Web 2.0 technologies have impacted the way travel is purchased and consumed on the internet, people can now watch other people’s videos, photos, read blogs and reviews as well as get RSS feeds of their favorite travel brands or destinations. But these new technologies can also be applied to other areas in our company, like in the Human Resources department either for training or recruiting.
Last week I had the opportunity of talking to Cindy Diaz who is one of my company’s National Recruiters, and even though we had a brief talk about how to use some of the web 2.0 technologies in the recruiting process, I felt it was important to continue the conversation about trying to recommend our company to modernize the recruiting process by having a more strategic approach of using the web for this purpose.
Advances in technology make the way jobs are found and filled online distinctly different from just a few years ago. Employers are now experimenting with innovative strategies for spreading their recruitment messages and screening candidates online. And Web-savvy job hunters are taking advantage of new Internet resources aimed at helping them make better career decisions.
.
Video, podcasts and interactive media
Until recently, few employers produced Web videos describing what it’s like to work for them. I think that Video is finally catching on with employers in a big way, as an example, online employment video site CareerTV says it will begin producing 30-minute shows every month starting in March. The job seeker-targeted content will highlight a variety of topics and industries, as well as showcase ‘top-ranked employers.’
These videos have a higher quality and most of the times are tailored to address a variety of job hunter interests. More than 6,000 videos are currently posted on Jobing.com, which is a job board that specializes in listing career opportunities in specific metropolitan areas like Metro Orlando in Florida.
Similarly, a growing number of employers are creating podcasts, voiced by employees, on career-related topics. Accenture for example, has been producing the Accenture Employee Podcast Series where one can hear first hand the “inside story” from Accenture employees about working in the company. You can subscribe and listen to Accenture Employees on their personal experiences using cutting edge technologies to deliver innovative projects for some of the world’s highest performing companies.
To captivate and engage job hunters, more employers are also adding interactive media to their online career portals such as games, blogs and real-time chat services. For example, ASML, (manufacturer of advanced technology systems for the semiconductor industry) designed a recruitment-events page that job hunters can synchronize with their Microsoft Outlook calendars. Users also can opt to receive event reminders via email or SMS text messaging.
Another very good website is JobsinPods.com, which is an online library of podcast interviews with hiring managers and employees at roughly 20 U.S. companies, including International Business Machines Corp., AT&T Inc. and Intel Corp, it was launched on March 2007. New podcasts, or “jobcasts” as they’re called on the site, are posted about once a week in a blog format. Older podcasts are archived by company name, job type and location. They average seven to ten minutes in length. Some podcasts describe employers’ current hiring needs while others discuss what employers seek in candidates overall. They may also talk about a company’s culture, job benefits and other workplace attributes. Employers are charged $329 per podcast and have the freedom to discuss any recruiting-related topic they choose. Another plus is that job seekers can download the site’s podcasts to an iPod or other device, and listen to them at their leisure. The podcasts also can be played directly from the site.
JobsinPods works well for high end professional executive jobs as well as entry level jobs, AT&T has been using podcasts to recruit Bilingual Call Center Consultants and Service Representatives.
.
Social Networks
For all of the technological gains of the past decade, relatively old-fashioned tools such as networking and referrals still drive the process of identifying and hiring qualified candidates.
But now some online services seek to take networking and personal connections from the HR toolbox and marry them to technology. “Social networking technology” refers to software and web-based services that enable users to leverage their personal relationships for networking, hiring, employee referrals and references.
HR professionals are trying products such as Visible Path, which measures the strength of relationships by analyzing company e-mail accounts and it helps companies integrate social networking into tools people use at work, Business Week magazine recently published an article entitled: Will eMail really be the next social network ?
But social networking technology has attracted a few critics. Privacy advocates are alarmed by the prospect of software that churns through employees’ e-mail. And skeptics remind HR professionals who have caught the social networking technology bug that while these services may make generating names of potential hires a snap, transforming those names into candidates remains the real challenge.
In any case there is no doubt that Social Networks have become very popular these days, and Secrets of the Job Hunt.com is recently launched social network for job seekers & career advice professionals. All members have the ability to post to the website blog, participate in groups, forums and message each other. Think of us as the “Facebook” for job hunting tips. They have career advice podcasts that will improve a candidate’s job search, plus a blog and a forum plus job postings and job podcasts. This social network was created very easily and very unexpensively using Ning.com.
Workforce Management posted a very interesting article on How to Use Social Networking to fill the talent acquisition pipeline.
.
LinkedIn.com
The Internet has opened up a whole new way of networking for job candidates. Online sites have sprung up to help connect people and jobs—putting technology behind the old concept of “it’s not what you know but who you know.”
LinkedIn is the most popular professional social network currently in use, they recently reported 20 million + users. New users register on the site and supply their name and location, then identify the kind of work they do and disclose whether they’re a full-time employee or a consultant. There is no cost to join, and LinkedIn offers privacy protection.
By joining the LinkedIn community, you’ve essentially added your name to an enormous electronic Rolodex. And once you’re in, you can search the extended network of contacts to find out who your contacts know. LinkedIn allows users to search for contacts by ZIP code, job, even the company for which they work. LinkedIn also gives you the option of uploading your Microsoft Outlook contacts onto the network. A quick search will reveal which of your contacts already belongs to LinkedIn.
Remember the old canard about how there are no more than six degrees of separation between any two people? The idea is that any person can be linked to any other person through no more than six other people. LinkedIn relies on that principle. Search for contacts, and you will get an indicator of the strength of your connection to those candidates. A direct knowledge of the contact would be defined as one degree of separation; someone who is known by a colleague’s contact would merit a third degree of separation, and so on.
