My client, Deloitte New Zealand is breaking new ground, with a plan to join the likes of Shakira, Miley Cyrus and KISS in mashing live-streaming video with social networking. Fans of the Your Future at Deloitte (New Zealand) Facebook page will be able to watch and listen on Facebook to graduate recruits in the Consulting team, as they talk about their experiences and impressions. Better still, the student audience will be able to type in any questions for the team.

Deloitte is trying to show its human face and engage with potential summer interns and graduates. Technology provides options and opportunities to increase engagement with a jobseeker audience. Students have career choices, and these types of initiatives serve to help students get to know the firm, interact, ask questions, and be better informed about Deloitte as a career destination.

The live and interactive event will take place 4-4.30pm on Thursday 21 January 2010.

Deloitte New Zealand’s Facebook page launched in October and we will be rolling out further initiatives on the page in the coming weeks and months. To keep up to date with the evolution of this page, you can follow Deloitte on Twitter (@deloittegradsnz).

Facebook membership continues to grow, reaching the 350 million member milestone this week. New Zealand Facebook membership is over 1.1 million, with about 30 percent in the typical graduate age demographic (source: checkfacebook.com).

Paul Jacobs
Engage

Link: http://jobs.nzpost.co.nz/

When a major employer within the Asia Pacific region refreshes their careers site, it’s worth taking a look. At first look I was really impressed with the strong branding - it feels fresh, modern and human to me. The site also showcases the diversity of roles, supported by video. OK, this is reading like an informercial. I must admit I have a soft spot for Post as I’m an ex-Poster, working in their HR team around 15 years ago.

As I delve further into the site, here are some other thoughts from me:

I haven’t been privy to the strategising behind the site and the future plans, so my impressions may be a bit presumptuous. Nonetheless, I congratulate Post on a job well done!

What are your thoughts?

Paul Jacobs
Engage

PS: Please feel free to share any careers sites that you particularly like.

Originally posted on Recruitment 2.0 Asia Pacific

Deloitte NZ has launched a branded Facebook page, Your Future at Deloitte (New Zealand), to enable graduates and summer interns to get a glimpse into the Deloitte culture, engage directly with Deloitte, and gain the inside running on news and upcoming career events. Engage worked closely with Deloitte to develop and implement the page. To keep up to date with the evolution of this page, you can follow Deloitte on Twitter (@deloittegradsnz).

Employers should consider Facebook as a platform to use in their recruitment and employer branding efforts. Facebook membership continues to grow (watch in real time), reaching the 300 million member milestone last month. The New Zealand audience is over 1.1 million, with about 30 percent in the typical graduate age demographic (source: checkfacebook.com).

Paul Jacobs
Engage

Engage is excited to offer a new and very unique service to New Zealand employers.

Deepsearch is all about sourcing talent on the social web. We do not advertise vacancies in newspapers or on job boards. We’re out there mining online social networks. We’re tapping into niche communities, industry and referral networks, LinkedIn, Facebook, TribeHQ, Twitter, Ning, etc. We’re going where recruitment agencies don’t typically reach. We’re not interested in fighting over the low-lying fruit. We’re using different tools, technologies and approaches to find the pockets of talent our clients are yet to uncover.

Employers should seriously consider DeepSearch if they want to reach the largely untapped passive job seeker market, or if they have exhausted traditional means and want to widen their talent sources, locally and globally.

Paul Jacobs
Engage

The term ‘social recruiting’ is soooooo hot right now. It’s on the lips of recruitment commentators, consultants, recruiters, and vendors. There is even a global wave of conferences and seminars on the topic.

So what does social recruiting mean? Well, from my observations, it means a myriad of things to different people. To many recruiters it means LinkedIn. To others it means any opportunity to post or syndicate jobs on a popular social networking platform. For some it means hash tags on Twitter. For others it means a range of words beginning with the letter ‘C’ (eg conversation, community, collaboration). For others it is a mix of concepts, approaches and technology tools. I even know one person who thinks social recruiting has something to do with socialism and Karl Marx.

