Search Results - contest

Blog Post: Job Fair: The Ultimate Guideline for Employers: Technological progression makes people argue that doing things online is better and job fairs should be no exception. Both recruiters and job seekers can join with a computer set at home, a…; Added by Ngan Pham at 10:28pm on April 7, 2021

Blog Post: Job Fair: The Ultimate Guideline for Employers: Technological progression makes people argue that doing things online is better and job fairs should be no exception. Both recruiters and job seekers can join with a computer set at home, a…; Added by Ngan Pham at 6:25am on April 25, 2022

Blog Post: Top 4 Virtual Event Platforms for Your Next Virtual Career Fair

For the event industry, especially career events,…

Added by Ngan Pham at 2:25am on January 26, 2021

Blog Post: Zoom Interview Tips for 2021: Zoom interviews might be here to stay. Or at least any video interview or remote interview session. Getting familiar with the tips that are required to nail a remote interview is critical in…; Added by Patrick Algrim at 9:35pm on November 30, 2020

Blog Post: Top 4 Virtual Event Platforms for Your Next Virtual Career Fair: For the event industry, especially career events, 2020 has not been a kind year. Instead of a catastrophic regression, however, the industry has found a new way to…; Added by Ngan Pham at 6:59am on July 13, 2021

Blog Post: Are Mo, Larry and Curly Doing The Hiring At Your Company?: Originally posted on http://blog.keenhire.com

I'm serious.

Let's get real, have you…; Added by Margaret Graziano at 12:33pm on May 13, 2010

Topic: Meet Jerry Albright, RBC Regular & Staffing Software Innovator: roup.com Jerry is one of those people you instantly like and feel a camaraderie much akin to someone who has sat on a lawn chair on your deck with a beer in hand for many a summer night. From a chat discussion to live at RecruitFest, RecruitingBlogs.com keeps bringing people from across the country and the world together, learning, singing and laughing. With Jerry we get all three. A practicing recruiter with a high grossing contracting firm who also happened to submit his talents on guitar with vocals for the RecruitingBlogs video contest and, not least, his ability to have us laughing throughout dinner in Toronto at Recruitfest on the first night at an RBC feast. Avid Outdoorsman, Familyman, Recruiter, contracting firm owner, singer, musician, and staffing software innovator, he still finds time each and every day to contribute at RecruitingBlogs be in a forum or a chatroom discussion. My friends, - we have ourselves a Renaissance man and a familiar face in Jerry Albright, a family member within a tight knit community. Meet my good friend, Jerry Albright ... Q&A with Jerry Albright, RBC Regular & Founder of Verbal Summary Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world, Jerry. Jerry: Nikole and I married in 1994 and have been enjoying our lives together for nearly 15 years! We have 3 children – boys Reagan (7) and Reed (5) and our little girl Hannah (3). Our home is in rural Northeast Indiana where we enjoy gardening, swimming in the pond on hot summer days and being actively involved with our kids! Nikole works at Oak Farm Montessori School where our children attend. In the summer we really love getting away in our camper. Venturing to new places and seeing how much the kids love exploring is a perfect way to get away from the desk. I’m an avid outdoorsman – so our family enjoys a varied menu depending on the season! Walleye, morel mushrooms, venison and pheasant are some of our favorite meals together. Six Degrees: How many years have you been a recruiter? Jerry: My recruiting career began in June of 1987. I remember seeing an ad in the Fort Wayne paper with the following headline: Human Resource Consultant. Are you enthusiastic? Motivated? Influential? It then listed the phone number to call. I was certainly motivated, as at that point in my life I hadn’t decided on a particular direction. Enthusiasm has also been a part of anything I do. So all I needed to learn was how to be influential which sounded great to me! I called the number and have stuck with it ever since! Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Jerry: I haven’t thought about that before…..It would most likely have to be the impact of my first few placements. The “big picture” of recruiting really sunk in. I remember feeling like I had really accomplished something. . I had been in sales roles before recruiting but something just felt completely different. I fell in love with it! Since then I have never taken any placement for granted. I can remember the names and companies of nearly everyone I have placed. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? Jerry: I have been fortunate in my career to have several mentors – each of whom gave me invaluable insight into the fine art of staffing. Richard Pulse is the one who hired me and gave me my start in 1987. His training and guidance was fantastic. It’s really hard to quantify just how much impact he had on my career because if it weren’t for him I’m quite certain I would be doing something entirely different with my life. My other mentor in the recruiting world was Bruce A. Bone. He was the one who showed me the absolute necessity to personally visit each client your represent. That is one of the things that have stuck with me over the years. If you are going to invest your time and effort with someone (clients) – you simply MUST meet them and build that relationship in a way that only face to face meetings can do. Six Degrees: Tell us about your Day Job, Jerry: Jerry: I am the owner of Professional Search Group as well as Verbal Summary. Professional Search Group was founded in 1998. Since that time I have developed clients throughout the Midwest. We are a small group of independent recruiters working together to fill our client need within the I.T. and Engineering community. We have a focus in I.T. and Technology and also recruit within the Engineering world for several key clients. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? Jerry: It would be foolish to not recognize the economic landscape we are all dealing with. It is refreshing for us all to be reminded of the true nature of our work and the focus and discipline success requires in the staffing world. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Jerry: Next for me is to continue developing the presence of Verbal Summary in the marketplace. Having been a successful recruiter for many years is allowing me to shift gears just a bit and follow an idea all the way through. Six Degrees: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit? Jerry: I really can’t say enough about Verbal Summary. If you can just picture how many times each day recruiters make marketing call into every company in the marketplace. They have absolutely nothing NEW to present to the clients. Faster? I doubt it. Better? Really. Lower Fee? Please….. When all is said and done there is nothing new taking place for our clients. They are getting resumes in Word format the same way they always have. So it all gets down to providing a truly different (absolutely unique) service to them. Verbal Summary is a tool which allows you to add targeted audio right on top of the resume. So when your client reviews a candidate you have introduced they just click the play button and LISTEN to the candidate describe their particular background for that position. Clients love this. Six Degrees: What tools (technology or old school file folder, for example) did you first encounter early in your recruitment career? Jerry: About the only tool we had was the telephone. What I learned during those days was the importance of listening. It seems that with the overload of internet tools we use now – there isn’t much “listening” going on. In fact there is more silence that anything. The process has shifted from “conversation” based recruiting to a more question/answer/email format. I don’t see as much investment in getting to know your clients and candidates as much as we use to. So the tool that has stuck with me is the good old telephone. (Rumor has it the phone is making a comeback!) Six Degrees: How did your expectations of being a recruiter compare to the actual, first time you got on the phone or in the cubicle? In your opinion, how do people's assumptions about our vocation differ from reality? Jerry: Well – for me I had never heard of such a thing. It was all brand new for me and it felt quite natural. Six Degrees: Worst mistake, biggest goof, lousiest practice you thought would fly but didn’t…and how that was a learning experience? Jerry: I’m all about learning from mistakes! Luckily I haven’t made too many big ones. After deciding to “do my own thing” in 1998 I did make the mistake of hiring people based on reasons other than what I knew from my previous 10 years in the business it takes to be a success. I made the mistake of assuming the people I hired had the same desire for success that I did. It cost my some real money and lost opportunities to figure that out! Six Degrees: How do you personally expect to facilitate change within our industry, and/or at your place of work? If you started that process, outline the problem, your solutions, and the vision. Jerry: It has been quite apparent to many of us “old school” recruiters that the general