Digital Recruiting

It's called Internet

Kudos to my good friend Howard at the Adventures in Digital Marketing blog for finding this one.

Very much in the same vein as Paul H's screenshot of Monster 1996 in his post the other day, here is a news story from 1993.

Amazing how things have developed in 14 years and how some things haven't changed at all.

They're back!

Looks like this blog's favourite American academic institution has upped their game (slightly!) with their new recruitment video. Scroll down to see the post about their last one.

Only a few hundred views this time though compared to a quarter of a million with the other one. Just shows you what sort of content gets noticed on YouTube!

more interesting links

before i forget to post this - check out John Hegarty on this link - very interesting presentation about digital creativity - i used a quote in another part of this blog but forgot to share it.

http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/4960_IAB/index.html

Interesting Blog You Might Like

To help the old debate i would suggest reading this;

http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/fastforwarding_to_a_better_understanding_part_1/

Very interesting stuff :-)

John

C'Mon! - That's the way to do it!

One advertising campaign that I have really loved in recent times has been the Vauxhall Corsa’s ad campaign featuring a selection of weird little puppets. I have seen it on TV but also viewed it online, through some excellent rich media executions that reinforced the message and characters involved.

I was sadly looking for a picture of one of the puppets recently to put on my instant messenger profile (I was tiring of Miss Piggy, but please don’t tell her).

I came across the following site

http://www.thecmons.com/index-en.html?.=.&_=.#

This is dedicated to all the puppet characters, it has downloads of funny clips, a ‘who’s who’s’ of the puppets in the style of Wiki pedia - http://www.thecmons.com/cmonpedia-en.html?.=.

And all the puppets have a profile on MySpace! - http://myspace.com/cmons_blue

What's interesting is that the actual product ,the Vauxhall Corsa car is not the main focus of the site, instead it acts as a backdrop, being in the background, part of the engaging script. The puppet characters and content are at the forefront and are the reason we as consumers are choosing to pull this message. What is key is that Vauxhall Corsa car is benefiting from this exposure and kudos, though not directly, it is still benefiting.

This is a nice example of how brands can leverage the whole Web 2.0 thing in a clever, humorous and engaging way. Some food for thought in how we position the employer brand in the Web 2.0 space.

Social media and recruitment: a match made in heaven...or hell?

 
Whilst, unbelievably, some companies have still to be convinced of the efficacy of online recruitment, at the innovative end the spectrum employers are increasingly looking to the social media as a way to engage and attract talent. Indeed, in the last couple of weeks the wires have been buzzing with Ernst & Young's Facebook recruitment drive, whilst TMP, with some fanfare, launched TMP Island in Second Life.

Whilst there is inevitably money to be made - and kudos to be earned - for those of us involved in getting companies to embrace these new worlds, what benefits are employers actually deriving from their efforts? And what is our target audience - candidate talent - making of this sudden clamour for their attention in hitherto "social" non-commercial environments?

The first thing to point of out course is that - without even counting non-stories like this -  this is a big subject area, encompassing Blogs, RSS, Business Networking ( like linkedin.com, xing, viadeo ) Social Networking ( myspace, youtube ), Virtual Worlds (SL and the like) and beyond....

As we meander through these topics over the next couple of months, the second thing to bear in mind is that there are really no gurus out there - it's all too new and fast moving for that. Whilst we can look at what's happening in the US, there really is no substitute for getting out there and mixing it up. The only rule of engagement that Carve has is to be honest: the last thing you need is a flogvertising scandal or feedback like this....

 

Until next time, how about a small quiz? Answers in the Comments section below please...  My word is final...  Global recognition and peer group kudos for the winner...

1. The average age of a LinkedIn user is __
2. The average age of a Second Life user is __
3. The average age of a Facebook user is __

 

PS Logging into SL for the first time? Yes, I know it's surprisingly ****** - but remember the internet back in the day? Here is Monster in Nov 1996. Its, like, a miracle we all earn a living from this stuff...

Paul H

Technorati tags: Social Media Marketing Carve Consulting recruitment 2.0

Spreading the Net

In order to keep debate as diverse as possible, we''ll be featuring posts by guest authors from time to time. First up is Russell Byrne of London Jobs

Spreading the Net

All this talk of Long Tails, YouTubes and Web 2.0’s has got me thinking. The internet is undoubtedly an exciting arena in which to work. Ok, it’s not Disney World exciting, but you know what I mean. By its very definition ‘New Media’ is going to be a place of innovation and expectation, and online recruitment is no exception. We frequently speak to agencies about the developments that we are working on, trying to find something to offer advertisers that is exciting, exclusive, and perhaps most importantly, effective. And rightly so. If we as an industry don’t push our collective boundaries what claim can we have to being a ‘new’ media; to being any different to the rest of the recruitment advertising fraternity?