I sometimes hear people emphasize the point that recruitment has always been social. True, it’s about interacting with people, human to human communication (as per various definitions of social). Picking up the phone and talking with a candidate is social. I don’t believe social recruiting implies recruitment used to be, or is today, necessarily unsocial.

So what is it then? To me, at the simplest, barest bones level social recruiting is “recruitment using the social web”. This obviously needs further explanation. In early 2009 Riges Younan gave the following definition:

“Social Recruiting harnesses the evolution of Web 2.0 technologies and social media tools to communicate, engage, inform and recruit our future talent.”

It wasn’t that long ago that our web communication experiences were controlled centrally and information was predominantly one-way, static and read-only. In recent years we’ve seen a range of social networking platforms and social media tools (eg wikis, blogs, micro-blogs, online video sharing) emerge. The term Web 2.0, unveiled to the world in 2004, was intended to capture not only the emergence of these new technologies and platforms, but more importantly focus on how they give people new ways of expressing themselves and interacting with others. These technologies are trickling into the corporate world, as more and more employers are using them to collaborate on projects and converse with employees, consumers and job seekers. In a recruitment and employment branding context, social technologies enable recruiters to reach and engage with active and passive jobseekers, tap directly into niche talent communities and their wider connections, and reach a broader geographical audience.

In an attempt to arrive at my own definition of social recruiting, I weighed up a number of considerations. To me, ‘social’ is about engagement. I like to think of the analogy of going to a social event, where you are meeting a group of people for the first time. Would you walk through the door and shout “Hey everyone, it’s me, and do I have an offer for you all”? Not likely. Neither would you go and stand in the corner, face the wall and not engage with anybody. You would probably introduce yourself to someone or a small group. You would try and establish some rapport and find some affinity and commonality. Social recruiting in this context is about showing up where the party is and then starting the process, ideally in real-time, of exploration and conversation between recruiter and job seeker. Authenticity of message and openness are vitally important. It is a bit like dating; a job seeker needs to understand the employer’s unique personality and feel like there is a good match to further the courting process.

The meaning of ‘social’ is a key determining factor for me. If a job board or recruiter, for example, syndicates their vacancies on a social networking site, is that social and is it social recruiting? To me it’s not necessarily a yes for either. Granted, the vacancies may be targeted to a niche community, but without some level of engagement I struggle to think where the ‘social’ is. It may lead to the receipt of candidate applications (by email or via a corporate careers site) and face-to-face interviews, but this will most likely be conducted outside a social web context. Likewise, consider the situation where an employer places a creative banner ad or video on a social networking platform, which engenders an emotional connection with a job seeker, and leads the job seeker to click through to a static careers site. Some level of social media and social networking was used in the process, but is it really social recruiting? I’m not convinced. In contrast, consider the following two scenarios: crowdsourcing the design of a job description and having an active Q&A blog on your corporate careers site. I think both qualify as social recruiting.

The tools are out there for recruiters to create a social experience on the web. To build a highly engaging experience around an employer or vacancy, recruiters could, for example, use any number of applications and platforms to mash up an event that includes live-streaming video with micro-blogging. There is also life beyond one’s favorite social networking platform for recruitment. Other options and target communities do exist. We are not really limited by the technology anymore, but rather by our own imaginations.

Taking our existing recruitment processes and tools and linking them with social recruiting is not necessarily the road to social recruiting. Instead, perhaps more of us need to blow up our current recruitment models and processes and think social. As an industry we need more pioneers, more social revolutionaries. Just because we have always done things one way, does not mean it is the best or only way. Social recruiting is about experimentation and opportunity. At the same time, we need to recognize that job seekers are in the public eye and respect their privacy.

Below is my work-in-progress definition of social recruiting. It will evolve, mostly via conversations and debates with others.

“Social Recruiting is delivering sound hiring decisions by actively using web-based technologies to build a shared understanding between employers / recruiters and passive and active job seekers.”

Your thoughts?

