Blog Article taken from Collabor8 by Pan Eight Consulting (www.paneight.com) :

There has been a lot of news and excitement about Google Wave over the last few days. Not just from Software Developers who can see a whole new technology market opening up, but also people like myself - who love to see how technology evolution can be used and realistically mapped to business challenges.

So, lets get the first thing straight: Google Wave is going to be the next evolutionary step with regards to real-time collaboration.

Will it make a difference within Recruitment in terms of how we work? Yes, I believe so. Why? Because as each day goes by, Recruitment is becoming more and more reliant on Social Networking, Media and collaborative tools. Google Wave is the next evolutionary step in collaboration - which is what Recruitment is all about.

I've been doing some research on Google Wave, and wanted to visualise how it could be used within real Recruitment scenarios. Let's start from the top:

What is Google Wave?
The way I see it - Google Wave will provide single and integrated interface for Email, Chat, Social Media, collaborative communication, knowledge management, sharing of information and various productivity tools.

Imagine Email, MSN Messenger, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, Discussion Forums, YouTube, Flickr, News Stories, Maps, Skype, and Google Search all rolled into one tool.

What is a Wave?
A wave is part conversation and part document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time. A bit like Instant Messaging on steroids!

What does this mean for Recruitment?
I think the key aspect to focus on here is productivity, efficiency and real-time collaboration.

Perhaps the best way to explain the benefits, is through a recruitment scenario:

A Hiring Manager (HM) within Company X writes a job spec for a new vacant position that requires filling.

Within the Google Wave interface, the HM creates a new Wave, drags/drops the job spec into it (no attachments) and adds the Recruiter to the Wave to provide visibility.

The recruiter instantly receives the new Wave notification and is able to view the job spec. The Recruiter can then make modifications to the spec. The HM can view these modifications in real-time on their screen as and when they are made - character by character. (No more waiting for emails to be sent/received).

This creates a collaborative discussion on the Wave between the Recruiter and HM and the entire discussion takes place in real-time within the document itself - inline with the actual paragraph that is subject to the discussion.

The discussion requires another HM to get involved, so the Recruiter simply drags the new contact into the Wave where all 3 participants can now discuss the spec instantly.

The 2nd HM can view a timelined playback replay of the entire discussion, so that they can see exactly how the discussion started, and where it currently stands. (No more reading an email from the bottom up...)

Once all changes to the spec are agreed, (an audit trail is maintained), the Recruiter is able incorporate the Twitter App into the Wave, so that the spec is distributed to all followers via a Tweet. Hey, while we're at it, lets send it to Facebook, LinkedIn, Monster.com, and a host of other Job Boards. All as simply as adding a contact to an email recipient list.

The Job Spec is now in circulation to hundreds, thousands, millions of candidates on the world wide web, where it is embedded into blogs, discussion forums, further tweets and messages. People add comments, receive instant updates and can collaborate with the Recruiter in real-time.

A Candidate using Google Wave drags/drops their CV to the Wave.

The HM is able to view the CV instantly within the orginal Wave, and provides their feedback in real-time, where the candidate is able to respond. Real-time candidate screening - even accessible via mobile phone!

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I could go on, but I think you should be seeing the picture - although the above touches the surface of what could be possible.

Bearing in mind Google Wave is based on Open Source technology - it allows independent developers to build applications, gadgets and tools that work with Wave - the possibilities are endless.

On the whole, companies like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and YouTube (these companies are just an example) representing various aspects of social media will have to rethink their strategy to create/protect their own niche by developing something even better or adopt Google Wave as a part of their strategy. Not to mention ATS systems, Jobboards, and Job Aggregators.

Any evolutionary step within Social Networking, has a direct impact on the future of Recruiting. Google Wave is the next step.

Google Wave is still a few months away from public release, however Recruiters should take note, and watch ths space.