level of service provided my many agencies has become stagnant. Find a candidate. Send the resume. Start again. Our clients are getting resume after resume in the same boring fashion they have for years! I am personally committed to changing the way recruiters make presentations to their customers. As mentioned I have developed a tool for very easily combining audio with resumes. This tool is saving clients considerable time by being able to hear highlighted parts of their interview with the recruiter. The benefits of using it are endless. It is also used to capture your discussion with the client and add that to a written job requirement to be sent to your candidates. They love it. They get to hear the CLIENT describe the job – not just the recruiter’s interpretation. Candidates can very easily refer jobs to their associates just by forwarding the link you send. It’s amazing. Six Degrees: What are some of the frustrating aspects/obstacles to your day to day as a staffing professional and in general? Jerry: Clients now hide behind a wall of voicemail and email. It had been getting harder and harder to reach out to potential clients that had not worked with me before. Up until developing Verbal Summary I had nothing new to offer them. Six Degrees: Considering all of the frustrations you have experienced in your career as a recruiter, -- what inspires you as you continue in your career? Jerry: What inspires me are the goals and dreams we have as a family. My lovely wife Nikole inspires me! My children inspire me! Recruiting has always been a gift I feel lucky to have received. I am inspired when I drive down the highway and see names of our clients on the trucks. It makes me feel in some small way a part of the big picture. There is not a single profession I can think of which offers such a balance between life and work. Recruiting for me is simply a way of life! The flexibility is something which few careers offer. I can take my work with me – leave it at the office – let it consume me for whatever time it may – or anywhere in between. The choice is up to me! Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2009? Jerry: I will continue to get the word out on Verbal Summary while maintaining the level of placement activity I expect from myself. Should be a very busy year! Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug? Jerry: Everyone should really check out Verbal Summary. If you want to offer your clients something absolutely revolutionary…..this is it! It’s one of the few tools I have ever seen which actually give you something that will open client doors for you. It really does! Six Degrees: How Are You Going To Change The Recruitment Industry? Jerry: In a small (but growing) way I already have! Find more videos like this on RecruitingBlogs.com Six Degrees: Tell us about Your Company Jerry: Verbal Summary - www.verbalsummary.com - is the first of its kind. It’s a "Presentation Tool" designed for every desk in the staffing world. It allows the recruiter to easily combine audio with a resume for effective and powerful presentations to their clients. They simply record a conversation with their candidate creating an MP3 file. This audio is then easily uploaded along with the resume to the website. This profile is then turned into a friendly link for sending to their client. All activity taking place from that point forward is tracked instantaneously on their “dashboard”. You will now know immediately when your client has reviewed your presentation. That alone is worth the price! Take a look at this example candidate profile! http://www.verbalsummary.com/ViewCandidate.aspx?p1=23cfc27e-2654-46ad-a4ef-59abcbf732a2 Six Degrees: How was Your Company Founded? Jerry: Our industry has been fixated on candidate sourcing, social networking and storing candidate profiles. There has been very little (if any) thought put into how we’re presenting these individuals to our customer base. In searching for a way to make our candidates stand out from the crowd we found nothing available. I’m an old school recruiter. My success comes from having conversations – REAL conversations - with candidates and clients. Lately many of my clients have begun to rely more and more on email for communication. This frustrates me. After developing an excellent understanding of my candidate’s background and qualifications – I then have to throw it out the window and just send a plain old email with resume attached! I had to change that. Often times during the initial part of the process the client begins with a phone call to the candidate. This is usually a few days in the making and the end result is in essence covering the very same ground your client is paying you for! So this tool simply had to be built. I now take specific parts of my interview audio with the candidate and stick it right on top of the resume. There are hundreds of products to help us keep track of our candidates, but nothing to move them forward once a match has been identified. With that in mind we built the industry’s only tool geared toward our client’s first impression of the candidate that requires NOTHING NEW from the client or candidate. We have significantly changed the way our customers expect to be served by reconstructing the entire ‘resume sending’ process. We’re now introducing the “person” to our clients, not just their resume. Six Degrees: Where did you go and find investors? Jerry: This was done in-house. This project was done with a team of outside software developers. They helped me put my idea into a workable design and then took it from there. Being the first software product I had experienced it was a fascinating and rewarding process…..expensive…but rewarding! From the initial concept to product launch took just under 1 year. Six Degrees: Your Company’s Value Proposition Jerry: With a world gone crazy with all kinds of technology to find candidates – there is simply not a single, straight-forward tool to help you “brand” your “product” once you’ve identified a solid candidate for your client. I find it amazing just how much money is spent in the recruiting world just to make sure everyone has access to all the same resumes their competitors do – but nothing is being invested (yet) to set that resume apart from the crowd for your client. Using Verbal Summary is a way for you to CLEARLY provide an incrementally better service to your client. Without a doubt clients absolutely love the ability to LISTEN to the candidate speak directly about their experience for the job. All the client does is click the link you send. Your email is a sharply branded message sent from Verbal Summary. The customer just follows the link. No downloads, passwords or additional software is required on their end. Your client can review YOUR INTERVIEW AUDIO at any time that fits into their schedule. Six Degrees: What is the pricing structure for your services/products? Jerry: $50/month for the first account with discounts for additional users in the same company. Six Degrees: What is the future for Your Company? Jerry: The future is great! Being the first tool of its kind I have noticed it taking a bit for the idea to catch on with the recruiting public. Once a recruiter sits down and really looks at it the advantage in using it becomes absolutely clear. I know most recruiters think in terms of placements so I’ll put it this way – if you make just ONE additional placement in 30 years due to VS – then it has paid for itself! Why WOULDN’T someone use it?! Six Degrees: Do you blog? Jerry: I’m a recruiter – not a journalist or reporter - so I really haven’t felt the need to blog much. I’ve never thought the general public needed to know my every thought – but to each his own. I am a regular on RecruitingBlogs.com though. Sometimes I’ll put something together over there. I have had the pleasure of hosting Talent Talk Cafe several times and have really enjoyed it. It is a chat every Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm EST on the front page. I strongly believe every recruiter in the world should be a member there. Each day is a learning opportunity. The volume of information there is mind boggling! Six Degrees: Tell me something others may not know about you. Jerry: My home is heated by burning corn which heats water in a boiler. That water is then pumped through my homes original gas/forced air system. The fan blows across the radiator and sends the heat throughout the duct system. It’s very quiet.…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 9:41pm on November 23, 2008

Blog Post: Vote Americans, Vote: Whether you believe Obama is prepared or not, history is being made. Whether you believe only McCain can protect our country, history is being made. Whether you believe our country needs to change,…; Added by Steve Levy at 8:38am on November 4, 2008

