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.