HR Professionals are also using LinkedIn Jobs, which is basically an online job board within the LinkedIn social network, that allows users to visualize how many “degrees of separation” lie between them and potential job candidates.
.
Dirty little “digital” secrets
Most recruiters now have as a standard procedure, the task of searching the internet for personal information about the job candidates, and many of them do this type of research even prior to extending job interview invites.
If what pops up is a picture of the potential candidate absolutely drunk and half naked during a Spring Break celebration in the Caribbean, the employer can now decide whether this job hunter might get an interview or not, and after this little discovery, this candidate’s resume will probably end up in the trash can and they will probably never even know what happened to their job application.
On the other hand, there are some job hunters that take advantage of these new social media tools, by creating a blog or a Web site targeted for employers, mainly because these blogs can provide an a great platform to expand about their experience and their knowledge, something that is hard to do on a one page resume. People who don’t have that internet presence are losing a critical opportunity to put themselves at the top of the list.
Another tactic that recruiters are using these days is searching through social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to learn more about the job candidates, as well as analyzing the information loaded up in professional social-networking sites like Xing.com or LinkedIn.com which now has almost 20 million members.
Recruiters for Electronic Arts Inc. have been using MySpace.com and Facebook.com to learn more about and engage with prospective hires, they want people who are passionate gamers, and often on these sites, people talk about their hobbies.
.
Job boards
While employers are doing more to reach out, there are also more online destinations than ever for job hunters to find employment ads.
Monster.com is one of the most popular job boards but about 2,000 new job boards have been launched annually since 2000, and there are currently about 50,000, out of which about 30% are general job sites while 70% specialize in a particular industry. One of the reasons for this popularity with Job Boards is its relatively inexpensive entry costs.
CareerBuilder.com even aired a Super Bowl Ad last week to generate more traffic to their website, this TV Ad has also been virally distributed through the internet and has been extensively exposed via YouTube.com
Because of their traditional media and the online campaigns the traffic to these popular job boards is very high, for example Monster.com had 11 million unique visitors in December 2007 and CareerBuilder.com had 25 million unique visitors on the same month, I will be interested to see what was the traffic increase generated by the Super Bowl ad.
To broaden their customer bases and keep up with the masses, Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com both power job boards within newspaper and other Web sites: Monster services 4,150 in the U.S., and 3,350 outside the U.S.; CareerBuilder operates 8,750 in the U.S. and 250 elsewhere. Many job sites have also added networking components to attract and retain more users, like Dice.com, a technology job site, which launched discussion forums last year on a range of career-related topics. Site visitors can ask questions and swap advice with other users.
.
Free Job Boards
Craigslist is a great alternative for posting jobs for free, their job section ads is very comprehensive and very popular, and they even go as far as separate sections for “jobs” and “gigs”. Craigslist had more than 25 million unique visitors in December 2007 and depending on the type of job offering, it can be a great place to advertise for entry level jobs, like telemarketing agents or sales people.
.
Making sure the candidates are the right fit in the company
Once you get from the job ad into the application process, more employers are adding candidate screening assessments to the online application process which was previously reserved for the interview stage, the idea is to learn about candidates’ intangible qualities, like leadership skills, work ethic and business acumen, as well as trying to weed out applicants who aren’t serious,because this will show an indication of interest from a candidate to spend time completing a more comprehensive application process.
Similarly, some Web sites now offer free assessment quizzes designed to help job hunters find positions that best match their qualifications, work history and job preferences. For example, Climber.com visitors are prompted to spend about 30 minutes answering about 25 questions on these topics, and results in a personal profile. Climber.com works with roughly 40 corporate clients in a variety of industries and sends them profiles of job hunters that closely match their hiring needs. Job hunters whose profiles aren’t a strong fit for any of Climber.com’s clients are directed to ads for positions posted on the Web.
.
Digital Video interviews
More employers are conducting first interviews with candidates over the Internet now that many computers have built-in video capabilities, this strategy helps employers save time and avoid recruiting expenses like plane ticket and hotel costs.
Some employers are using the technique to have candidates meet hiring managers in faraway locations. Video interviewing really accelerates the hiring process.
.
Job Search Engines
There are some phenomenal Job Search Engines like Indeed.com that aggregates thousands of listings from the major job boards mentioned above like Monster, CareerBuilder and Dice as well as many others.
Mashable wrote this very interesting post about Tools for Job Hunting 2.0
.
Putting all together
One of my favorite new services for putting all these ideas into action is Standout Jobs, that helps clients build corporate recruiting sections for their company web site. The service costs $149 per month. The functionality included in the templates (which companies can customize) includes job postings, blogs, photos, employee profiles, a bulletin board, RSS feeds for various streams of content, and corporate videos. The layout looks a lot like my favorite DLA (Digital Lifestyle Aggregator) NetVibes with various sections of the corporate career site contained in isolated boxes that I assume companies can move around the page and place wherever they want.
It will be interesting to see how Standout Jobs does by offering an interesting solution to help companies improve their recruiting efforts in this Web 2.0 era.
.
Recommendation
I would recommend my company to start integrating some of these social media tools for recruiting purposes, they are very easy to setup and very easy to use that we should be frequently using them and taking advantage of them to tell our story. Recruiting in our company will not only become easier but will also cost less money.
Posted in Other, Social Networking, Social Networks, Web 2.0, Website Reviews
)
