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There is no doubt that technology has had a significant impact on the way we identify and recruit candidates in this age of social networking and blogging, but have we gone too far?

I recently had the opportunity to speak at a recruiting conference whose major theme focused on technology and its application in the recruiting lifecycle. As I stood in the back of the room waiting for the speaker in front of me to finish her presentation, I was shocked at what she had to say. She stated that “there is no reason to actually talk to a candidate today.” She continued by saying that “email and text messages should be the only means we use to contact and recruit candidates today because that is the medium they use.”

As this well-known speaker’s comments began to sink in, I realized the cause of many of the problems we face today — it’s people like this speaker who teach us to rely almost exclusively on technology! I may not be a doctor, but the last time I checked, every candidate is a living, breathing, human being with the innate craving to have a relationship with other living, breathing, humans.

Within the recruitment profession today, technology has moved from a tool to identify candidates and create efficiencies to a mechanism that replaces real relationships. If we all rely on the same technologies to identify, engage, and recruit candidates, what will be the differentiator from company to company? Are candidates to be treated as a commodity?

Have we forgotten that recruiting is sales? That sales is what builds real relationships? That technology should enable us to be more efficient but cannot engage a candidate in the way a recruiter can? Obviously these are all rhetorical questions aimed at pointing out how our near-reliance on technology is only exacerbating the problems we face today.

As I surveyed the room after I heard these ridiculous statements, I realized the impact this speaker had on the audience of seemingly young, inexperienced recruiters who were attempting to learn at least one nugget of information they could apply when returning to their respective companies.

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You’ve read about them. You’ve heard about them at conferences. Glenn Gutmacher did a webinar (still available, scroll down) on them. In fact there’s even an entire conference dedicated to corporate social networks.

With the growing number of providers, starting a private label corporate network or participating in a MySpace or Facebook is about as easy as launching a blog. And just like a blog, social networks need thought, planning and work to be successful.

“It’s important,” says Karen Lash, regional director / interactive strategy at TMP Worldwide, “when you are engaging with the social networks that you do have a strategy.”

So what sorts of things should a recruiter consider before launching a corporate network? We asked Lash and Ryan Esits, senior vice president a chief talent strategist at NAS Recruitment, for their advice. Here, in 2 minutes and 48 seconds, are the basics: keep reading…

Social networks like Facebook and others are good for building relationships and for keeping track of all 156,977 of your closest friends — but no one really gets hired from them, right?

Tell that to nGenera. It has hired 63 people through its employee and recruiter social networks, which accounts for 70% of its 91 hires since last December. For those 63 people, that means no job boards. No third-party recruiters.

nGenera started in March 2007, and acquired six companies in one year. The company’s products (while hard to understand from its website) include call-center software, incentive compensation software, simulation software, and more.

Katie Carty Tierney (pictured) manages the recruiting function for the Austin, Texas, company, which has just under 300 employees, most virtual. “Our recruiters were relying heavily on job boards in the past, and we wanted them to look beyond that,” she says. “They weren’t necessarily getting the right candidates. They weren’t necessarily getting the right matches. There was a lot of turnover. That’s not the way to hire people.”

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The war for talent isn’t over, but the world’s economic woes are turning it into more of a series of skirmishes than hot battle.

“Recruiting is not going away,” said Zach Thomas, senior analyst with Forrester Research. But it is shifting focus to retention and internal recruiting.

He joined other industry analysts at a panel at HR Tech Thursday to discuss “Today’s Technology Trends and Predictions.” None of the four went so far as to declare the war over, but each in their own way suggested that the mass exodus of Baby Boomers from the workplace may not be quite so mass as we’ve been hearing.

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Decision-making can be a daunting challenge, especially when faced with pressure to cut costs and reorganize in a challenging economy. As recruiters, you are presented with a myriad of tools, services, and processes to choose from and the list keeps growing and growing! I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your toughest decisions with us every day on the ERE discussion boards. I learn such valuable information from you!

Twittering for Sourcing
We see it used at conferences. We read about it on our discussion boards. We might even be active “Tweeters” ourselves … but how effective is Twitter for sourcing and recruiting? Erika Hanson Brown recently joined the Twitter community and wants to know how it works in the recruiting world. John Kennedy is skeptical about Twitter. Although it can help save time when learning about a potential candidate, John relies on some advice he received years ago, “there are only three true productive tools in recruiting — the pen, the pad of paper, and the telephone.”