Paul Jacobs

I read a book recently by Jeff Howe called Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Howe coined the term ‘crowdsourcing‘ in June 2006 in a Wired article to describe the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the territory of a specialized few. He adds that the crowd is more than wise—it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. The concept of collective intelligence has been around for a while, but with the advent of Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies it is even easier to reach and engage with large and geographically diverse audiences (inside and outside a company). The following sites (eg, eg, eg) often feature when commentators talk about crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing isn’t just about getting feedback from a group; it involves relinquishing power and getting the community involved in design.

This book got me thinking about the potential evolution of HR and recruitment. Howe dedicated a chapter to thinking about a ‘company as a community’. This is a major mind shift. Most HR and recruitment strategizing and design takes place in isolation, within the HR function, and sometimes in consultation with others (eg senior management, marketing, IT, external specialists, vendors, customers). Instead, why not crowdsource it? Invite the wider community of employees, managers, jobseekers, and third-party recruitment agencies to help develop the company’s employee value propositions (EVPs), employer brand, recruitment charter, etc. Use wikis, micro-blogs, blogs, social networking sites, polls, etc to reach out and engage with the community in real time. The community will more likely buy into a shared, collectively-created vision. They will not only interact with the company’s brand, they will feel a sense of ownership, even if they don’t work there (yet).

Within the last couple of weeks, another recruitment application for crowdsourcing jumped from way out of left-field - thanks Joshua Kahn for alerting me to this. Best Buy crowdsourced the design of a job description. Check out the details here. I love how this has evolved, and enjoyed following the discussion around the ideal person specification. You have to admit this is all very counter-intuitive.

What are your thoughts on crowdsourcing in HR / recruitment? Will it affect the HR / recruitment profession? Should HR professionals become Community Managers DJs? What other applications are there for crowdsourcing? (eg, could we get the community to shortlist candidates rather than a recruitment panel or agency?)

Paul Jacobs

Yesterday I attended, along with about 225 other attendees, the inaugural Social Recruiting Summit at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, USA.

Unlike other conferences I’ve been to in stuffy hotels and auditoriums, I was really looking forward to seeing the Google work environment. I’ve heard so much about their campus style workplace. More importantly, as a dog owner, I wanted to see a dog. This was an absolute must for me. Taking a dog to work is pretty much a foreign concept where I come from. I would’ve been gutted to have come all the way from New Zealand and been short changed.

Lazlo Bock, Google’s VP Human Resources welcomed us. Lazlo spoke briefly about Google’s work culture. Google have really thought hard on how to create an environment where people connect, interact, and have fun (yes fun!). Lazlo said innovation comes from these things.

I thought the line up of speakers were first class, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and engaging. I’m not going to summarize each session, but will make some overall observations:

• It appeared we were living the cultural things that Lazlo spoke about - quite possibly running the summit within Google contributed to that.
• I got just as much from the audience and the discussions as I did from the presenters.
• In addition to the presenters, many audience members are movers and shakers in the recruiting and social recruiting space too, so I enjoyed hearing their views. I’ve heard some concern about the knowledge level of some of the attendees, especially vendors, but my take on that is that people have different levels of knowledge and experience and we are all there to learn. Maybe there could be some sessions in future summits that are pitched clearly to different knowledge levels.
• I enjoyed being amongst peers that were open to the social recruiting concept. Nobody said “I just don’t get the point of social networking”.
• It was great to see supporting statistics, poll results etc to back up the presenters’ points. Some of the numbers presented shocked me and challenged my thinking.
• I felt more time could have been spent at the start of the day defining ‘social’. The terms community, collaboration, and conversation were mentioned, but some of the ideas presented throughout the day were not what I perceive as being ‘social’ or followed the 3 C’s.
• The term Community Manager was used a number of times. I hate that term. Maybe it’s just semantics, but it is more about enablement and giving power over to the community in my eyes, than ‘management’. One presenter said communities aren’t formed, they emerge. I believe community [managers] emerge too.
• I felt too many attendees were wedded firmly to LinkedIn as their one and only social recruiting tool. The enhancements to LinkedIn appear very useful for a recruiter and their growth is phenomenal (a new member every second), but I felt some people need to think more about their target demographic and ascertain where they hang out and how to engage with them. Maybe some people need to look at using a more blended approach. It’s OK to use Facebook, Twitter etc for branding purposes. I’m not so convinced there needed to be two sessions on LinkedIn.
• I found it ironic we were using Twitter to tweet during Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn session. Why were we not using LinkedIn to do that?
• I agree 100% with a tweet from Master Burnett who was very disappointed with the number of recruiters who see social networking sites as just another place to post job ads.
• Loved the live tweets showing on the screen during Joshua’s session. On average, throughout all the sessions, a tweet using the hash tag #socialrecruiting went out every 15 seconds.
• I don’t really feel I picked up too much new knowledge overall - lots of little morsels instead. The session on mobile recruiting is all pretty new to me and has got me thinking about all the possibilities. I would like to develop some tools in that space. I believe employers need to start thinking about how to use smart phones for employment branding and recruitment beyond SMS / text campaigns.
• I think the summit organizers should consider making future summits two days in length. The day did seem a bit rushed between sessions and it was a very long day, especially when I was concentrating on making out what some people were saying with their strong accents. Maybe I need to get my ears tested!

I’m pleased I made the trip over to the summit. I thought the social events before and after the summit were exceptionally well organized. I probably got just as much from the networking as I did from the summit sessions.

I don’t feel the US recruitment audience is further advanced in this space than a New Zealand or Australian audience. In fact, we are doing some very innovative stuff downunder. The conference opportunities on recruitment and talent related topics though are heaps more in the US. And it’s a well oiled machine. I would like to see next year’s summit take place in New Zealand please!!!!!!

I’m happy and relieved to report that I saw 3 dogs, but because I signed an NDA I can’t report what the dogs looked like, or what breeds they were.

Paul Jacobs
Engage

TribeHQ, as reported on previously, has quietly entered its beta testing stage.  The development team are still adding core features, but want to get the concept out into the public domain so people can interact with the platform, and submit their thoughts, feedback and suggestions. 

To a recruiter audience, TribeHQ is a next generation job board.  It brings social networking to job seeking.  Employers list a vacancy and tap directly into a community of professionals within a defined occupational “tribe” (e.g. IT professionals, engineers, nurses, HR).  Tribe members are automatically presented with specific job vacancies, based on their career wishes, and can engage in conversation directly with employers.  TribeHQ brings interactivity to recruitment advertising.  It is a major shift away from the directory-board and static approach, and reduces the noise and clutter inherent in existing job advertising.  For more information about TribeHQ click here, here and here.

Please check out TribeHQ and leave your comments via the Feedback facility on the site.  The development team have found all visitor comments to be valuable and many suggestions will be implemented.

Paul Jacobs
Engage (& Co-founder TribeHQ)

The NZ Recruitment 2.0 online community, established in April 2006, has widened its breadth to include other countries in the Asia Pacific region. There’s a lot of interesting stuff happening in the region, and Recruitment 2.0 Asia Pacific should benefit New Zealand members and those members not too far from NZ’s shores.  The Australians could learn from Kiwis and vice-versa, and both can benefit from others further afield through networking and sharing of knowledge and experiences.

The community has nearly 300 members and this will likely grow as members from outside NZ join the fray.  However, like any community, the value will be in the kinship, networking, participation and discussion between members.

Paul Jacobs
Engage

Happy New Year!  I hope the year is a positive one for you and not too turbulent in the uncertain economic times ahead.

