate to the world of talent: recruitment, human resources, or development. What I have tried to do is to compile a set of blogs that, taken together, give an overall picture of what is happening in the world of talent.

There is Gerry Crispin’s lively blog called the CareerXroadsAnnex annotating his talent-related journeys around the world and his activities in human resources. He writes about once a week and has a style that both entertains and informs. Gerry can always be counted on to discuss an issue from a little different perspective or chronicle an event in a memorable way.

And every few days, Todd Raphael of ERE keeps us up to date on current events and happenings in the recruiting space, reporting about people, vendors, and corporations. His blogs are short, filled with links and easy to read.

If you are focused on Asia, particularly China, there is no better source in English than Frank Mulligan. Frank is an Irishman who has lived for a decade or more in China and runs an RPO there. He is well connected and very aware of the issues organizations face as they try to find talent there.

Some blogs are in area related to recruiting such as the future of work, the generations, or employee development.

Russ Eckel, a sociologist who researches the differences between the generations, discusses the values, beliefs, and work habits of the under-30 generation that is just now entering the workplace in large numbers.

Charlie Grantham, a professor at the University of San Francisco, writes a fascinating blog on the future of work. He covers topics from what work might look like down the road to what the workplace will even look like in a few years. The blog contains a rich set of links and great information for anyone in HR.

Several vendors contribute solid blogs and illuminate the technology space particularly well.

One of my favorite is by Alice Snell at Taleo, who covers a lot of territory in her blog commenting on everything from screening processes to hiring in Singapore.

Another blog, commenting more on employee performance than recruiting, but nonetheless very relevant to recruiters, is that by Success Factors. It’s called Performance and Talent Management.

While this is a very small list, it represents a cross-section of commentary and thoughtful practice from some very good people. From time to time I will present other blogs.

After all, they seem to spring up almost daily, but I encourage you to skim widely and wisely.

Just when you think you’ve mastered the Internet, along comes a new generation that is changing the way we use the Web. It will be incumbent on today’s recruiting innovators to rethink and shift their recruiting tactics in response to the changing dynamics of the Web’s second generation.

Ten years ago, leading companies identified that the habits of their target audience were rapidly changing. The Internet, once an exclusive haven for techies and geeks, was now becoming an indispensable resource for everyone from college students to experienced professionals.

This shift enabled a virtual revolution in recruiting, with large recruiting teams, high costs, and long hiring cycles giving way to faster, more agile recruiting departments that could do much more with less and more quickly.

This shift to online recruiting began with next-generation job seekers: namely, college students. Today we can see that the college audience is once again proving to be a bellwether audience signaling times of change ahead.

From the way they use the technology to the way they interact with and create social circles, their changing behaviors are behind the increasingly rapid evolution of the Internet as we know it.

Is There Really a Web 2.0?

We’ve heard hot buzzwords before like push technology, convergence, and custom portals. Not much materialized from these concepts except that fledgling businesses without viable business models raised large amounts of venture capital, threw lavish parties, and ultimately, crashed and burned (some in spectacular fashion). We fell in love with a sock puppet, but not enough to buy pet supplies from him. We watched the Furniturewarehouse.com Bowl on national television. If you were lucky, you saw Celine Dion or KISS at an IPO party. If you were unlucky, you bought stock in said party-thrower. And a few winners survived.

And now comes “Web 2.0.” Terms like user-generated content, tags, social networks, contextual targeting, and mass customization have emerged. Sites like MySpace, YouTube, del.icio.us, and Digg have become overnight sensations. There are 50 million blogs, with two new blogs getting created every second.

Websites are becoming much more dynamic and immersive than ever before, threatening to turn the “world’s biggest library” into the “world’s biggest form of interactive entertainment.”

I believe that Web 2.0 is a convenient, easily understandable phrase that represents a much broader set of changes happening online. Yes, there are some technological changes underway allowing new sets of innovations. There are some new (and recycled) approaches to business problems that would have never been possible without the level of online participation that we see today (for perspective, 75% of U.S. households are online, and it took only five years for the Internet to reach 50 million people vs. 38 years for TV and 13 years for radio). The Internet and the technology and processes behind it are maturing.

