Wednesday 13 February 2008

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know

How recruitment is changing to use social networks and "Web 2.0" technology to source candidates.

The recruitment business has always been about matching supply and demand. Candidates and Employers.

In the old days, this would involve newspaper and magazine advertising to source potential candiates. Then along came the internet, which allowed for three important changes:

1. Aggregation of supply
Websites sprung up that posted jobs from many different employers and agencies, allowing for a one stop shop for candidates.

2. Employer direct advertising
With the internet employers can advertise directly themselves with ease and source lots of candidates with a simple online listing.

3. Candidate driven demand
Candidates can search for jobs using search engines. This allows employers and agencies to advertise using paid search (e.g. Google Adwords) to fish for candidates that were stating their interest.

There have been a few winners in this first round of the internet revolution. A good example is Monster.co.uk, a jobs listing site that when I checked last had over nearly 2000 jobs in London for just one sector: IT/Software Development.

HR Managers and the recruitment industry have adapted to this new world. Can they adapt to what's coming next?


Get A Haircut And Get A New Job

The next round of change is being driven by online social networks and "web 2.0" (community driven) applications.


Here's 5 examples of what's coming next...

What connects them all is that increasingly we will be referring each other for jobs and sites will facilitate this.


1. Niche Community job boards
Specialist communities have built up over the last few years. Owners of these sites realise that their audience might be interested in jobs in that sector. An example that I've found to be successful was http://www.e-consultancy.com/jobs/ which is an online marketing and ecommerce resource. I posted a job here for just £99. I only got a few candidates, but one of them was the one we hired. Result.


2. Linkedin.com - professional networking site
Linkedin is a networking site that allows you to keep in touch with your professional contacts. It's like an online contacts list that is automatically kept up to date. There's over a million users in the UK. By my calculations, there's probably only 200,000 that are "power" users.

Anyway - linkedin has job ads. As an employer I can list a job for only about £100 (Monster is about £500). What's clever is that when a user logs in, jobs in their "network" are shown. I've found many of the jobs advertised that I've seen when I log in to be highly relevant: they're in the right sector and are interesting job roles.

What's also clever is that if you apply for a job, Linkedin will tel you how you might be connected to someone at the hiring company. You know "John Smith" who knows a "Jane White" at "Company X" where company X is the job opportunity. It gives you a chance to knock on a few doors, ask John to have a chat with Jane to find out more about the job, put in a good word for you. The power of a personal introduction is always and will always be a useful door-opener.


3. Facebook pages and applications
Facebook has a number of jobs applications. Companies are trying to find one that works. I'm not sure that Facebook is the right place for job hunting, but lots of companies have tried to make it work.

There are two main types of applications: "refer a friend" and "search for a job". The trouble is with the "search for a job" type applications is this: why would you want a "David added the search-for-a-job application" message to appear on your profile, especially as so many of your "friends" are probably your colleagues. Who can you trust these days?

Refer-a-friend type applications are potentially interesting, but the whimsical nature of Facebook means that it doesn't lend itself to a decent referral audience. If you are going to refer a friend you need to put some effort into it. See Zubka.com, below.


4. Zubka.com - referral reward site
This is a very interesting start-up and it's private equity backers are the same guys that backed eBay, Betfair and Bebo.

Zubka’s approach is that a user will log on to their website, see a job that they think that their friend may be interested in, and make a referral. If the friend gets the job, the user gets a fee. The fees are substantial. For a £50,000 role, the referrer stands to make £3,600 if the candidate is successful. That's a pretty big carrot. It does require some effort from the referrer, but not too much. 10 minutes work could land you a couple of grand.


5. Notchup.com - get paid to interview for jobs
Taking things one step further is Notchup.com. Let's see if this one works out, but it sounds interesting. Here, you register and employers can invite you for interview.

What's great is that they PAY YOU to go on the interview. How great is that? According to their "interview calculator, I'm worth $610 an interview. Could be worth an afternoon off? I haven't really test driven this site myself, so I'd be interested in feedback from anyone that has.


So - what success have you had with finding candidates or jobs through community based websites?

I'd be interested to know. Comments welcomed....

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