Social Networks Are Not Just About Having Fun.

I’ve been banging on about the importance of social networking to recruitment and my job networks on Twitter are gaining a considerable following @JobsAustralia @Jobseen @GamerJobs @ITJobsSydney as an example. Check out this article from the weekend Courier Mail by Amanda Horswill. Read article here. You’d have to be an ostrich not to notice the level of media coverage social networks receive these days. “These networks won’t work”, “It’ll take years before social networks are vital to recruiting”, said the critics. I say the critics need a rethink on these claims. I say, social networking is already integral. If you don’t believe me, read in this article what Iggy Pintado has to say about my ideas…

Ah. I love it when a plan comes together.

Other adaptations of social networking techniques create new takes on a traditional job board. Online Recruitment owner Geoff Jennings says he runs a number of different Twitter accounts that “feed” (provide updates to) “followers” (people who agree to receive his messages) a one-line description of particular categories of jobs, followed by a weblink to the job ad on a different website such as Careerone.com.au. The information he uses is collated by a third party, a website called an aggregator (www.recruit.net), which “scrapes” information off a number of websites and collates it into a single-line description called a “news feed”. Jennings takes this news feed, combines it with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed from other sites than ban aggregation, and mixes in a few of his client’s positions that he is contracted to fill. He then broadcasts the jobs on Twitter, under account names such as ITjobsbris and ITjobssydney and gamerjobs.

“At this stage I am just testing the service. My company is not yet big enough to draw a large following on Twitter if I only put the jobs my company was recruiting for. But if I put many jobs on I can feed to a broader audience,” he says.

“That’s my strategy, anyway. I am very up-front about it (on those accounts).”

He maintains a personal account under his own name: “I don’t flog jobs in there, it’s to brand me as a recruiter. But on the other accounts, people don’t want to see me in there among the jobs.”

He says while he doesn’t get a large number of inquiries from Twitter to his company’s positions, the response so far is promising.

“I do get a lot of people ‘re-Twitting’. That’s when people pick up my Tweet and put a RT in front of it and send it out to their network. Then you get that community-based thing going. From that, I have had emails saying ‘I am interested, tell me more’.”

Social networking expert and author of Connection Generation Iggy Pintado says Jennings could possibly represent the future direction of Twitter.

Back To The Future For Job Boards

My recent blog regarding The Future Of Job Boards sparked a bit of debate. A few issues arose from that debate, and I’d like to respond to each of them.

Before I do this, however, there needs to be some clarification around the definition of social media. Many readers assume they know what this means, but – when pressed- have difficulty defining it. And since it remains a hot phrase over the coming years, let’s establish up front what we mean when we use the term.

Social media describes a new set of internet tools that enable shared community experiences, both online and in person.

A community, in this context, is a group of people with common interests who connect with one another to learn, play, work, organise and socialise. Communities can be large or small, local or global. They can be public or restricted to members.

Okay, let’s move on to address some of the concerns and conflicts around what arguably is set to become the latest adaptation in the evolution of the Internet.

1) Social media won’t have the impact on the way the Internet is used: Wrong. Evidence, in the form of the large numbers flocking to Twitter and Facebook, not to mention forums like Whirlpool, demonstrating high levels of uptake of social media suggests there’s something about it that people enjoy. And it doesn’t take a genius in anthropology to figure out what that might be. Humans are social animals. We congregate in groups to share opinion, to gossip, to fight, to fall in love. Any form of communication that exploits this natural tendency will necessarily have dominion over more static formats.

2) Job boards can simply add a social networking component and this way will be able to deliver interactivity to the user, while maintaining their traditional role in the market: This looks like a bet each way to me. Are you a job board, or are you a social network? When customers get confused about the service your business offers, this ameliorates customer base and loyalty. Why would customers want to look at old and outdated jobs listed on the job board component of a business like this when they can hear about what’s hot straight down the line of a social network posting. The immediacy of these types of media makes the static environment of the job board obsolete.

3) Social media is probably where we’re headed, but it’s going to take a while to get there: Well. Der. No one suggested it would happen immediately. We’re discussing future directions here peoples. Keep up with the show.

4) It’s difficult to monetise social media sites: the value of these sites is not around the direct revenue they make, it’s around the value of the unique users. Users bring traffic allowing for the leverage and sale of other products.