After reading several more responses to Erika, it is clear that John is in the minority. Twitter can be an effective tool if you follow the advice of Kelly Dingee and Mark Tortorici including search strings, and tying together SMS and social networking sites. If anyone is interested, you can check out Dennis Smith’s presentation on the Recruiting Road Show and tune in to ERE’s webinar series on November 5 for some tips and advice from Geoff Peterson.

ATS Wish List
Erica McNally wants to know what are your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves” when selecting your ATS. What’s on your “wish list”? Jake Stupak lists the following: scheduling for multi-users, resume parsing, email tracking, and candidate and position matching. Sylvia Dahlby astutely advises to identify your unique business requirements first. “The leading apps all have the basics” — think about what your company needs before creating your list. She recommends CareerXroads and HRchitect for additional information. (HRchitect, by the way, is doing a workshop in San Diego at ERE’s conference on “How to Save Your Current ATS and Get a Return on Your Investment.”)

I have to add The Newman Group (who will also be doing a session on HR systems at the Spring Expo) to that list since it has a wealth of knowledge in this arena. Dorothy Beach, unhappy with Vurv, has been very impressed with Avature’s Recruiting CRM tool as an ATS option. (I also sat on a demo last week with Michael Johnson and agree that it is worth checking out.) This makes me wonder…will CRM tools replace traditional ATS tools? What do you think? Would you take the leap?

Onboarding New Hires and The Buddy System
There are several programs that if implemented correctly can make onboarding strategies successful. Based on research and discussions, many companies would include the “buddy system” on that list. Laura Arnold is very interested in a program that would pair an internal employee with a new hire but wants a new name for “the buddy system.” Apparently, Laura is not alone. Several respondents use a variety of different names, including “Mentor Program.” Bryan Chaney also recommends “Internal Career Counselor” and “Coworker Coach” while Joann Robinson has used “New Hire Partner,” “Orientation Partner” and “Orientation Coach.”

I’m interested in knowing if any companies have been able to measure the success of their onboarding programs, more specifically the concept of a “mentor program.” Todd Raphael has an in-depth look at onboarding in the next Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

JobFox or Net-Temps?

Kathleen Coughlin wants to add a new job board to her list. Can anyone recommend JobFox or Net-Temps? Although Kathleen did not receive feedback on Net-Temps, JobFox (often considered the eHarmony of recruiting) has some work to do. Taryn Pfalzgraf has been satisfied with the customer service but feels that the process is too time-consuming. She recommends a “conditional trial membership” or “waiting a few months to see if they’ve ironed out their problems.” Kimberley Joyce would have to agree. As an Oracle-centric company, she was reassured that JobFox could meet her companies’ needs. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Among other complaints, they are unable to add different tools, languages, and functionality. Given this negative feedback, Eden Shaffer encourages Kathleen to consider Search Engine Marketing instead. What do you think?

Hiring a Virtual Recruiter/Sourcer and Unethical Competitors
These topics continue to dominate the discussion boards. We’d love to hear what you think about these critical and timely recruiting issues…

What’s a marketing manager?

Ask five people, and you’ll get five definitions. Look for resumes, and you’ll get hundreds of people doing vastly different things.

Mark Bielecki is trying to clean it all up with a new site, Joblish. (And you thought startups had used up every possible fanciful variation of the word “job”!)

It sounds more complicated than it is. Employers can fill out some drop-down menus as to what they’re looking for — let’s say, for example, that the employer wants these four things in a candidate:

• a functional area of engineering;
• the R&D department
• division head reporting to chief executive
• supervising 10 or more people directly.

The employer picks those four attributes from the drop-downs, and generates a code that looks something like this:

joblishDENERBE

Job candidates who fit that criteria will, in theory, have added the code joblishDENERBE to their resumes or LinkedIn pages or elsewhere, and employers searching for joblishDENERBE can find them.

Like so many new ideas, the success of this one will depend on getting a critical mass of both job candidates and employers to use the codes.

This year in the recruiting industry there has been a lot of talk about how companies are tapping into Web 2.0 technologies to enhance their recruiting. But how is the candidate community also using these technologies for their own purposes, and what impact is it having on our recruiting strategies?