More important for recruiting is that the audience is changing. They’re using the Internet in entirely different ways than the original Web generation did. Some of the changes happening with this new generation include:

• The Web is a hub of social interaction. It is no longer just an information resource, which results in this generation forming fewer close friends and more “weak ties,” or people they do not know well, but unite with around common interests.
• Privacy is no longer an issue. This generation seems quite comfortable publishing all of the gory details of their lives online. Some of these details will shock you. Get used to workers who are perfectly functioning members of the work world, but who perhaps make decisions in their personal lives that you find appalling.
• More time spent online than watching TV. During this time, they visit dozens of sites vs. congregating in just a few, hopping from social networks to friends’ websites to blogs and music-sharing sites like Last.fm.
• The Web is always on. This generation is always connected and never sitting in one place long enough to get their attention. They work faster but have a myriad of distractions to keep them occupied before, during, and after work hours, and they expect their employers to be okay with this as long as they’re working hard and producing.
• An inherited Gen X cynicism. This generation may not trust the marketing messages they’ve been bombarded with throughout their lives. As such they are harder to communicate with through traditional and mass media.

The Next Generation of Job Seekers

Job-seeker behavior and expectations are also beginning to change. The implications on how companies find and connect with people will be significant. While some of the old habits of previous unwired generations carried through to the first generation of Internet users (i.e., writing a great cover letter will get you that job!), the new Web generation will completely redefine the job search and bring new expectations to the workforce.

Here are a few examples of the changes underway:

• Because they don’t trust marketing messages, the “culture section” of your website or the employee testimonial will no longer add much insight into the work experience. Instead, they will use their broader set of connections to give them new, more honest insights into what it’s like to work at your company or even for a specific hiring manager.
• How you use technology will have a bigger impact on job-seeker perceptions of you as an employer. They won’t have patience with bad websites and user experiences. If something is broken on the website, the company will be perceived as broken and not worth working for.
• Many job seekers, growing up in the level playing field that is the innovation economy, will often expect to be judged by their ideas, not their experience. Resumes will become irrelevant (or at best, a meaningless formality that describes your work history, not who you are). View this discussion on Robert Scoble’s blog to see what I mean; it’s the inspiration for the title of this article. If this attitude exists, outside of the system or not, think about whether you could even interview someone like Robert with your current process.
• You won’t find as many candidates you’re interested in sitting in big databases. Instead, you will find them commenting on blogs, in user forums, on social networks, in niche sites, or reachable via opt-in and permission-marketing techniques.
• To gain credibility with passive candidates, you will need to be more educated on who they are and how they think. They will expect that you have read their blogs, seen their portfolio, or viewed recommendations from co-workers and supervisors who have vouched for their intelligence and work ethic. If you don’t do your homework, they won’t return your calls or be receptive to your offer. And once again, you can’t always expect a resume from a passive candidate.
• You can no longer control or restrict information, nor would I suggest trying. If your work environment is terrible, people will hear about it. Someone will blog about it, comment on it, or IM others about it. You have no choice but to treat your candidates, employees, and alumni well and encourage them to talk about their experiences.

If you think that these trends are only applicable to students, think again. Ten years ago, we thought that the newspapers would still remain the dominant media and the Internet would be a niche player in online recruiting.

Today, the Internet is poised to overtake newspapers in the job-classifieds market in the next five years. We already do what we thought only IT people would do. Soon, I predict that we will all be doing the things that this new Web generation does.

With a broad, global reach and perspective, the modern recruiter will eschew resumes in favor of relationships and job descriptions for competency and skill profiles. A successful recruiter will use a host of tools, including email and referral software as well as sophisticated search tools such as ZoomInfo, to build competency profiles and to find, reach out to, and build relationships with a wide variety of potential candidates. If you have seen or used MySpace.com or Facebook, you are looking at the type of tools recruiters will be using in just a few months. Do you have a profile on MySpace? Why not?