Topic: Meet Beth Havens, A Corporate Recruiter with a Physics Degree & Love Ancient Architecture: ue. Personal Causes: Saving Edith Wharton’s Home in the Hamptons, it’s a very unique bit of history Office/Cell Number: 805-212-0612 Personal Email: msbhavens1@yahoo.com *** Beth is Available for New Opportunities Beth Havens has been a Full Cycle Contract Technical Recruiter with more than 12 years exempt recruitment experience in high-volume, high profile technical and scientific fields. Beth takes pride in her expertise in areas such as risk reduction, ability to work independently or in teams, vendor negotiation, collecting and defining business requirements, executing strategic searches, workforce planning, strong flexibility to adjust to demanding environments with attention to details and deadlines. Q&A with Beth Havens Six Degrees: Tell us about your home world Beth Beth I am an empty nester with a busy year ahead of me! My youngest Daughter Graduates from the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, on the 9th of May. (Yes that is the week after the Kentucky Derby, for you horse racing fans out there) My Oldest Daughter is getting Married in August, and finishes her Masters at USC in December (her BA is from UCLA, she has a fine sense of humor) otherwise it is just me and the critters at home these days! Have Dog will travel! Hobbies! Oh my! Aside from the obvious hobbies of gardening and hiking, I am known to write poetry, I have a book on lulu dot com that I put together for the friends and family who complained, “Toads Pond”. I’m known to hang out with the Society for Creative Anachronism on occasion. I enjoy medieval engineering, heraldry, textile hobbies and other interesting tidbits to be found within that group. I love ancient architecture. I’m far more likely to be found in the museum or the garden than on the beach. I’m terribly unsocial in my private life for a recruiter. Six Degrees: How many years have you been in the staffing industry? Beth I started recruiting in 1995. My BS is in Physics and Computer Science and finding a job in that market was a bit tough, when I stumbled across a recruiter who thought I’d make a good recruiter. I think a good many recruiters stumbled into the industry via odd roads. I had the pleasure of working for an IT staffing company called XXCAL for a good many years before I went into contract recruiting. Since then I have been doing contract and freelance recruiting. Generally I get called for one of two things, either hard to find Scientific, Engineering, IT or Technical people, OR oddly enough, hard to work with hiring managers. I have worked with both very large companies like Citibank, and Sony electronics, and small companies(less than 100 employees), like Xencor. I find either can be great opportunities as long as there are interesting requirements to work on. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? Beth Full Cycle Contract Technical Recruiter with more than 12 years exempt recruitment experience in high-volume, high profile technical and scientific fields. I am dedicated and work to give a high level of professionalism. My abilities include strong written and verbal communication, risk reduction, ability to work independently or in teams, vendor negotiation, collecting and defining business requirements, executing strategic searches, workforce planning, strong flexibility to adjust to demanding environments with attention to details and deadlines. Most recently, Beth serviced at Sony Electronics, Inc. through Integrity Placements, performing full cycle recruiting, mainly for ISSA, Legal, Marketing and Controller groups. Recruiting mainly SAP manufacturing and finance project lead and management for ISSA. Participating in research and development for a strong print ad campaign, as well as searching for and developing stronger presence in recruiting online in niche arena’s for specific job functions, mainly seeking Project experience for large ERP projects. Helped to re-create the in house staffing function at Sony. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Beth Transitioning from Agency Staffing to Contract Recruiting - it allowed me to really do the parts of recruiting I like best! Working directly with hiring managers to fill needs, and working on finding the candidates to fill those needs, while not having to do the part I dislike which is hunting for prospective opportunities. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? Beth I have to say the person I learned the most about recruiting and business in general from, was Marv Hoffman. Marv not only provided a great deal of recruiting training, but encouraged his recruiting teams to participate in groups that they could learn more from. For instance while working with XXCAL I belonged to several users groups that were great souring pools. (NT users group and a VB Testing group for example) We attended recruiting conferences and Marv had his own training sessions as well. It would have been hard to spend any length of time in that group and NOT learn a great deal. Six Degrees: Tell us about your position, (responsibilities, size of your staffing organization) : Beth Currently I am doing freelance work, taking on requirements from staffing firms who need a bit of help, and doing splits while seeking that next contracting opportunity! Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? Beth I am hoping the Trend in new Energy Development and Deployment will have a great boost in my future opportunities, as I’ve been keenly interested in alternate energy sources since I was a teen. Be it thermal heating systems, Wind turbines, solar (recently read a great white paper from MIT on some solar energy changes that would radically alter the amount of energy you are ABLE to use from solar cells) or even passive energy creation or conservation. (for instance if you don’t lose as much heat from a home, you don’t need to create as much, etc.) But then I’m always interested in engineering and architecture, so this shouldn’t’ be too big a shock for those who’ve been reading along. I am a geek by nature, and no! That is not a negative statement! Six Degrees: Tell us about your broader involvement within the staffing industry: (Do you attend conferences? Which ones? List/detail speaking events, awards, publications, where you have you represented your company) Beth I have attended conferences in the past, SHRM, ERE and many conferences that were directly related to my recruiting needs, Like the Optical Electronic Industry conferences, or Computer conferences which were related to industries I was recruiting for. My personal favorite is the OPIE. I have to admit, I have a couple Schott glasses from the Schott glass company. That has to be one of the best give aways ever. Six Degrees: Can you detail how the recession has affected your particular industry niche? Has it effected your job or that of your fellow team members within the organization - If so, to what extent? (If you have been laid off, tell us about the experience, when it happened) Beth My last contract ended at the end of January in 2008. I was very surprised that I didn’t have several opportunities in the wings when it ended, but still, I didn’t think I’d be working freelance as long as I have. I had remarked to some friends in 2007 that some banking transactions I’d had reason to observe worried me as to the state of several banks stability. I really hate to be right some days. It seems to me that the media began paying attention to the recession in Late 2008, but that the recession itself began early 2007. I began seeing a great deal more recruiters looking for work peaking in the winter months of 2008 and finally starting to subside in about March of this year. Of course in times like this, Good Sales Staff are worth their weight in gold, but they aren’t automatically created from thin air, so both staffing agencies and corporate business have found themselves going through sales staff and training at a rather intense rate (good training is far too under rated and under utilized in my opinion) while other business find themselves holding their collective breath, so to speak waiting to see what is happening on the world stage, or even failing in the interim. We will recover, economies do, sometimes more slowly than others, but we will recover. Now, where we will all be at the other end of that recovery, that is the question! I admit to having some Thoughts about the viability of changing direction, but to what purpose? Important questions these! I think one of the best indications that the bleeding of the economy is slowing down is that there are more advertisements for recruiters and a big slowdown in the number of NEWLY unemployed recruiters. If there are Jobs, there will be a need for recruiters, so it is, I think, the number one job listing to look for in a recovering economy. Interestingly there seem to be a great deal more ads for the east coast than west coast coming up on my searches. That too may be an indication of what we need to watch in the coming year. Are other economies recovering faster than the California economy? And which industries are recovering fastest. Which seem to be failing completely? I enjoy searching through this information on a regular basis lately. Also I would expect some staffing agencies to do really well when the economy begins to heal because when applicants are abundant, what manager wants to wade through hundreds of resumes to find a few gems? So the pick up in Agency hiring is to me another indication that the recession is beginning to ease just a bit. I am looking forward to a happier year! Six Degrees: Aside from simply the generic term “Networking” what specific efforts have you made on your own behalf, or on behalf of colleagues to broaden your opportunities. Are there specific groups, both online and in-person that have proved fruitful in