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I was surfing the Internet this week and came across a fabulous story that is a perfect metaphor for how much things have changed in the world of recruitment since the rise of the Internet coincided with the global shortage of skills. Unusually, it’s a recruitment story from the work of rock music.

The story revolves around rock band Journey, which has existed in various guises since 1973. I suspect anyone younger than an ‘old Gen X’ (like me) won’t have heard of them unless they regularly listen to classic rock radio.

Journey were huge during the early to mid 1980’s with American Top 10 hits such as “Who’s Crying Now,” “Open Arms,” and “Don’t Stop Believing,” (probably better known to pop culture aficionados as the song Tony Soprano selects from the jukebox in the closing scene of The Sopranos’ final episode).

Journey’s lead vocalist at the time, Steve Perry, scored a 1984 hit with the single, Oh Sherrie (confession: I have the vinyl single somewhere in storage).

Last year Journey founder and lead guitarist, Neal Schon, was attempting to recruit a new lead vocalist to replace the departed Perry. Frustrated with the options he had auditioned live, Schon turned to the Internet and spent hours surfing scores of YouTube videos, looking at bands and singers to see whether he might discover what he was looking for online.

Amongst the many wannabes and try-hards, he stumbled upon a video by a popular Filipino cover band, The Zoo.

Schon listened in amazement as 40-year-old lead singer, Arnel Pineda, belted out a stunning and note-perfect version of one of Journey’s biggest 1980’s hits, Faithfully (amongst many other cover versions The Zoo had posted on YouTube).

Schon messaged The Zoo via YouTube, and although Pineda initially thought it was a hoax, Schon eventually convinced Pineda he was for real, and asked Pineda whether he was interested in auditioning for the vacant lead singer’s role.

Six weeks later, a still shell-shocked Pineda was winging his way to San Francisco for a two-day audition with Journey.

In December 2007, Pineda was announced as Journey’s new lead singer, followed three months later by his debut, fronting the band live at a Chilean music festival to an ecstatic fan reaction, glowing reviews, and a television audience of 25 million.

Revitalized by its new lead singer, Journey quickly recorded a new album which it released in June and is currently in the middle of summer/autumn tour of the USA with fellow 1980’s classic rockers, Heart and Cheap Trick.

What a fantastic story for the new world of recruitment: a story covering globalization, Web 2.0, and non-traditional sourcing strategies.

What I most love about this tale is that a U.S. rock band, whose fan base is solidly in the Midwest, resisted the temptation to go for a singer who “looked right” and instead recruited the best-performed, most-competent singer, even though he was from Manila, speaks heavily accented English, and doesn’t look like Steve Perry (save the long dark hair) or the band’s fan demographic.

It would be easy to dismiss this story as unique to music and not relevant to recruiters.

I believe that would be a mistake.

Consider that in this Journey-finds-new-lead-singer story, the following occurred via the World Wide Web:

• The employer sourced a potential employee, living in another country, online.
• The employer contacted the potential employee.
• The competence of the potential employee was able to be assessed sufficiently well to arrange a live interview (audition) in another country without any need for a resume.

No recruiter was involved in the process.

When you consider the growth of career portals and the rise of online testing of skills, competencies, and motivations, recruitment in the 21st century has only just begun.

As we rapidly head towards the 21st century’s second decade, are you ready for what’s ahead?

ERE was at RecruitFest in Toronto last week. Organized by Jason Davis, it featured some great speakers such as Susan Burns, Scott Love, Craig Silverman, and John Sumser. We asked speakers and attendees about what changes and challenges to expect in 2009.

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A number of organizations are recruiting in Second Life. They are realizing significant branding benefits by recruiting in a virtual world. The real question is, How successful at recruiting employees? The challenge becomes more acute for those attempting to find talent outside of the IT world.

A common theme that I usually hear when I discuss recruiting in Second Life is “Second Life is great for technical organizations recruiting young IT talent like Java programmers, but it really would not address our needs.”

There are many reasons why non-technical organizations can benefit from recruiting in SL. Most organizations would agree categorically across industries that there is a growing demand for a technically proficient employee base outside of the IT department, especially as more baby boomers head off for retirement and web 2.0 applications proliferate in the enterprise. There is a compelling benefit to having access to a geographically diverse pool of candidates during these tumultuous economic times, when fuel costs are exceedingly difficult to manage as well as travel budgets. Value is also realized by branding and screening in a virtual world that is typically the domain of leading organizations.