Even when they’re looking for people to fit positions that are clearly defined and routine, they’re not likely to find candidates by running a keyword search or by using Google, nor will they find that person sitting neatly on some job board. They’ll have to tap into their own network, or the network of a friend or colleague, and then set up communication with potential candidates. An essential skill will be the ability to create enough interest in yourself and your organization to get the attention of a potential candidate. The most successful recruiters will be those who can be funny, articulate, friendly, and authentic, but still be focused on assessing and finding good people. Recruiters will also use these same tools to help the hiring manager build a realistic and comprehensive job profile, depending on how complex the position will be. A manager may say, “I need a person who can oversee a programming project that will involve programmers in three countries and that will be used by people in a fourth country,” or “Can you find me an MD with experience in a developing country who wants to do vaccine research?”

These are actual searches that some senior recruiters are in the midst of today, and before they can even begin the search process, they need to clearly understand what the job competencies and requirements are going to be. Working with hiring managers to identify the competencies such people need is tough and could be powerfully refined by reaching out to the network of practitioners and also of fellow recruiters and colleagues who are willing to offer suggestions and collaborate with the recruiter and hiring manager to build a profile that is realistic. Recruiters could put the request to the network and ask, “What skills would a person need to have to do this job? How important are project management skills? Team building practice? International living experience? Fluency in several languages? Knowledge of a programming language? Good sales skills?” The answers will come from the network as some combination of all of these.

The recruiter and hiring manager will sort through the answers and, perhaps augmented with assessment tools, create a skills profile that can be used on the candidate network. The recruiter will stay connected to her talent circle through email, blogs, instant messaging, the telephone, and even face-to-face contact. At Microsoft, Heather Hamilton has built quite a following of potential candidates with her marketing-oriented job blog, and the company has embraced blogging as a recruiting technique. Take a look at its Jobsblog page. Blogs are fast becoming a powerful way to add authenticity and allow candidates a peek into the organization’s culture. The talent community (or pool or circle, as you wish) will be ever-changing and open to referrals from current members. In fact, no one will consider himself or herself to be a member, but rather a participant in something with benefits. The benefits will include the sharing of ideas, the ability to help profile jobs and use the collective wisdom of the network as a filter, collaboration on projects, friendship and communication, and eventually employment. The recruiter will be both the creator of this circle and the facilitator that holds it together, but the circle will have its own life as well. Time will also be a major component and driver of the recruiter’s life. Managers will say, “Get me someone in two or three days - this project is crucial.” And the candidates will say, “I have three offers and need yours by Friday so I can decide over the weekend.” The time between ask and get is falling to zero. So, the future recruiter has to be able to respond fast as well. Time has never been as important a focus in recruiting as has quality - or at least the illusion of quality. Now recruiters are asked for both. A grasp of the numbers will help the recruiter develop an “odds sheet” on how likely and how quickly a candidate can be located. And, the technology embedded in the talent circle will help hone in on the two or three most likely candidates.

With time being so important, meeting people at bars and social events can only be used effectively as a way to get more people into your network. These face-to-face encounters are too clumsy and slow to ever be a mainstay of a high-volume recruiter. This underlines why it is so important to proactively build large networks of diverse potential candidates using virtual tools. This will require some drastic rethinking about how we work and about how we meet people, but MySpace has already opened the door to this world, and Generation Z (that’s what they’re now calling people under 18) has already embraced it. Industries may have to collaborate and integrate recruiting approaches, as well. The medical, engineering, and IT professions could benefit if there were a meta-recruiting website not focused on any one company but on all of them. This site would provide information and marketing materials to attract students and young people into considering a specific career. Recruiters could tap into this through email and organization-specific sites.

The future will be a highly virtual space. It will be fast-moving, dynamic, and techno-focused. The old world was built on stability; the new world is built on change and flex. The emerging world will require fast, flexible, passionate recruiters who have an active orientation and a grasp of facts and data. And, they will have to be able to put all this into a personal style that is persuasive, fun, and engaging. In short, the recruiter of the 21st century will have to be totally relationship-oriented and embrace the virtual.