extending your personal brand and job seeking prospects? Beth You know that is a great question! I have joined a few interesting groups in an effort to get more visibility. I joined the “Ruthie List” and “Carecruit” (California recruiting) groups. I also started receiving other industry communications that I thought might be useful for finding companies that might need my services. I found a few browsers that have been uniquely helpful. Indeed.com is a site that lets you see jobs on several boards and even private company sites at once. Which also just brings to light several possible companies that might be useful. Six Degrees: Given your own Trial and Error experiences as a Networker, what advice do you have for your peers on what NOT to do? Be specific Beth I should advise against sharing too much personal information, there really is (and I believe, should be!) a difference between your personal and public life. Other than that, be interested in others as much as you are interested in promoting your own needs, because if you don’t listen to others, you will miss opportunities for yourself! (or maybe even an opportunity for a friend) Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Beth There are a couple things I’d like to do. One objective is to work with a small company helping build a solid team from the ground up. Possibly working that effort into an operations Lead position later on. Another thing that I’d be interested in doing is leading a recruiting team for a large company. Either objective is highly dependent upon opportunity. I have my eyes open for just such an occurrence! “HOW DOES BETH IT?” Six Degrees: How many applicants at your present employer do you estimate are hired from your corporate website as compared to how many are hired through referrals? Beth When corporate recruiting, it has been my experience that the overwhelming vast majority of the hiring was the result of sourcing efforts on my part, which included, corporate advertising, searching internal and external databases and networking. I found that a good candidate was just as likely to be found by anyone of these methods as the other, which is why I employ all these methods. . Six Degrees: What is the source of your "LOWEST COST OF HIRES" - (least amount of invested resources for the easiest hires, regardless of quality) at your present employer? Beth Without doubt the lowest cost per hire I have found has been with previously known candidates, or internal transfers. An internal transfer does not always mean another opening. One of the things smart companies do, is to review the personnel they have to let go from One team, for the likelihood they can fill openings in another group. The cost savings can be tremendous there. Six Degrees: What talent niche groups do you target and are these particular talent areas specialized under your review? Beth I generally focus on hard to find IT, Engineering or Scientific candidates, though I’ve been asked to fill legal openings as well. While at Sony my main focus was in hiring High level SAP management and design level candidates and Law candidates. While at Amgen it was chemists and other high level R&D scientists, at Citibank embedded Unix developers, and Oracle programmers. If it is a complex opportunity, I may be the recruiter you need. Six Degrees: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit? Beth I have probably used just about every ATS system out there, at one time or another, having an ATS is invaluable, which one you have is certainly up to you or your company, my favorite is Bond. The one I’ve used most is Taleo. Secondly I think one should have access to posting on Some job boards, one doesn’t necessarily need every board out there, but one universal board, and a few niche boards that fit your company needs really do make networking easier. Not to mention advertise your company and give you more opportunities to network. And contact with niche groups that support whatever activity you most need in your hiring, be it MBA groups or some users group that services a particular type of prospective candidate, these can be invaluable. My brain, is also known to be a fairly useful tool, though I don’t claim to share all its contents. Six Degrees: What tools (technology or old school file folder, for example) did you first encounter early in your recruitment career? Beth I came into recruiting when databases and search engines were already in use. And being a geek I really don’t think I would have gotten into it otherwise. If I file it, it isn’t likely to be seen again for years. I file things that Might be useful sometime, not things I use on a regular basis. That is why databases are so useful, its filing for things you plan on using regularly. I also think I drove my first bosses crazy because I hired more candidates on email than I ever called, and that drove the metrics crazy. But then a lot of the candidates I deal with don’t like(and occasionally don’t answer) the phone. Six Degrees: How did your expectations of being a recruiter compare to the actual, first time you got on the phone or in the cubicle? In your opinion, how do people's assumptions about our vocation differ from reality? Beth I didn’t have any idea of what to expect when I first started recruiting, since it wasn’t anything I ever imagined I’d be doing! So no expectations to live up to or crush. I think the biggest assumption people have about recruiting is that it in any way is an HR function. Recruiting is a management function, and is diabolically opposed to HR. the sole function of HR is to protect a companies assets. This means if you have someone in HR doing your recruiting, they often will not show resumes to hiring managers that they think are a pain to HR. a recruiter puts the position and the hiring managers needs before HR preferences. Recruiting assumes the responsibilities of a hiring manager to detail, advertise and find suitable candidates for an opening. Some of the odd HR jobs recruiters take on in order to fulfill that duty, are for our own convenience, to get the job done. They aren’t a recruiting function per se’. The most foolish thing any business can do in my opinion, is to put recruiting under the auspices of HR. If they aren’t under their own separate heading altogether, then they should be under operations. Six Degrees: Worst mistake, biggest goof, lousiest practice you thought would fly but didn’t…and how that was a learning experience? Beth I will have to hold a contest to see. Though possibly the one I thought the silliest was parking in boss’ favorite (though unmarked) parking place when I went for an interview. Six Degrees: How do you personally expect to facilitate change within our industry, and/or at your place of work? If you started that process, outline the problem, your solutions, and the vision. Beth I think that the best way to make any industry better is to do your best at what you do. Lead by example and change will occur naturally. Well it’s a theory anyway. Six Degrees: “Best practice” you are most proud of developing (now or in the past) in your recruiting career? Beth The best recruiting practice is to stick to process. Six Degrees: What are some of the frustrating aspects/obstacles to your day to day as a staffing professional and in general? Beth I think the biggest obstacle to recruiting, are hiring managers whose personal hiring goals clash with their companies hiring goals. They most often take up the most time. This time waster is followed closely by un-necessary meetings. Six Degrees: Considering all of the frustrations you have experienced in your career as a recruiter, -- what inspires you as you continue in your career? Beth I’m happiest when working on an interesting opportunity. Finding that one odd placement no one else can find. Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2009? (OR) Six Degrees: What one thing do you find most ideal given the opportunity to develop/ implementing/ invent professionally that has yet to be done. Beth Actually I’d like to see an MRP (manufacturing resource planner) that is similar to a job board for investors and communities to use to help manufacturing stay strong. The idea being that resources, inventors and investors really need a place to network to make opportunity happen. The thought comes out of my recruiting experience. Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug? Beth Only the hole in the economic dyke…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 2:54am on May 18, 2009