Well, it’s that time of year again, when bloggers make their predictions for the next 12 months.  I’ve enjoyed glancing at a range of recruitment / social media / technology blogs on this very topic.  Though the commentators are on the whole optimistic about the year ahead, the state of the global economy is a common underlying thread.  Reading recruitment-specific blogs and articles in particular, hiring freezes and talk of wide-ranging redundancies feature in the short-term at least.  In the US the euphoria around incoming President Barack Obama and stimulus packages appears to moderate some of this doom and gloom. Commentators here in New Zealand (and Australia) appear a little more optimistic (possibly it’s the sunshine), but nevertheless we would be delusional to ignore further flow on effects.  

A retrospective

I believe that it is important to look back before looking forward.  In NZ 2008 was pretty sweet for many recruiters, despite a candidate short market.  Some of the niche recruiters performed better than the bigger generalist players.  In the last couple of months some agencies started to “consolidate” their structures, with casualties appearing in non-revenue generating positions.  The multi-national agencies were feeling the brunt of dropping revenues and share prices offshore. The word on the street was that some agencies were considering shutting up shop and retiring to their lifestyle properties in Martinborough or Waiheke Island. Some recruiters (including internal recruiters) were exploring their career options. Some employers would not be too concerned about the plight of some recruitment agencies, as quite a number felt the overall quality of service and candidates being presented was dropping to an unacceptable level.  

In 2008 I was staggered by how many medium to large employers still had no recruitment strategy or one that was ill-defined.  Few NZ employers conducted any research and measurement.  They did not know the effectiveness, cost and ROI of their recruitment and advertising endeavours.  Even if they had an applicant tracking system in place they were not necessarily using the platform’s reporting features.  Many internal recruitment managers were bogged down in doing the recruitment themselves and left the creative stuff to recruitment advertising agencies and/or spent possibly too much time coordinating a wide range of recruitment agency and RPO relationships.  Though some recruitment and HR teams had a useful working relationship with their marketing and communications teams, the majority did not.  It is not to say that this is always the best option, but the internal marketing professionals often asked important questions around candidate and employee research, segmentation and measurement. Some employers made useful steps in 2008 to identify the things that really attract a jobseeker to their organisation.  However, some of these same organisations did not identify how to best reach their audience, and just focused on targeting the active jobseeker in newspaper and job board advertising.

Social networking sites continued to grow in popularity in 2008.  Some NZ employers, recruitment agencies and job boards started to dabble with these platforms and/or use social media (eg videos, blogging etc) on their own sites.  However, a lot of recruitment consultants appeared to be just happy growing their presence on LinkedIn.  I noted strong pockets of resistance from some HR people who did not see the point in investing any time into such pursuits.  There is so much unrealised potential - HR and recruitment in general were way behind other professions when it came to the rapid growth of social media. 

2009 Predictions

Structural changes:

• Many recruiters will find a new career in career counselling
• Many recruitment agencies will add career coaching services to their portfolio
• Some agencies will consolidate, a few will actually prosper as hard times hit their competitors

Outlook:

• Cost minimisation will be on the lips of corporate recruiters 
• Employers will use the term “quality” more and psychometric assessments will become in vogue again
• Though employer branding projects should definitely continue, many planned endeavours in this area will be put on hold
• More employers will identify and/or refine their panel of preferred recruitment suppliers
• The employers that continue to strategise around recruitment without producing any outcomes, will strategise some more
• We will continue to see talent shortages in certain professions and sectors
• If caught up in any restructuring, Gen Ys will likely head offshore rather than stick at it
• Graduate recruitment will continue, but fewer grads will be hired
• We will start seeing increased cross-sector cooperation, driven by Government and industry representative bodies - some innovations will come from this

Challenges for HR:

• HR will be involved heavily in coordinating internal restructures, with a focus on identifying and retaining key talent
• Marketing and social media professionals will enter the HR and recruitment world
• HR professionals will be under pressure to demonstrate their value

Technology:

• Employees will start using a mix of wikis, online collaboration tools, blogs, and microblogs - HR will start seeing the potential for internal communication - these tools, a lot of them free, will challenge traditional organisational structures and heirarchies.  A lot of these tools will be mashed up    
• The above tools will be used to communicate organisational change to employees - let’s coin this Downsizing 2.0
• The term crowdsourcing in a recruitment / HR context will become more familar to employers  
• Recruitment videos will on the whole remain information-based rather than viral in nature
• We will see the emergence of niche talent communities (eg TribeHQ) and employers will see the value of tapping into these for recruitment
• Employers will continue a shift from print to online advertising, however they will question why the job board model remains very directory-based and not as conversational as some of their Enterprise 2.0 tools 
• Job boards will add some new features (eg maps, video) and improve their search functionality
• Some job boards will disappear, but the main ones will continue

I don’t believe the majority of NZ employers and recruiters will use social networking platforms seriously for recruitment until 2010.

Anyway, let’s check in again this time next year and see if any of these predictions were on the button.

Paul Jacobs
Engage

 Thanks to NZ Recruitment 2.0 member, Lauren Young for alerting me to this innovative approach to recruitment advertising from Hamilton-based legal firm Tompkins Wake. Check out their Boston Legal style video.
 

Then click through from this video to read the letter of intent proposing defamation action against New Zealand for giving the city of Hamilton a bad rap. This reputation makes it particularly difficult to recruit lawyers, when apparently Hamilton has a lot to offer. Check out the “expert witness” written statements.  

Does this encourage any lawyers to shift to Hamilton?

Paul Jacobs
Engage

Sometimes recruitment agencies are unkindly referred to as sausage factories. So what happens when a recruitment agency teams up with a sausage and smallgoods manufacturer on a recruitment assignment? Answer: innovation.

New Zealand-based recruitment agency Farrow Jamieson teamed up recently with Heller Tasty Ltd to recruit a Human Resources Manager, based at their Kaiapoi Head Office and manufacturing facility.  

The vacancy was advertised in The Press (8 Nov) and Sunday Star Times (16 Nov) as well as on Seek, Trademe, Careerzone and HRINZ.  63 people applied (including those directly approached). This is where the innovation kicks in.  21 applicants, including 3 from overseas, were invited to a webinar (see definition), 18 registered and 3 couldn’t make the designated time.  

Farrow Jamieson consultant Robyn Goulevitch ran the webinar with two Heller representatives (one in Auckland and one in Christchurch).  During the webinar 32 questions were raised.

I encourage you to watch the webinar, right through to the end when they poll those attending:

Watch 

 
I found the webinar to be both extremely informative and upfront. The honest commentary was very refreshing.  Candidate feedback received since is apparently very positive, with overseas candidates commenting that they felt engaged in the process. Two candidates self selected out, realising the job wasn’t for them and the remainder were keen to progress.  Client feedback was also positive, they enjoyed talking about the business and were impressed with the intelligent questions from candidates.

Farrow Jamieson intend to make this approach a permanent part of the recruitment process, highlighting that “even the best briefed consultant will occasionally get questions they cannot answer.” They believe that this medium allows those questions to be answered and the client to gain insight into the thinking of the “market”.  In the future Farrow Jamieson intend using more polls to gauge candidate opinion.

This is an example where using technology appears to have added value to the recruitment experience for all parties involved. Do you think it is a good approach?

Paul Jacobs
Engage

KPMG New Zealand graduate careers site

Oracle Asia Pacific Recruitment Blog

Russell McVeagh Summer Clerk programme 

Microsoft’s JobsBlog

Paul Jacobs
Engage

This is a role opportunity that will create quite a lot of “buzz”.  A “friend” of mine is considering applying for one of the vacancies with Durex NZ to test out a new product.  If you are aged 16 years old or over, check out the campaign site.  My friend really wants to secure a position and they have until 21 January 2009 to submit an application.

The only problem is that they are stressing out on how to best answer the “Why do you think you’re suitable?” question on the application form.  Any suggestions?

Other important questions:

• Will behavioural assessment form part of the selection process?
• What’s the employee value proposition (EVP) for this role?
• Would a 90-day probation period be a good idea?
• Would the role provide appropriate work/life balance?
• Are there any worker protection policies?

Paul Jacobs
Engage