There are also numerous arguments that can be put forth as to why non-technical organizations will not be successful recruiting in SL. There is limited information on either technical or non-technical employees who have actually been hired through an interview conducted in SL. There should be more information readily available if this was a frequent occurrence. Virtual job fairs and islands of employment are not well-known, and I’m sure many job seekers have no interest in engaging in a virtual world. Even if a non-technical person did find a job fair and decide to participate, there is the challenge of operating within SL. It takes time to become adept at controlling your avatar and getting the right appearance for an interview.

What type of employees if any are being hired in SL?

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Here we are in 2008, soon to be 2009, and almost a decade into the 21st century. The Internet is maturing: it’s been around for ordinary people to use for almost 15 years and has already earned its place as a technology and a social movement as important as electricity.

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.

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Rating employers is not a new idea. Vault has (profile; site) been doing it for years and for pay. There’s JobVent, which has an 11 point rating system and the ability to leave comments. Jobster (profile; site) has a feature where employees can talk about what it’s like working for their company. F–ked Company used to have the dirt on all sorts of companies until it got, you know.

So when we came across the announcement of CorporateGrade.com we were admittedly underwhelmed. But considered from the standpoint of it being part of a trend, the site takes on greater importance.

CorporateGrade.com is new and in beta, so it doesn’t have much in the way of content yet. But it’s easy to use and has a good bit of sophistication. Ratings can be anonymous, although the registration process does require a valid email address. Not that that’s going to deter bitter employees or ex-workers or even just someone out to sully a company. While that’s often the first objection raised by company officials (only the disgruntled participate in these sites), we found just the opposite to be true. CorporateGrade’s first participants appear to be a balanced lot, providing a good glimpse of life inside a company, a division or the office where they work.

Ratings have been around even before the Internet. But those were either compiled by an ambitious author (Places Rated Almanac, for example) or were limited surveys. The Internet expanded the reach, and opened the door to anyone who wanted to participate. Today, ratings have become so available and influential that a very high percentage of consumers both consult product reviews before making a buying decision and are influenced by what they read. Social media is increasingly exerting both an influence on decision-making and providing a way for consumers to offer feedback.

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No. It is not a typo.

My misplacement of capitalization in the above heading is intentional. LinkedIn spells itself with a double capital so I decided to play along.

There’s been alot of brouhaha over LinkedIn lately. Every conference, convention, and seminar I attend has a LinkedIn workshop. LinkedIn Webinar invitations land in my email inbox semi-weekly.

Here LinkedIn. There LinkedIn … everywhere LinkedIn.

I don’t get it. Is it just me?

Sure, I have an account. And yes I get invitations to “join my network” each week.

I find LinkedIn is little more than an annoyance for the following reasons:

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Two weeks ago, I wrote an article about an imaginary Willie who was faced with some challenging issues.

He heads recruiting for a large construction company where business is good and hiring strong. There are many open positions for experienced, senior-level people and there will soon be many more as a large number of boomers are approaching retirement. He is being urged by some on his team to begin using Web 2.0 techniques and to develop a more exciting and interactive Web presence in order to get ready for both current and projected needs.

So Willie is wondering….would a social network be useful for his organization? Would it give him any return on his invested time and money? Or would it just divert attention from more urgent recruiting challenges? Is it worth investing in today or should he wait for some commercial applications to arrive (if they ever do)?

What would you do if you were Willie?

Here is one of the first responses that I received from a reader:

“I would suggest Willie fishes where the fish are. Web 2.0 is fun, new, different, exciting and sexy, however the fish he is looking for are not feeding there. 45-55 year old engineers and project managers are not on social sites on the Web. . .”

There is certainly a lot of merit in this argument. While a recent Pew study suggests that a very large percentage of people over 50 are using the Internet, it is likely few of them would use the Internet to find a job.

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Job boards? Social networks? Search engines? Wikis? Blogs? Microblogs? The list could go on and on. What are you using? Some of the above? All of the above?

Recruiters and sourcers have a wealth of options at their fingertips to find, reach out, and connect with active and passive talent. Every recruiter and sourcer has a different set of sites, tools, and communities that they use to find their talent. This is what I like to refer to as the “recruiting portfolio.”