Topic: Recruitment 4.0: Crowdsourcing, Gamification, Recruitment as a Profit Center, … and the Death of Recruitment Agencies!: sting 3.0. But what direction are we heading in? Is it a coherent journey? Is there a clear destination/end goal? 4.0. What on earth could that include? How’s this? Recruitment transitions from being a “cost center” into a “profit center”’! The collapse and insolvency of many recruitment agencies. Job boards stuttering and collapsing … and repurposing themselves Companies hiring “through the sky” through external referrals and crowdsourcing Exclusive/VIP/premium paid in-community content and paid mobile apps Gamification shapes recruiting strategies and generates stickiness and virality Companies rated globally by crowd opinions Before anyone screams “unrealistic” or “utter fantasy” or cries B.S., let’s be clear that Recruitment 4.0 moves into the territory of vision. This is some years off. But by calculated hypotheses it is clear there will be a 4.0 and that it is a natural progression of 3.0 and builds sensibly on its foundations. Let’s recap the different versions of recruiting. Recruitment 1.0 encompasses traditional recruiting over a huge timeline, including good old-fashioned fax machines, print advertising, (post, spray ,and pray), and Rolodexes moving into traditional ATSs. Recruiters more focused on processes than end results. The basic any-bum-on-any-seat philosophy. Recruitment 2.0 saw the move onto online and using technology for recruitment purposes, including the advent of online job boards & online CV searches. While the technology moved forward, the traditional methodology of 1.0 was prevalent, including online post, spray, and pray candidate attraction (aka the recruitment lottery of let’s hope the right-ish person looks at the online advertisement, at the right time and feels willing to go to the effort to apply). Both Recruitment 1.0 and 2.0 were/are fundamentally focused on the active job seekers, (applying to vacancies, on agency books, and those watching job boards like a possessed predator). Recruitment 3.0 is a huge leap as it moves recruitment out of its comfort zone. The beating heart of 3.0 is the non-active/passive individual and a focus on “best talent” and building predictable talent pipelines. In addition, the philosophy of “everyone is a potential candidate so engage them” is central. 3.0 takes us into building engaged, two-way, free-conversation based, transparent communities. This is anchored by things like employment branding, marketing, and PR. 3.0 is not only concerned with building communities but mapping key competitors and seducing cream-of-the-crop talent with your brand and in-house opportunities. What is Recruitment 4.0? Recruitment 3.0 is all consumed and focused on building communities. 4.0 is all about the value of those communities, both real and perceived. Recruitment has traditionally been a cost center. It sucks money from the profit line like Count Dracula on a feeding frenzy in Transylvania, especially if agency fees are involved, coupled with advertising/job board fees etc. Add this up and it can be an overwhelming drain on resources. Remember that many of the Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies are addicted to agency hiring and mass job board advertising like an alcoholic drawn to drink. Why highlight the Fortune and FTSE companies? Primarily they should have the advantage and resources to wean off agency addiction, source passive candidates far more easily than small to medium companies, (but funnily enough it is the small- and medium-sized companies who are far more fleet of foot and innovative). Recruitment 4.0 sees recruiting move from being a cost center (a loss-making division) to being a profit center. Reflect on that statement. It’s huge and revolutionary. Recruitment being a profit center. “Impossible,” you cry. Perhaps not if you reflect and apply some visionary foresight. Recruitment 4.0 is some years off. But not as far as some may think. Consider the world we live in. Value is defined differently. Companies like Zynga, Facebook, and LinkedIn have massive valuations, well above their profitability margins. Their reach and potential reach and the size of their mass following — an engaged following. Our generation is living in the information age. The power lies in networks. Networks are data. Data is power. And data is money. We all want data. Especially recruiters and marketers/salespeople. So how does a community, (or let’s crudely call it data) = value = monetization = recruitment becoming a profit center? There are several facets to recruitment moving to a profit center. Reduction of recruiting costs to a minimum, (agency usage close to zero, less need for mass job board advertising, reduction in number of in-house recruiters employed). This depends on building and nurturing a “qualitative” community, a strong employment brand, vibrant social networks, mapped competitors, and putting in place a predictable talent pipeline for key hiring channels. The community itself evolves into a self-service community, where recruitment can be executed by crowdsourcing, and by hiring managers becoming more engaged into pipeline generation and hiring. Everyone can use LinkedIn. Why not hiring managers? Value in the community is identified by both internal and external advertisers/marketers that allows for revenue for recruitment. A sense of increased value is attached to belonging/being part of that community, hence VIP/exclusive areas/content that people are happy to pay for. Gamification principles create more engagement and sense of belonging and stickiness to sites, hence driving potential of more opportunities for monetization. Actual games/cartoons/content that people subscribe to have repeat value. Let’s look at some of those in a little more depth. Traditional advertising is failing. The days of successful, targeted TV and print advertising are long behind us. Ways to communicate, once limited and restricted, are now numerous and disperse. Looking at TV, the former medium of choice for mass communication, now diminished, as people are now hungry for choice and happily spread their viewing over a diverse and numerous multitude of TV channels. If an advertiser manages to define a great TV slot to advertise to reach their target audience they are thwarted by the fact that people can now record and Tivo, hence skipping ads. TV advertising then is a busted flush. Print advertising? Again, some national newspapers and magazines are spiraling downward from their heyday readerships. People tend toward reading the latest news online 24/7 or from niche web sites. They don’t want to wait the next day for old news. Print has had to be more salacious and do what it can to get the best scoops to get whatever sales possible. Online, people not only digest news, but have the benefit of posting comments and engaging in discussions. So traditional messaging vehicles are struggling. This coincides with a time when recruiter networks are expanding. Combine a recruitment database (with some companies having in excess of ½ million – million names), with social media networks, a targeted mass of names, email addresses, with perceived affinity to a business or product, and a growing realization awakens that this has a marketable value. A marketing department does not have this scale, (or quality), of information on its database. Recruiting does. Now the first step is for recruiting to cross charge its marketing division to advertise to its database and community. Why not? Many marketing departments don’t see or understand the value of recruiting databases. They’re a potential goldmine of information and data … and potential business opportunities. Taking this a step further, why not allow specific external companies the opportunity to advertise to your community? (Mindful of data protection and ensuring a community buys into contact by third-party advertisers). You remain in charge of the names and not divulging data, but certain advertising is safe to your community and could be revenue-generating for recruiting. As this thought sinks in, revenue potential opens up. The Death of Recruitment Agencies At the same time, savvy companies will be seeing their recruiting costs decreasing. As companies build their databases of talent, via sourcing, identification through LinkedIn, talent mapping, and coupled with their valued online communities, the need and reliance on recruiting agencies, both contingent and retained, will dramatically lessen. This will also coincide with less of a need for corporate in-house recruiters. Hiring managers are more than adept at searching on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is greatly expanding its offering and making recruiting easier for everyone. Initiatives like ‘Genome’ from LinkedIn will radically lesson the need for dedicated in-house recruiters in the future. Coupled with your community recruiting on your company’s behalf (crowdsourcing of talent), the need for recruiters will lessen and hence accelerate cost reduction. The very future of recruitment agencies depends on their ability to adapt to the new realities that companies are waking up to the need to break out of the active candidate pool and identify and attract passive candidates. If we take as an approximation that of the 100% of candidates qualified for your job, only 10% are active with agencies and job boards, then it’s the 90% who are more attractive to companies, and the agencies need to identify, attract, and present those candidates. Contingent recruitment agencies, especially the large ones, are in the business of competing to be the first to present the CV of that 10% active pool, all trying to Bolt out the blocks. Unless they start to adapt by attracting and mapping out the 90% non-active and building their own communities, their model will face extinction. Now is not the time to rush and buy shares in traditional contingent operators as a long-term investment. Even worse, the business model of traditional retained search and selection companies, as we reflect on it in this modern age, is founded on the delusions of lunacy. A client pays a 30% fee for first-year guaranteed compensation (or