With the rise of social networking and the blossoming of Facebook apps for recruitment where do people see Online Recruitment going in the next 5 years?
Answers (14)
Mike C suggests this expert on this topic:
Kamo A
Hello
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (4), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Direct Marketing (1), E-Commerce (1)
I think that targeting and finding reliable resources is going to become even more complex. I could see someone spending many hours (can you say days?) going through a lot of useless junk to reach a qualified candidate. I would stress learning to navigate the social web ASAP to become acquainted with the language, environment, and tools that will save you lots of time and, more importantly, give you that edge over your competition. There is no question that the emergence of social media as a dominant platform of communication online provides many opportunities to those looking for an edge. Recruiters are brilliant at searching and obtaining valuable sources of info offline. However, the lines between the online and offline worlds are becoming increasingly blurry. In the next 5 years I see social networks become increasingly prevalent, I see vertical search becoming more advanced, and (as hardware advances) and I see more interactive media taking over (Second Life). Recruiters could be video conferencing with someone at the other end of the world, searching through their facebook feed , attending several virtual get-togethers at the same time.
Mark S
Business Development Director, returning to the UK Spring 09
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Mark S suggests this expert on this topic:
Steve D
Recruiter (6100+) (847)431-4681 resumes@sjdelaney.com
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What an awesome question!
1. I see people becoming more comfortable with the concept of a real web identity. There will develop more ways to verify you are who you say you are on the web. People who are familiar with MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Xing, will have a real advantage with branding themselves (the me.Inc) concept - if they are ligit.
2. Look for resumes to be converted more and more into XML format. The resume DTD already exists but the apps to take advantage of it are slim to none at this point. With XML you'll be able to reassmble a winning team from 5 years ago. Fancey fonts will disappear. Resumes will start to carry more weight as more details will be verifiable.
Five online years is a long time to see ahead but I would like to give it a go regardless of your timeframe. I foresee that social networking and social media will integrate more than they do today - which will make it easier to expand our social networks due to the fact that we can offer our networks' networks relevant messaging. There will be a growing trend that people in social networks are raising their hands for relevant offers - also job offers - since - due to intelligent profiling - the offers become ever so more relevant. One of the main challenges to date is to get people with a solid job - that are satisfied with the balance between salary and challenges in their job - to interest themselves in job offers. I see an opportunity that on line recruitment through networking features will solve this accessibility problem. Another trend, consider linkedin, is that these networks become increasingly global. This will make it easier to find people independent of geography since the best person for the next VP job might be living in Rabat or Rome. It will take an effort though of recruiting industry to harvest the potential and might also require some lobbyisme to get some legal issues straightened out. I hope this was helpful.
I would only assume networking will take the floor ... people and recruiters/hiring managers will be so busy that they will be able to weed out candidates at a faster pace that today. Hopefully they will be more professional and have better work ethics as well... Only the top professionals in this field will still make a living out of recruiting. Candidates will have to be more careful with their 'marketing/branding" (stress the content/info on their resumes/blogs etc, not the fancy fonts and format). Job boards will not play such a major role anymore in finding a job or the best qualified candidates, but will merely be a tool used in the process. I do believe that networking and blogging are the future tools in finding a job and candidate (they are now, but will be even more important in 5 years).
The question is very complex, and these are just some aspects. Hope this helps. Thanks for the question, great one.
Alan W
www.RCEURO.com, E-HR and E-Recruitment Consulting, Technology innovator, TopLinked.com
Hi Matt,
As one of the others noted, 5 years is a very long time to look out, but here goes. The use of social networking and Facebook type apps will continue to grow as tools for the highly skilled and dedicated recruiters, both corporate and placement industry. Combinations of job boards with community applications will create environments that might even replace search at certain levels. However, in the UK, the recruitment industry will continue to dominate, as UK PLC will continue to resist the open web as a place to communicate with candidates or customers. The intermediary will continue to control much of the game, particularly in temporary staffing. BTW, I wish it were not so!
Best regards
Alan
I think social networking will be more and more discovered by companies and each company will in time setup recruitment networking websites. They will be able to track and elect potential future applicants long before they graduate and apply for a job in that company. Hence the interview procedure will be starting long before the actual face-to-face interview.
We have designed an influencer network model recently for a client of ours at TargetYouth and that project might shed some light on this issue. The influencer network model was based on what the brand ambassadors for that company was willing to do and in fact was doing. As time goes by, the influencers became to be actual employees depending on their value-added performance for the specific company.
Also another point of view on the future of recruitment is the university social networking sites bringing together alumni and existing students of a specific university. It's almost a fact that candidates have a better chance if they share the same alma mater with the recruiter and/or the decision taker in the company. So university sites linking alumni in certain positions with the existing student portfolio of his/her own university will give a better win-win chance for both parties.
I think hypothesizing about the future of recruitment with many more ideas like this is possible. If I come up with more I will append to this answer.
Matt
As we all know the world of recruitment is changing and will continue to change dramatically over the next five years. Advances in IT will revolutionise the ways in which people communicate and interact with each other at work.
The first point to note is the relative cheapness of sophisticated technology compared with a decade ago. Because PCs and internet access are now so inexpensive, people are becoming very skilled in their use of PC-based communication media. The interesting thing is that they are doing this at home, rather than at work. Hitting the job market over the next 5 years is a generation of individuals who are using blogs and chatrooms as an everyday leisure activity - they expect to use technology -companies and recruiters will need to step up to meet this expectation or they will lose candidates. Most of these new workers are going to be extremely frustrated at how out of date and limited their employers’ IT equipment is.
