One of the biggest news stories last week was Google’s announcement that CEO Eric Schmidt was stepping down and co-founder Larry Page was st....  The news follows a few years of criticism of how Google was becoming more bureaucratic and less innovative into new technologies.

With Larry back as CEO, Google is looking to get back to their “Don’t Be Evil” days when employees pushed the limits of their core businesses while also making breakthroughs on the side into interesting and innovative side projects (while they still do this some feel they have moved away from it a bit).  I fully expect the 70-20-10 rule to continue to be an ever more important part of an employee’s life at Google.

For those who aren’t familiar with this rule.  Google lets their employees spend 70 percent of their time on core search and ads. 20 percent on adjacent businesses, ones related to the core businesses in some interesting way such as Google News, Google Earth, and Google Local. And then 10 percent of their time should be on things that are truly new.

I highly encourage you to take a look at your recruiting and see if a change is in order like Google.  Are you trying anything new in your recruiting to see if it works?  Are you instituting your own version of 70-20-10 rule in your recruitment marketing strategy?

The key is that the 10% should focus on trying something new in your recruiting.  Here are a few ways that you may want to focus with that 10% of your time:

Social Recruiting - If you have already started a Social Recruiting strategy, please ignore this.  However, if you haven’t, you may want to start one as soon as possible.  A Social Recruiting strategy doesn’t involve just setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter profile for your company but involves you using these portals to engage and connect with potential high potential candidates.  The key is to start and keep updating them with content.  Please be aware, results won’t be seen right away but should come in 4-6 months.

Existing Technology – You already know the technologies you have and how you use it on a daily basis but when is the last time you re-evaluated the way you use the technology and looked at other services and/or functions that it offered.  What new things can you do with your existing technology that you didn’t know was included.  This is a quick and cheap way to improve the efficiency of your recruiting strategy.

Recruiting Channels - Every organization has recruiting channels that they use for every one of their jobs from job boards to social networks to email campaigns to Mobile Recruiting.  I highly encourage you to continue using these channels (if they are working) however with one caveat.  Try a new channel every once in a while and measure the performance.  Whether it’s a new job board or sending out your first Email campaign to contacts in your Talent Network, you’ll never know if a new recruiting channel works unless you try it.  The key, of course, is to see if it’s working with key recruiting metrics.

Change can be a good thing and I encourage you to test out new initiatives in your recruiting strategy.  Even if it is only 10% of the time.

Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.