Way back in 1999, Business 2.0, an Internet-age magazine that has managed to survive to this day, listed ten principles for the new economy. I wrote a column then that showed how those ten principles applied to e-recruiting. In reviewing them recently, I was surprised at how apropos they still are and how much they have become part of what we do. Back then many of them were controversial ó recruiters wrote angry responses to this column. They said that face-to-face recruiting would never die and that candidates and hiring managers would not accept electronic resumes, online screening, online interviews, and many of the activities around recruiting that are increasingly done virtually. In some cases they were sort of right ó some of these have happened more slowly than I thought they would ó but mostly they were wrong. We have embraced the virtual world more than we may know. Here are the ten principles, updated:
So the thoughts of 1999 still ring true even after a boom, a bust, and a sort-of recovery. Things are not the same and never will return to the way they were in 1999. Technology, the Internet, and changing expectations of a diverse and global world challenge us now, as they did then.