Imagine....

Just saw the the Imagine programme “www.herecomeseverybody.co.uk” on BBC 1 (a rare quiet night in!) and it’s stirred me to post.

The speed at which the Internet has evolved even in just the 10 months I’ve been at Barkers is incredible. It’s not even that things like Wikipedia, Youtube, Myspace and Second Life or concepts like the Long Tail are brand new, they aren’t. However the way their growth has accelerated and the fact that their names seems to now be ubiquitous is extraordinary. Seeing them all name checked on BBC1 on a Tuesday night just proves the point.

It also brought it home to me that this is only just the beginning and the web as we know is going to change beyond all recognition. In some ways this hardly seems fair on a lot of companies who are still trying to come to terms with the fact the Internet changed everything in first place!

Wikipedia, Youtube, Myspace and Second Life aren’t the real Web 2.0, this is just the overture. These brands in some ways are like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Signalling the start of the second coming and the end of the “old” Internet as we’ve know it!

This brings me onto my rant. I’m somewhat disappointed by the UK online recruitment industry’s reaction thus far to this phenomenon. Don’t get me wrong, the great and the good have all heard of it and you’ll struggle to go to a presentation these days where LinkedIn and My Space aren’t mentioned and mentioned enthusiastically.

However it’s very rare that you hear what the true implications for recruiting are going to be and how these emerging trends should be put to use in an appropriate way. I’m going to bold and say that is because most of the people talking about them just don’t understand how they work. Putting banner advertising in My Space, rushing to put “clever” videos on Youtube and developing recruitment pod casts no one wants to download is kind of missing the point.

I don’t claim to have all the answers but I do know one thing. We’ve always been told that word of mouth and referrals are the most popular way of finding jobs. Word of mouth and referrals are fuelling this phenomenon and that has already rewritten the rules for companies who make (or should that be made!) money out of music and journalism. Recruitment is next and unless we get our act together to stop just talking and start working out ways of doing, it’s just going to sweep on by past us. If we’re not careful our industry in the UK is going to be floundering in the technological version of the dark ages and we’re all going to be clinging tightly to our banners and job postings wondering where all the job seekers went!

So lets have some proper debate and some genuinely new ideas, they’re doing in the States we need to be doing the same here