Recruitment and Cloud Computing

There is plenty of interest now in moving your applications into “The Cloud”. If you have not come across this jargon, all it means simply is not buying software from Microsoft that works on your computer directly but paying a monthly fee. (Software as a Service or Saas) Even better though, is the products that are free!

Google has a term for this “the power of free”. People quickly become loyal to products that are free, constantly upgraded and do not need to be maintained.
For example, if you laptop was stolen would you have a full back up? You do if it is all stored in the “cloud”

As an example, a company I have worked with who uses Excel to keep track of all of its recruitment has now moved the trusty spreadsheet over to Google Apps as it is very simple for everybody to access the document and update it.

So will recruitment move into the Cloud?

Firstly the systems that you can use to do your recruitment administration, many of them are SaaS. Where it get interesting though is that “cloud recruiting” with the Social Net begin a new focus on building and maintaining relationships.

It is far easier to build and maintain an active relationship with passive candidates who just want to stay in touch with your company, see what you are doing until they are ready to make a move.

Slowly we can draw them into our company with a recruiting process that gently stays in touch and makes them aware of what is happening. Gives some idea of the company culture. The passive candidate can slowly make up their mind about us. The company may also not have a vacancy right now but when they do, they already have developed enough rapport that asking the candidate if they are now interested is a lot easier than a cold call about a vacancy.

Passive candidates need reassurance that they are making the right decision; they require relationships that have developed over time.

Until Web 2.0 it has been too hard – too time consuming and too labour intensive to build and maintain a real talent pool. So, what happens? We advertise and take the person that is on the market now – a purely chance event than finding somebody who is a better match.

Cloud recruiting provides a way around this problem by building “virtual relationships” on the Internet. Virtual relationships can be developed more quickly and efficiently because they use one-on-many online interactions. In other words, passive candidates can engage with you whenever and wherever it’s convenient (and discreet) for them to do so.

Where does cloud recruiting take place? You could build your own Talent Pool, or you could invest some time linking to the right people on LinkedIn.

Posing the occasional question, inviting them to an event, notifying them of a great book – anything that is an occasional reminder of you and your company.

Does all of that cost a lot more money than most organizations are now investing in the career resources they’ve provided on their Web-sites? Probably not if you take away your spend on recruitment agencies and use this to build a real talent pool. The calibre of the candidates that you do hire is likely to be better.

How did Seth Godin hire?

I am a big fan of Seth Godin.

If you don’t know him, he invented on-line permission marketing and writes an innovatative, thought provoking marketing blog.. I along with many others on Facebook think he is a marketing genius.

Of course, my interest in Seth comes back to recruitment.  If you change the product/service you are marketing,  you can apply all the same techniques to market to your possible hires,  the tools are all the same. So for example, how could you use Facebook for recruitment.

At ERE – US e-recruitment conference in 2006 I was lucky enough to here Seth speak about how he hired his staff (before Web 2.0).

Basically he collected up the people he was interested in and then invited them to attend a presentation, all at the same time about his company. That’s right, the people who were going to compete for the same role were all in the room together. (I like the time efficiency of this process!) Then they were asked to present to the group on why they should be chosen. After that a mix and mingle with some staff over a few drinks and that was it. Done. Seth said he likes to hire on personality, style and fit rather than definite skills. He believes skills can be taught but attitude can’t.  This was all pre Web 2.0. Now Seth uses Facebook.

Here’s the process he went through to find his summer interns

“Unable to just pick one from the applicants, I invited the applicants to join a Facebook group I had set up. Then I let them meet each other and hang out online.

It was absolutely fascinating. Within a day, the group had divided into four camps:

• The game-show contestants, quick on the trigger, who were searching for a quick yes or no. Most of them left.
• The lurkers. They were there, but we couldn’t tell.
• The followers. They waited for someone to tell them what to do.
• The leaders. A few started conversations, directed initiatives and got to work”

Read and be inspired to try something new – Seth on his Summer Internship