With all due respect to my friends at Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, and so on, they have become a knife in a recruiter’s arsenal. When I started my career, I began working for a very successful staffing agency. I had no experience in recruitment. I just knew I liked the pace and the competition, and I figured out quickly that if you worked hard, you could make great money. So, I came in everyday, logged on to Monster.com, and proceeded to pick the low-hanging fruit. Back then, it was pretty much all low-hanging fruit.

No one had time to cold-call the passive candidate; by the time you convinced him/her to take a look at your job, you could have submitted five or six candidates whom you found off a job board, all of whom were eager to interview for your position. Anyone in the recruitment space today knows just how much times have changed. During my career at this staffing agency, they made us read the book Danger in the Comfort Zone by Judith M. Bardwick, which is about employees getting complacent. A great book, but I never really got the full effect of that read until recently. You see, we’ve spent so much time worrying about our employees being caught in the danger zone that we as corporate leaders have let ourselves start to slip into this zone. We aren’t looking forward enough, we don’t have an understanding of what the next generation of our corporate leaders is doing now, and we don’t have a definition of what an A-player in this generation looks like. A-players in this generation share the following characteristics:

• They understand the importance of a good education, and they know the value of that education before they walk across the stage and grab their diplomas. They aren’t going to accept a $28,000 job that has them working from 7-7 just to get that next promotion. The days of hiring fresh college grads and dangling the promotion carrot in front of them while you work them to death are gone, and if your company is still trying this method, chances are, you’ve got the low end of that graduating class working for you.
• They blog, they MySpace, and they prefer texting to actually calling and speaking to someone. I had a colleague tell me a story about a negotiation dance he was recently involved in with a young professional. This candidate was just what he was looking for: solid education, proven work ethic, and not afraid to make mistakes. They went back forth a few times when it came down to salary, so he sent her a text that said, “Final offer: 50k.” Five minutes later, his cell phone chimed with her reply back that read “deal.”
• They care about what amenities your company has to offer, and I’m not talking about 401(k)s. Comfortable dress (not business casual; I’m talking flip-flop comfortable), BlackBerrys, and their own parking spots. These things matter, and it can even mean they’d accept a lesser-paying job in order to not keep their flip flops in the closet.
• They don’t attend job fairs, mass-submit their resumes, or look for jobs in the help-wanted sections. Yes, job fairs and print ads do work, but let’s face it; those methods target a specific audience, one that I am not speaking of. I love Jason Goldberg’s intro speech about his company, Jobster.com. He stands in front of a room full of recruiters and HR leaders, and he says something like, “How many of you landed your job by going to a job fair?” Or, “How many of you landed your job by submitting your resume online?” In rooms of hundreds, you’d be lucky if 10 hands went up. So, why do we continue to shell out thousands of dollars to run ads and hold job fairs?
• They care about your company’s brand. Notice how Starbucks continues to employ young, energetic people with a sense of what exceptional customer service is all about. One reason is the endless supply of caffeine, but the most important reason is the brand that Starbucks Corporation wears. It screams energy, and invites employees to be themselves and have fun at work. Perception is everything; if your company doesn’t consider its brand a key priority objective, you’ve already lost half the battle.
• The fact remains that you don’t have to know who Gnarls Barkley is, or own a Sidekick, or even maintain a MySpace account to successfully recruit and retain the next generation of corporate leaders. What you do have to do is avoid getting caught in your own danger zone. Stop thinking that the way you conduct business today is always going to be the right way, and start coming to the realization that times aren’t just changing; they’ve already changed.

Ask yourself the following two questions: 1) How effective are the weapons in your recruitment arsenal? and 2) Do you know the space you’re fighting in? I’m interested to see your comments and continued discussion.

Blogs as a Marketing Tool

In the excellent book, Creating Customer Evangelists, authors Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell demonstrate with real-world examples how “buzz marketing” has started to level the playing field between large, advertising-driven companies and small companies with limited budgets. Rather than spending huge sums of money on media and advertising plans, companies that embrace buzz marketing know how to have more personal dialogues with their customers and prospects. In our increasingly connected world, word of this approach has the potential to spread quickly. Another suggested reading on the topic of word of mouth and buzz marketing is The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Blogs are becoming a de facto tool in the buzz marketing arsenal for emerging companies. They allow these companies to rapidly communicate information, get customer feedback, and create a community of potential customers that are more likely to purchase their products or services and spread positive word of mouth. Done well, a blog reduces the need for a big marketing budget to generate brand awareness. This is exactly why some CEOs, who are quite busy running the day-to-day operations of their companies, choose to spend their valuable time blogging. Even a company mascot has joined in the fray.