even just basic salary only), split into thirds, a third for commencement of the project and a third for presentation of a shortlist — the risk all loaded on the fee-paying client. Certainly, cost models will change toward loaded placement fees. The irony is that search firm marketing is based on its peerless reputation as the ultimate Rolodex of all the golden names in the industry. Their network is the goldmine that we are seduced to unlock. If their databases are that peerless and they have done hundreds of similar searches, why then does it take four to five weeks for a shortlist? Perhaps that question is not raised enough. The zealots will cry that the search agency is peerless in assessment and interviewing. But is that not we do in house? Why am I paying two-thirds of a fee without a placement? It’s even more laughable when the shortlist of contacts is most likely generated by a fresh graduate on $40,000 a year in the back room of the search agency, who then passes all their lead generation to the search consultant. Alternatively, a growing trend is using a new breed of company that is engaged in market mapping, talent pooling, and recruitment research solutions — hence providing a company with a mapped market of qualified talent, with contact details and candidate profiles that the recruiter then follows up on. Not every company can afford internal sourcers, and this is the next best thing, and significantly cheaper/more cost effective than a full search. However you cut it, the future is not bright for contingent and retained search and selection unless they adapt to changing new business realities. Not many currently have that foresight as they focus on short-termism. Hopefully agency CEOs have strong managers in their crow’s nest who are prepared to shout “iceberg ahead” before disaster strikes. Job Boards Faltering Coupled with the death/decline of agencies will be the faltering and restructuring of the large job boards. As companies build their own recruitment databases and even more importantly their own communities, they can use creative ways to sourcetalent. Communities themselves will evolve around certain disciplines/careers/industries and hence negate the use for paid job boards. Why pay for a large job board in the active pool when we can reach passive candidates in a free community? Job boards will have to look at community-building themselves and earn their revenue through product placement advertising rather than paid-for job advertisements. Companies have always embraced the concept of internal referrals. Why not the reverse? External referrals — even better through crowdsourcing using their communities. Naysayers will point to the rewards attributed to internal referrals, generally through monetary bonuses, and hence the difficulty of applying this externally as companies don’t want to pay for talent they would have got anyway. But recent times have showed the power of recognition and “public reward” through games like Foursquare. People love the status of being the Mayor of a local curry house. Why not take this principle into recruiting and reward referrals from crowdsourcing: Public recognition and rewards in the community, (badges, leaderboards), on a sliding scale to reach actualization of ”real” rewards, be it monetary bonus, vacation, or a PC or iPad? External Referrals through Crowdsourcing Recruitment can learn a lot from crowdsourcing. This term was arguably defined by Jeff Howe in the June 2006 issue of Wiredmagazine. Howe states: Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers. Howe further drives this home by stating that “it’s only crowdsourcing once a company takes that design, fabricates [it] in mass quantity and sell[s] it.” In laymen’s language, a company posts a problem online; a vast number of individuals offer their opinions and ideas as to how to solve it; the winning idea is rewarded in some form; and the end result is the company adopting the idea for its own benefit. Some great examples of the power of crowdsourcing exist on Wikipedia: (the following are all directly quoted from Wikipedia). In 2005, Amazon.com launched the Amazon Mechanical Turk, a platform on which crowdsourcing tasks called “HITs” (Human Intelligence Tasks”) can be created and publicized and people can execute the tasks and be paid for doing so. Dubbed “Artificial Intelligence,” it was named after The Turk, an 18th century chess-playing “machine.” Cisco Systems Inc. held an I-Prize contest in which teams using collaborative technologies created innovative business plans. The winners in 2008 were a three-person team, Anna Gossen from Munich, her husband Niels Gossen, and her brother, Sergey Bessonnitsyn, that created a business plan demonstrating how IP technology could be used to increase energy efficiency. More than 2,500 people from 104 countries entered the competition. The winning team won $250,000. The Democratic National Committee launched FlipperTV in November 2007 and McCainpedia in May 2008 to crowdsource video gathered by Democratic trackers and research compiled by DNC staff in the hands of the public to do with as they choose — whether for a blog post, to create a YouTube video, etc. Facebook has used crowdsourcing since 2008 to create different language versions of its site. The company claims this method offers the advantage of providing site versions that are more compatible with local cultures. General Electric organized a multimillion dollar challenge to find new, breakthrough ideas to create cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid technologies, and to accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies. The winner will be announced on Nov. 16, 2020. The Vancouver Police Department has put up a website entitled Hockey Riot 2011, informing people about the VPD′s investigations into the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot. It also asks people to contribute any pictures or video that they may have taken during the riot, with the goal of identifying people who may have participated in the rioting. The site also reminds people to not use social media to take justice into their own hands, instead leaving it to the police. As of July 1, 2011, 101 arrests have been made. IBM collected more than 37,000 ideas for potential areas for innovation from brainstorming sessions with its customers, employees, and their family members in 2006. L’Oreal used viewer-created advertising messages of Current TV to pool new and fresh advertising ideas. Pepsi launched a marketing campaign in early 2007 which allowed consumers to design the look of a Pepsi can. The winners would receive a $10,000 prize, and their artwork would be featured on 500 million Pepsi cans around the United States. Unilever has recently decided to drop its ad agency of 16 years, Lowe, and has turned to the crowdsourcing platform IdeaBounty to find creative ideas for its next TV campaign. Unilever has worked with Lowe on the snack-food brand Peperami since 1993, but has decided to submit its brief out to the public, rather than a small team of creatives. Ironically, Wikipedia is itself a successful example of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing, as a concept, lends itself perfectly to recruiting. Posing the question to your community, “We are looking for a dynamic Product Manager, with x/y/z experience … any ideas/recommendations?” will soon become a normal sourcing/name generating activity for recruiters. The key is how to incentivize/inspire/motivate the crowd to do your recruiting. LinkedIn gets it. It’s already making headway toward this goal, aiding a company’s ability to use employee networks and matching up people who are connected to our employees who closely match our job specifications. But what about the wider crowd? That’s where attention will turn next. Premium Paid Content Recruitment 3.0 recognized that recruitment is fundamentally boring. People tend to only visit corporate careers pages when they are looking for work. There is no engaging “repeat visit” content that drags them back for more. Many companies are using social media as a replacement job board and listing jobs with hyperlinks back to the job site. It’s hardly the most engaging content. Recruitment 3.0 involves building “engaged” communities. The key is compelling, rich content, creating a destination that people want to go to on a frequent basis. That is not a list of jobs. Remember again that recruiting is not about “bums on seats”; it also encompasses nurturing a strong employment brand proposition, attracting and seducing those not familiar with your brand, and taking them on a journey to either apply to work for your company or be an active brand ambassador in your community. As communities build up in 3.0, underpinned by engaging content, and when those communities reach a critical mass, the next step is starting to grant VIP access and exclusive content to community members. If communities are engaged, they will be, by definition, happy to pay to be part of the VIP area, and we will see the monetization of these communities and a potential revenue stream for recruiters. Aggregating all your social media feeds — Twitter, Facebook, YouTube content, and your blog — is the first step. This could and should be aggregated both on your corporate careers site and your mobile phone app (for those who want to be part of