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Permalink Reply by Mike Hard on April 7, 2010 at 10:50am

It is, first of all, a brilliant marketing slogan. Even if the concept had no meat (it does in my opinion), whomever coined the term was smart (or annoying depending on your POV).

I'm sure there is a company or person out there who is claiming it as the basis for thier pitch or offering, but in reality it refers to a concept that is broader than anyone company or person. It's been discussed several times on recruitingblogs over the past couple of years.

The term originally comes from "cloud computing" which has been around for about a decade and refers to software applications that aren't stored on your PC but exist somewhere on a server (or servers) on the internet. Think MSFT Office (local) vs. Salesforce.com (Cloud). It's any app that leverages the internet as a key source...for storage, for processing, for data, etc.

Cloud recruiting can be seen as the extension of that concept to recruiting. As with many trends, however, this started pre-recession and in my opinion is getting traction now that the slow job market is forcing recruiters to try dramatic new things. Many recruiters use "the cloud" or internet to do traditional activities better. They use LinkedIn to source candidates thru the internet. They use BountyJobs to find job openings thru online marketplaces. The internet cloud enables them to find jobs or candidates or information at scale in a way that they simply weren't able to do 3-4 years ago. I'm sure others have other applications of the concept.

If you google the term you will find some good presentations, many of which however are a little out of date. Search the term on recruitingblogs and you'll find some good ideas. Hope that helps

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Nabors on April 19, 2010 at 11:07am

Thank you for the info Mike! The reason for my question is that I am currently working for a small company that has recently begun suffering from the current economic situation. We had been doing so well and managed to grow our business by 30% in the midst of the economy crashing, until now. We have 3 recruiters and 2 BDMs and about 3 job openings and we are about to lose several contractors (not a good situation to be in). My manager asked me to find some training on how to build our business, get new job orders and find the right people for the jobs. Other than our internal database, and of course referrals, the boards have been a strong source for us and have recently ceased to be effective. I had been seeing more and more of the cloud recruiting methodologies and thought this would be a good training course for us to do. If you happen to know of any other training courses that we can benefit from please do share! I am in dire need of some direction and advice! Thank you again!

Mike Hard said:

It is, first of all, a brilliant marketing slogan. Even if the concept had no meat (it does in my opinion), whomever coined the term was smart (or annoying depending on your POV).

I'm sure there is a company or person out there who is claiming it as the basis for thier pitch or offering, but in reality it refers to a concept that is broader than anyone company or person. It's been discussed several times on recruitingblogs over the past couple of years.

The term originally comes from "cloud computing" which has been around for about a decade and refers to software applications that aren't stored on your PC but exist somewhere on a server (or servers) on the internet. Think MSFT Office (local) vs. Salesforce.com (Cloud). It's any app that leverages the internet as a key source...for storage, for processing, for data, etc.

Cloud recruiting can be seen as the extension of that concept to recruiting. As with many trends, however, this started pre-recession and in my opinion is getting traction now that the slow job market is forcing recruiters to try dramatic new things. Many recruiters use "the cloud" or internet to do traditional activities better. They use LinkedIn to source candidates thru the internet. They use BountyJobs to find job openings thru online marketplaces. The internet cloud enables them to find jobs or candidates or information at scale in a way that they simply weren't able to do 3-4 years ago. I'm sure others have other applications of the concept.

If you google the term you will find some good presentations, many of which however are a little out of date. Search the term on recruitingblogs and you'll find some good ideas. Hope that helps

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Permalink Reply by Mike Hard on April 19, 2010 at 2:01pm

I'm sure there are others who can chime in to help - you've come to right place for advice during the downturn. Take some time and look thru other posts on the subject on recruitingblogs, you'll find some great feedback.

Two of many strategies are to use LinkedIn to find passive candidates and BountyJobs (our company) to match them with open jobs. There's alot of great advice on using LinkedIn out there - as well as advice on the old fashioned but still effective use of networking and splits.

If your search firm is already using BountyJobs let me know and I can give you some advice offline (sorry I can't add you if you are new - we may open it up to more headhunters later but are keeping it closed for now).

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