The Microsoft Recruitment Blogging Strategy

Microsoft has an interesting, love-them-or-hate-them employer brand challenge. They employ some of the most brilliant developers and business minds in the world, yet there is an entire population of their colleagues that would never work there. It is no secret that the reactions from candidates are often virulent. So how do you make Microsoft seem less like a slow-moving, bad-intentioned giant and more like a nimble innovator with a policy of open communication? Enter the Microsoft recruiting blogs, which now include an Australian entry. Add to this a host of blogs from Microsoft employees (over 3,500 of them in all), and you’ve got a phenomenon that has started to create a human face for the company. The Microsoft recruitment blog approach gives the company a competitive advantage for semi-active candidates by providing a level of personal interaction with candidates even some of the smallest companies don’t offer. If you post a comment, you’re almost guaranteed to be answered by the Microsoft recruiting gods and goddesses. In contrast, most candidates refer to employment websites as either “black holes” or “resume vortexes.” Posts are not always about recruiting or the Microsoft culture, which is exactly the point: create content that interests your target audience, and you can create a community of passive job seekers. In Microsoft’s case, there are literally thousands of readers of the recruiting blogs. Anyone researching a technical, marketing, or finance career will likely stumble upon one of the easily indexed blogs through a major search engine. This is low-cost, high-impact buzz marketing for recruiting. Microsoft has set a trailblazing example for the rest of the recruiting industry.

Blogging Strategies You Should Take Advantage Of

Today, blogs are a competitive differentiator used by an elite group of pioneering recruiting departments. As more companies realize their power, they may soon be an integral part of every recruiting department’s strategy. I’ve spoken with quite a few companies about incorporating blogs into their strategies. The most common reasons I hear that they don’t blog today (with my usual responses) are:

• “We don’t have the resources.” My response: Focus your resources on a better way to connect with passive candidates and you will see a return on investment.
• “Nobody in recruiting has time to blog.” My response: Compare your 30 requisitions to the thousands of employees and initiatives blogger CEO’s manage. Twenty to thirty minutes every other day of one person’s time is time well spent.
• “We’re not sure where to start.” My response: Blogging is amazingly easy. Blogger.com is probably the easiest to use of them all with a step-by-step wizard. (If you have questions on how to get one started or tips and tricks, please email me at davel@jobster.com.)

Here are a few recruitment blogging strategies for you to consider:

• Replace employee testimonials. Employee testimonials are approaching ubiquity. Almost every company has them on their career website, and they all sound eerily similar. Candidates are bound to have a hard time telling an employee testimonial from one company apart from another. Highlight employees from time to time in your own blog postings. Link to employee blogs from your career website.
• Augment your culture section with more dynamic content. Another dated approach to career websites is the standard “culture” section. Once again, there is very little differentiation from one website to the next. If you want to give people a real taste of your corporate culture, link to existing employee blogs from your career website. Think about approaching employees at the company about creating a culture-related blog and rewarding them for employee referrals that are generated through their efforts.
• Create a talent magnet blog. Do you have employees or recruiters that can create content of interest to potential employees? Destination blogs are a great way to easily publish information that is relevant and interesting to passive candidates, while selling them on considering a career at your organization. John Sullivan has advocated answer guy sites for years, and blogs are a very simple way to accomplish this. Once again, reward employees that participate with employee referral bonuses when they drive hires from the site.
• Create a dialogue with candidates. Is something preventing people from wanting to work at your company? Blogging can be an instant feedback mechanism that is less time-consuming to administer than an online survey, helping you make more rapid decisions.

Blogs have the potential to take communicating with candidates to an entirely new level while driving business results. They can be one of the most effective tools in your recruiting arsenal.