the community on the move). A one-stop shop for people to engage and follow your company encourages repeat visitors. This content on the social media sites needs to feel personalized and humanized, giving exclusive access behind the scenes of your company and the individuals behind it. But what else? Understand the public pulse. There is no better place than the Apple Store. This shows what content keeps people coming back and is most popular to download. And guess what that is: News & Information (knowledge and exclusive access news) Games (fun games but also including quizzes) Comics & books (The appeal of an ongoing story that people want to follow) Photography/photos/videos (uploading and sharing) This content often focuses on getting people involved, something to do with your friends, and brings that “global community” together. Each of these is “sticky” and keeps people coming back. Why can’t recruiters use these same concepts as part of their community building but adapt them for their own companies? Recruitment Embraces Concepts of Gamification Gamification is the latest buzzword. What’s funny is that some well-known commentators are rushing to speak about this subject but end up mirroring granddad at the disco trying to throw “cool” shapes to the latest bangin’ tune but instead look rather doddery and completely out of touch. People love to be entertained. Gaming is huge. Not just “serious” video console games like the Call of Duty’s, FIFAs, and Battlefields, or the PC games like World of Warcraft, but the spread of casual gaming whether on Facebook or on mobile shows the power of people of all ages wanting interactive entertainment. Gaming educates us about the dynamics of engagement. (Some would take this further to addiction.) What a great game does is ingrain itself into the conscious and subconscious of the player. You think about it and love the roller coaster of emotions that the game takes you through. You may pull an all-nighter, or get up extra early to get in an hour or so before having to venture off to deal with humdrum reality. Escapism is the new drug of the austere Tens. But what else can we learn? Casual games are the key to the door of mass/mainstream and that elusive community engagement via compelling content that we all seek. Casual games are those that embrace all demographics, are simple, fun, accessible, and from which users get an instant form of gratification. This is different than “serious games” that are deeper experiences and are perhaps less accessible due to the time invested and the barrier of controllers/complexity of purpose. Farmville on Facebook is a classic example of community-building and demonstrates some key buttons in engagement theory (in a social context). Farmvile has been such a success for a number of reasons. First, it recognized the unbridled thrill of “gifting.” When you first visit your farm, you don’t go straight to it but to a page with a list of gifts. Many games ask you to spam mail your buddies to play the game. Farmville cleverly goes further by allowing you to send a gift of an animal or plant/crop to your friends. Of course, when we receive gifts, we also like to give them back, starting the spiral of interaction. Part of this psychology also encourages you to help your friends by reminding them to harvest their fields and to weed their farms. It’s very community-friendly stuff. These gifts also have a perceived value. The whole point of Farmville is to build a busy and profitable farm and maintain it. But to do this, you need to build and grow the farm, which is time-consuming and takes a while to buy plants, crops, and trees, etc. But luckily your saving grace is your friends as they help out by sending all these valuable items for your farm. Hence my farm looks better with more content so I will invite more of my friends to play, give them gifts, and expect/request gifts in return. It’s a clever use of personal psychology and satisfaction of wants. Farmville also gets that the game has to be accessible and simple. There are no extra levels; you just keep on growing the size and scope of your own farm. The only limitation is money. But having lots of friends gets around that. Now the clever part kicks in. The game keeps you coming back. Certain crops you plant require harvesting at certain times. Some crops will die if you don’t come back. Strawberries mean you come back every four hours. That locks in an engagement and repeat visit. “I must log back in at 2 p.m. or my crops will die!” Farmville also cleverly gets the whole concept of one-up-manship and competing to have the bigger farm, the more money, the latest gadgets 00 and that’s where monetization kicks in. Someone can pay to get ahead of their friends, and for many that is a key driver. “I must have the biggest farm and the latest items and be ahead of my mates!” Hence Farmville teaches us there are three things to making social games huge viral successes: getting users to invite their friends (virality); getting users to return frequently (stickiness); and people competing to win/be ahead of their friends (showing off). Interestingly, one of the first to understand these dynamics was the Hotel chain Marriott, which has released a Facebook game designed with the goal of introducing potential employees to life in the hospitality industry.MyMarriottHotel gives players the opportunity to “work” in various hotel roles, including hospitality manager. You can start by working in the hotel kitchens and gain points for excellent customer service and profitability. The game is geared to raising awareness among millennials to job opportunities around the world (cleverly available in five languages). Critically for recruiting, the MyMarriottHotel Facebook game includes at the top of the game a banner shouting “Do It For Real” that hyperlinks to Marriott’s jobs site. Marriott’s goal is to fill 50,000 positions at its hotels around the world, helped by this game raising awareness, (predominantly outside the U.S.). So what is gamification, and how can it be applied to recruiting? Gamification is using game mechanics/methodology to inspire engagement in activities that otherwise would be considered boring or routine. Recruitment certainly sits within that definition. Key concepts of gamification that recruiters can learn from when developing communities and building compelling, repeat visit content, include: The key word when engaging in social media and community-building is remembering the key element, often-forgotten, is social Keeping activities/content simple, fun, and interactive. When people read your blog/social media, is it light, carries pictures, short, informative, stimulating, or even entertaining to read? People want to know what other people are doing, especially their friends. Can people see what their friends have been doing? People love engagement and giving their opinion, be it by rate-this-page, commenting, oropinion polls. These are all interactive elements that engage. As people interact, degrees of personalization and humanization help, such as the uploading of avatars and/or people’s pictures. People prefer engaging with “perceptibly real” other people. Avatars aid that. Are you encouraging sharing content/activities with your community? Are people rewarded or recognized for sharing content? Inspiring members of your community’s “friends” to get involved and get their friends engaged, i.e. virality, sending community growth viral. “Gifting.” Can content be shared amongst friends/can someone get something in return? Keeps em coming back for more. Certain times of the day/week that the community has to be there. Prizes/giveaways ingrain this activity. Some companies do specific content “reveals” at certain times of the week. Live webcasts also encourage set-time attendance. Competition against friends/leader boards. It could be quiz-questions about your company, the most referrals of job seekers, or the most comments made in your blog/social community. Leader boards keep people coming back to chart their progress and see who is on top, and if they are ahead of their friends. “Easter Eggs” — those intentionally hidden features that people can’t find. Especially cool for college sections and can be used to encourage people to find about more about your company and unlock exclusive content. Enabling unique experiences/personalization. Can people create their own unique user account, personalize their landing pages, and personalize their experiences? Progress bars. People are addicted to completion, and progress bars are often used in online shopping as you are guided to place things in the shopping cart and progress to the checkout. Progress bars fit nicely with job application processes of a series of tasks that people will want to complete. “Completism” is a natural human psychological compulsion. User-generated content, and games like LittleBigPlanet have showed us that people love creating their own content and sharing that content with the community. Can your community do the same, involving uploads to your blog/corporate careers site? These concepts can all be applied to corporate career sites, which are purely a repository of information overload and fundamentally dull, and of course tomobile apps. People, bored sitting on the train, plane, and bus, want content to engage them. Some corporate sites already