5) Social media may overtake the recruiter’s role of moderator in the job-candidate relationship. This may herald the demise of the recruiter: The breadth of contacts a recruiter has, as well as the knowledge of what is happening with the major players in their areas of speciality will work to protect the role of the recruiter in the match-up process. While social media are useful, they are time consuming. Building relationships takes energy. It has always been the value of these relationships that the recruiter offers the process. This will not diminish, but can only be escalated, as social media make contact with more people from more industries, more accessible to recruiters.

My Facebook Application

This is a tough one for me.  I’m conscious of how I want this blog to be.  I see it as a forum for offering ideas and opinions.  You know, tossing stuff about a bit. I’ve been ranting for some time now about the benefits of using social networking to overcome some of the challenges of finding candidates.I followed my own advice recently and employed a company to create a Facebook application for the Onrec site.  The company I used did a great job and I’d like to endorse them, Recruitment Directory, whilst keeping in mind that the raison d’etre of the blog is not to serve as an advertising publication. I just wanted to let folks know about them so that if they choose to follow my lead, they could think about using these guys, or perhaps any number of others out there who do a similar thing.  If you are one of them and want to tell folks about yourselves, let me know in the reply.    

Social Networking Is On Fire!

Social networking is king. I’ve discussed this before and the latest Hitwise Australia data, Asia Pacific Social Networking Report 2008, adds credence to my rants.

“The 40 leading social networking websites experienced strong growth in the past 12 months in Australia, New Zealand,Singapore and Hong Kong; Australia and New Zealand experienced the highest growth, increasing 62% and 88.6% respectively comparing market share of visits to the Social Networks custom category in February 2007 and January 2008.”

I’m not going to bore the heck out of you with a bunch of figures. But check out the graph below for the figure freaks:

I will draw your attention to a few salient points. Prime among these is that of the traffic moving downstream from the major palyers Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, 89% is sent to second tier players. This means that many folks are maintaining several profiles on different sites. Perhaps, for instance, they display a professional profile on one site, whereas on another they might choose to communicate with close friends and family. This makes me wonder at the feasibility of a site that morphs a professional site like LinkedIn with a Social Networking site such as Facebook. Users could maintain several different profiles in the one space.

It also seems that the major players are attracting different audiences. Well-educated and more affluent types are veering toward Facebook, while Bebo attracts multi-cultural and family groups. Important data, especially if you’re doing WHAT I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU TO DO and integrating your online presence with a social networking facility.

Finally, and this is the boon for me (Watch for that word in my future blog. It’s old; retro, if you like, but I’m big on it at the moment), users are increasingly choosing to communicate with one another via social networks. Imagine the world without email. Imagine the world where people’s social and professional and familial alliances are built around their online profiles. Now dump yourselves right in the heart of that space.

Face The Facts

Whether we like it or not, the workplace is going to evolve into an almost entirely electronic arena.  What I mean by that is individuals will communicate with each other via the web, not face-to-face in an office.  Businesses probably will not even have offices in times to come. All of the consultants from Online Recruitment, for instance, pretty much work from home. We have an office in Melbourne, which we use from time to time to conduct meetings and to meet with candidates, but we aim to be entirely online when the rest of the world catches up with our way of thinking.I don’t want to have a discussion about the pros and cons of this.  Whenever I start to evaluate the costs and benefits of this way of operating, I feel as though I’ve stepped back in time and I’m having a chat to one of my printing colleagues about the evils of the printing press.  I don’t dwell on stuff like this, I like to anticipate future directions and run with them.  So don’t try to engage me on this point, it’ll bore the heck out of me.What does interest me, though, is the consequences of this new type of workspace.  It is on this point that some really fascinating questions concerning the role of social networking arise.  Humans are a social species.  Even the most introverted of us gets a buzz out of having a good chat every now and again.  But with no office; and therefore no water cooler, where are these chats going to take place.  How is that special intimacy that develops between colleagues while they’re sipping their water from inadequately small plastic cups going to arise?The answer, my friends, is blowing in the ether.  Social networking sites, such as Facebook, are going to become the means via which business provide employees with a forum for the all important team-building, for encouraging folks to get to know one another “outside work”; really all this amounts to is developing community.  And whether they know it or not, that’s why companies like Seek have created a Seek Group within the Facebook space with about 6,700 members, even including younger family member Joel Bassat. (Shouldn’t you be doing your homework??) A CareerOne employee has started a  CareerOne Facebook Group without any support. Probably because Myspace, owned by their parent company News Limited, is their focus for now with Myspace Jobs. And companies that have banned the use of Myspace and Facebook during working hours are gonna have to think long and hard about how the heck their people are going to communicate personally with each other when there are no longer four physical walls fencing them in.  Onward and forward, folks.