A recruiting portfolio can be comprised of countless sites and tools.

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Web 2.0, Web 2.0! That’s all Willie is hearing from some of his recruiters, and the words seem to pop off every page he reads. This morning he picked up the Wall Street Journal and there was a big headline espousing the many benefits of social networks and Web 2.0-enabled websites.

Willie is a progressive guy, usually the first to try out new technology or bring new ideas into a conversation. He was one of the first recruiting managers to adopt an applicant tracking system years ago, and he is an advocate of maintaining close relationships with candidates via email. He is just not sure how to go about implementing a Web 2.0 strategy or how to create a social network.

Willie’s organization is a construction company with over 1,000 employees, mostly all located in the United States with a handful in China setting up a new operation.

Despite the economy, they have lots of work. Many of their contracts are local and state government jobs that are funded by tax dollars and have strict deadlines. Revenue is excellent and the firm projects to earn more than US$1 billion this year. The future looks bright given the poor state of the U.S. infrastructure. They project doubling revenues within 5 years as more roads, bridges, airport runways, and water systems need to be replaced.

But Willie faces some major challenges.

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FriendFeed is a social networking community of roughly 75,000 people currently. FriendFeed is technically a microblog, in the same space as Twitter, but with more options.

Per its site, FriendFeed “offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.” I have been using the site for the past few months; it’s a new craze among the technically savvy and Web 2.0 crowd. If you are looking for a way to connect with passive technical talent and the young Gen-Y crowd, this is a site you want to invest some time on.

With FriendFeed, users setup a free account and customize a “feed” of content they share from other sites online. Everything then funnels into FriendFeed for people to see. The content shared can be from sites you have accounts with and use already to include news, bookmarking, status, video, photos, blogging, music, and more. These sites can include Twitter, YouTube, Digg, LinkedIn, Google, Blogs, and up to 30+ others. My feed allows others to see status updates and comments I posted out on Twitter, in addition to updates to my LinkedIn profile and articles and posts from several blogs. If you don’t use a lot of sites for sharing content, you can simply post and share anything directly on FriendFeed. It’s dead simple to use.

Users of FriendFeed have the option to subscribe to “feeds” of other users and in turn they can discover yours. When a user shares something in one of their feeds, they are telling the rest of the site and users who subscribe to them what they are doing currently, what they are interested in, and what they want to talk about.

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This week I will keep my column short and devote it to discussing a few books that I have read over the past few months. These books will fuel your creative juices, maybe get you a little angry, or at least motivate you to look at what you do differently.

They are all written by well-known authors who have explored similar topics before. But what is interesting to me is that every one of these books is centered on people, talent, and how talent will be used, organized, or deployed over the next few years.

Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty by Peter Cappelli

Peter Cappelli is known to ERE Expo audiences as he has spoken at the Expo and is frequently quoted in the press on talent issues. He is a professor at the Wharton School  at the University of Pennsylvania and frequently writes and speaks about talent issues.

In his recent book, Peter looks at talent as a supply-chain issue. Just as we take great care to ensure that we have a reliable source of raw material or parts for manufacturing, we need to do the same with the people who invent, design, manufacture or deliver, and sell our products and services.

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When I was asked recently about the top three trends in recruiting, my first answer was Web 2.0 Recruiting. So, when the time came to create this month’s webinar schedule, this topic was a must-have. I have noticed that many of the questions, discussions, and articles on ERE focus on Web 2.0 recruiting. These sites are so appealing because they allow candidates interactivity and a level of input through chat, blogs, discussions, and networking.

Love it or hate it, Web 2.0 is here to stay. According to a recent ERE article, “Compete.com’s recently released figures on the number of visitors to social networks show LinkedIn growing by over 700% in one year, Facebook by 77%, and Twitter by more than 4,000%”. There is no doubt these sites are growing like crazy! But one question I keep hearing is “how do we use these sites to find quality candidates?” I wish I knew this answer myself. The bad news is I don’t. The good news is I found someone who does…Kevin Wheeler.

View his webinar.

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Let’s look at ways to expand your LinkedIn network, the online network of more than 11 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

Before we go on, I want to credit Shally Steckerl for many of the ideas that I used to build my LinkedIn network. Check out Shally’s blog on Becoming a Promiscuous Linker on LinkedIn. Shally has done a huge amount of research and has documented what works.

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