include games and other challenges — almost always in the Careers section — and some companies have added game elements to the recruitment process. Some are asking, “Is this expensive? How can a recruiting department make games? But at minimal cost there is a thriving development community and graduates studying at colleges who would love the opportunity and exposure that creating and publishing a game on a corporate site brings them. Development time on games for mobile is minimal but the key is fun (look at games like Doodle Jump and Flick Football, massively popular but simple to develop). Many recruiters are currently using Empire Avenue as a way of engaging with communities and making new contacts. Some are even using it as a sourcing tool to recruit from. For those who don’t know, Empire Avenue is fundamentally a stock market simulation social network game that encourages users to buy and sell shares of people and websites. Players have their own portfolio in a virtual economy and earn money, called Eaves, by investing in other people. This sees your own net worth rise by encouraging friends and community members to invest in you. What is cool is that when all accounts are linked together, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and blogs, your net worth rises based on the content you either create or share. What’s cool about this approach is that it combines simplicity with what we do on the web every day: creating and sharing content. Interestingly, Empire Avenue mimics the other sites as it’s also a social network itself. It’s allows opportunities to connect and debate with others by finding affinity groups (“Communities”) within Empire Avenue. Clever engagement mechanisms at play. Concurrently, Google is also on the move with its Google News Badges. We all read the news, and applying the above theory — let’s call it gamification methodology — Google has created “Google Badges.” Google News users in the U.S. can earn different pins for reading the news, starting with bronze and moving up to Ultimate. There are more than 500 badges available to suit all types of interests, such as “stock market,” “Harry Potter,” and U.S. elections. These “Google Badges” follow closely on the heels of Google launching its own social network, Google+, and is increasingly trying to get people to share content via its network of services in a similar fashion to Facebook. This will sound very similar to users of Foursquare. Foursquare is a location-based social networking website based on mobile phones. Users “check-in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging, or a device-specific application, and select from a list of venues that the application locates nearby, e.g. restaurant, library, pub, house, etc. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges.” The first time a badge is unlocked on Foursquare, be it an easy achievement (like the “Superstar” badge for 50 check-ins), or one that comes as a surprise (“Douchebag Badge,” which is unlocked after checking into venues tagged with “douchebag,” or the “Don’t Stop Believing Badge,” awarded for checking in to three venues tagged “karaoke” in a month), the game keeps people engaged with rewards that makes members want to use the system even more and compete with friends. Especially those who live or work in close vicinity of each other as they compete to be the Mayor of a location. Why is gamification so important? Interestingly, to give more credence to this area, Gartner, in research published in April 2011 stated: By 2015, more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes. By 2014, a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay, or Amazon, and more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organisations will have at least one gamified application. That’s a big statement. 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application. Many commentators see that naturally fitting in the corporate careers site. Perhaps gamification will be taken more seriously among current recruitment leaders moving forward. Global Community Rating of Companies People trust each other and members of their community far more than they do advertising or company communications. Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, talked about the impact of social media. One of his key points was that 78% of consumers trust each other more than they trust advertising — which is why they read blogs and go to chat rooms. There are many examples to back this up, particularly when we go on vacation. The holiday industry has had to get far more authentic and responsible in its communications. No more fantastic ratings of restaurant food when it is tripe; no more “the beach is in walkable distance” … but only for those who are happy to walk for two hours; and no more “great local entertainment” when it is two people playing spoons. Why is that? Many people now check out Trip Advisor and read how people have voted/rated their vacation/hotel en masse and then read through some of the commentary. Real. Authentic. Trustworthy. No hidden agendas, just shared experiences. Companies value their placing on “best companies to work for” and “great places to work” lists. And these are a mix of internal questionnaires of employees’ experience and then a specialist evaluation of policies and internal structures by a panel of experts. Glassdoor is the closest to a trip advisor for recruitment. Its bias is more U.S.-focused and needs to hit that critical mass to be held in the same esteem. As we head to 4.0, those principles behind Glassdoor will see job seekers trust the crowd, and companies will value that authenticity far more than traditional manufactured best-places-to-work lists. Size Doesn’t Matter Some reading this will rightly raise the question of whether this is all this scalable. Cynics will openly proclaim there will always be a need for local agencies to hire receptionists, builders, joiners, hairdressers, admin assistants, and hosts of other roles. Screams will be heard: Job boards will never die! This was all predicted 10 years back and it never happened! How can a small company generate its own community? Many criticisms/protection of vested interests will emerge in this debate. They’re fair points to discuss. Interestingly, when Hard Rock Café wanted to open a new venue in Florence, perhaps the initial reaction of many recruiters was to advise them to go to local “high street” agencies, or place an ad in the local press, even on a job board. The Hard Rock took a different approach and used Facebook to reach out and recruit. It built a community around the new venue opening. Hard Rock needed to hire 120 staff across eight categories from waiting staff, barmen/women, to accounting. It was inundated with responses and was able to interview 600 candidates for the roles and whittle down to the 120 needed for opening. Whatever the size of a company, all the concepts here are relevant. It may be that a company does not have the time to build its own community but will be able to access other communities and groups, be they local or discipline-specific, such as hairdressers, and crowdsource their vacancies. Technological, access to information, and communities know no boundaries. That’s the difference the past 10 years have made and why jobs boards and agencies have to adapt, or else. Conclusion Recruitment 4.0 is a long way off; yet, many of its concepts are resonating today and being built upon and planned. Some early adopters are even implementing some of the component parts. 4.0 is a natural progression from 3.0. It takes the community concept to the next level. While some will be initially shocked at the radicalism involved at suggestions of recruitment transitioning into a profit center, crowdsourcing talent, and entertaining/gamification, with a period of reflection it makes sense as a natural strap-on to 3.0 communities. Many of the recruitment leaders in place today are not ready for 3.0, let alone 4.0. They have been schooled in traditional recruiting techniques that will soon be outdated and detrimental to their business. Many more are worried about process than end results. Where does your leader stand? Imagine those recruiting leaders who can go to their CEO and demonstrate that they have been able to map out competitors, and identify and build relationships with cream-of-the-crop talent. Leaders who have helped shape and who have put in place engaged communities with positive two-way communication social media channels, thus enhancing employment brand attractiveness, (with a positive spinoff for the consumer/product/service brand), and have hence been able to slash expenditures on recruitment and are now coming up with proposals of how to turn recruitment into a profit center. Compare that to your current recruiting leader. Are they shaping your future in this direction? Who do you think your CEO would prefer as a recruiting leader? The one described above or your current one? There is plenty above to chew on and debate. Agree or disagree, what is certain is that exciting times lie ahead for recruitment. And before someone asks, will we see an article on Recruitment 5.0 anytime soon? Not from Autodesk. We’ve got to focus on delivering 3.0 and 4.0 with the great team at Autodesk. There’s lots to do and achieve. …; Added by Rajnish Sinha at 4:58am on November 1, 2011