Allied to this point is the huge impact of Web 2.0. The first generation of the Web was a one-way communication vehicle. Companies could use their websites to communicate information about their products to their customers and they could use intranet sites to communicate information to their employees. Web 2.0 has enabled an organisation’s customers, suppliers and even competitors to talk to each other. Within companies, employees can now communicate upwards, downwards, sideways and in virtual worlds . In terms of recruitment, Web 1.0 was about organisations finding the talent it needed. Web 2.0 becomes Web 3.0 and will be about how talent finds the right organisation – the balance of power has already shifted away from organisation to job seekers who will continue to call the shots.
And finally picking up on Alan Whitford's point the laggards that resist the advances of technology or just don't get it are likely to pay a high price for the gap they creat between how they post vacancies and hire and how job-seekers apply.However as we know, for forward thinking employers the substantial upside opportunities, payback, and durable competitive advantage gained from harnessing technology are too irrestible.
Hope this helps
Nick
Hi Matt,
Being a regular facebook user this question caught my eye. The more we network, share ideas and talk over Web 2.0 the more we will rely on this technology to take us places, in terms of acquiring resources. Adding to what Nick has mentioned about companies staying in tune with the trends and the new technology I agree with this because if the right candidates need to be recurited then their expectations and needs to be fulfilled to maximise their skills and ability. Enhancing the need to meet both the companies objectives and the candidates potential.
Facebook is not seen as a professional website (unlike LinkedIn), kids, teenagers and practically anyone can join Facebook. CVs and profiles of candidates may be directly available through the next five years as websites such as Myspace or Facebook-(or the next generation) takes over! The main point I feel that is needed here is the boundary that needs to be set between an individual's social and personal life to their attributes in the workplace. As Oana mentioned there a number of aspects emerging from this question.
I find this question very interesting. Hope this perspective helps!
Nimisha Solanki
Matt M
Search Engine Marketing Consultant, Founder at ClixLocal Media, LLC
Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (5)
you will see more use of search engines and corporate career sites breaking off from the main site and employment brand taking on their own identity
Links:
One of the interesting aspects of Web 2.0 is the peer access and review. As we all know, and many surveys have shown, most candidates are less than 100% truthful on their CVs. One of the aspects of sites such as Linkedin.com is that a person’s CV is published in a public place where any discrepancies are available for all to view – including people who were there and know the truth. I believe that this will engender more honesty in the process and less exaggeration of the experience of a candidate to match a position.
I wonder if this will go further and change the way in which companies interact. Will people be more ready to review the experience of people they meet in a business context? Certainly I review what I can find on the web before I meet people and that search is becoming more fruitful with the explosion of Web 2.0 social websites. Incidentally I interviewed someone the other day whose opening line to me was “You and I have had parallel careers” that he could quote my background had an effect; not to mention the natural desire to hire someone like ourselves.
Companies are collections of individuals. We trust certain companies to hire individuals with particular experience and equip them with training and tools to do the job we contract of the company. If we could see reliably if those people had that experience would it change the way we viewed the company? Would we prefer a company with a shroud of mystery around who they are and their collective experience, or a company that is open to scrutiny?
As several people have said, 5 years is a long long time to predict where on-line recruitment is going and indeed social networking's place within that.
Earlier in my career I sat opposite someone selling a fledgling monster.co.uk . "This internet lark wont take off, it's an American fad" I said to myself and others!! And now look! Earlier still I was involved in selling a graduate recruitment medium using Viewdata, by memory, a product developed by the Post Office - what's now BT. We're talking late '80s now!! And what happened? It died and almost no-one can remember it!!! Oracle in the mists of time promoted themselves as "the" technology recruitment medium? I was one of the major proponents of it in the recruitment advertising industry using it to great qualitative success What happened...?
The lesson? Change is happening increasingly quickly and in many ways unpredicatably through technology breakthroughs. Will Facebook and indeed Linkedin be around in the current format in 5 years time? I think not!! Heresy I hear people say.
Will the web replace the press, radio etc? No, I think not. Experience suggests that it will be/is an incremental media, adding to what exists.
Key to future developments will be looking at things from both the candidates' and recruiters' perspectives. Now working in the world of executive outplacement a number of things are apparent. People largely find roles through the "hidden job market" - ie through networking - largely face to face. Good networkers find new roles more quickly than others. The web though will make the "hidden" market more visible. Those doing their job search without carrying out research on who they are contacting, being interviewed by will be dead in the water - but research prior to job search has always been key. The only difference is the volume and accessibilty of information is incomparable to the old days of paper.
Recruitment will become more and more a question of information management/manipulation using databases such as Monster's CV City (if that's what it's still called), social networking sites, and various talent pools (internal company based, recruitment consultancy based and alumni sites etc.) To my mind information will be able to be gleaned from the web much more easily leading to one consolidated source of candidates (look at price comparison web sites for insurance etc.) There will come a day, possibly within 5 years where there will be the equivalent for people... scary.) Quite how this then meshes with ID cards, text messaging, cybernetics etc who knows.
Feel free to contact me!
Keith Busfield
Paul H
Carve:Digital Strategy, Corporate Social Networks, Communities, Search, PR, Talent/Engagement | paul@carveconsulting.com
Some really interesting answers here...
One possible vision of the future we're quite excited about - at least from a targeting perspective - is the "Google Earth meets Second Life monetised by AdWords + base" scenario blogged about here: http://www.carveconsulting.com/blog/index.php?title=google_earth_meets_second_life&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
More broadly, we think that "portfolio workers" will start to have a radical impact on the recruitment market. These are talented knowledge workers who reject the idea of a 'normal job', but instead work as internet-connected freelancers for a number of organisations (like a few of the great and good on the list below in fact ;-)
The intermediaries then become global talent pools, such as oDesk.