Yet beyond Rich Media, Podcasts and HTML emails there is an opportunity for advertisers which is seldom explored; the option of extending their recruitment campaign onto non-recruitment partner sites. We have lost count of the times that we have been asked by the agency for a proposal on using Lifestyle sites, or local newspapers sites (etc) within our group. Yet the number of proposals to actually manifest into a cross network campaign remains a very solitary… one. I am not nearly so arrogant to suggest that I speak for every online media network, but I believe that the debate as evidenced by our inability to convert interest in execution is a valid one.

You see, it seems that advertisers who claim to be interested in reaching the holy grail of the passive job seeker are unwilling to commit the budget required to reach them and opt instead for the job board only strategy. With financial constraints being what they are, I can appreciate that. When the chips are down, would you rather look for a needle in a haystack or a needle in a box of needles? Are these advertisers missing out on the opportunity of reaching a gold mine of talent? Or are they maximising their budget by going to where they can be sure to find job seekers.

On the one hand, spreading the net in this way would massively extend the reach of an ad campaign and potentially attract a hitherto unexplored talent pool. But the cost associated with running a campaign visible and frequent enough to out-muscle the Display Advertisers who inhabit these sites is usually considerably higher than the kind of costs they would normally pay on a job board.

So should the advertiser remain within the confines of the Recruitment Platform? It might be more cost effective in reaching candidates, but in doing that would the advertiser have to forego the option of reaching that potentially highly employable casual browser who might be open to the suggestion of changing job and employer?

We are lucky to have the luxury to offer this. In my experience, asking a Newspaper Ad Director if we could move a recruitment ad out of classified and into run of paper would inevitably be met with hilarity. Or a beating. Client requirements were of secondary concern to protecting the micro-markets evolved out of decades of tradition. But even Newspapers are changing now, embracing the concept of ‘Cross Media’ in order to fight for survival in the advertising market.

This IS an exciting industry, one that is changing all the time and we have a fight on our hands to convince our advertisers that the many different strategies that we can suggest aren’t just innovation for novelty’s sake. Will 2007 be the year that Web Recruitment 2.0 explodes into the marketplace? One thing’s for sure; we’re sitting here with our blast goggles on and enough dynamite to do the job as soon as they are willing to go to war.

Oh who am I kidding, this is much more exciting than Disney World.

Space

Mountain

is a rubbish ride…

Web 2.0 is all about the feel-good factor

I thought you lot would be interested in this :-) not written by me so it will make sense

Web 2.0 is all about the feel-good factor

• 02 January 2007
• From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues
• Celeste Biever

User participation is crucial to the survival of popular websites like YouTube and Flickr. But how do these sites ensure that new videos, photos and comments keep flooding in?

It all comes down to persuasion strategies, says B. J. Fogg at Stanford University in California, who is analysing the techniques employed by websites that rely on their users for content, known collectively as Web 2.0. The secret is to tie the acquisition of friends, compliments and status - spoils that humans will work hard for - to activities that enhance the site, such as inviting new users and contributing photos, he says. "You offer someone a context for gaining status, and they are going to work for that status."

Fogg and his colleagues analysed hundreds of such sites and identified three stages to their success, which they called discovery, superficial involvement and true commitment.

They found that the first two stages are easily achieved, for example by making it simple for existing users to email their friends with something they have posted online. In this way other people discover the site and become superficially involved through activities such as rating a posted video or photo. What separates successful from unsuccessful websites is the ability to get these people to create content of their own, involve yet more friends, and remain active and loyal.

By studying over 150 videos of people using successful sites, Fogg identified key strategies that persuade users to get involved. One incentive is to give people the opportunity to increase their status. For example, the photo-sharing website Flickr assigns images an "interestingness" score depending on how many people view them and whether they comment. This encourages users to email their friends with links to their photos. This is good for the site as it improves the quality of Flickr's search engine by ensuring the most interesting photos are ranked most highly.

Sites also keep people involved by giving them the chance to earn rewards. For bloggers these could come in the form of comments from other users, while on the business networking site Linked-In they might be endorsements that potential contacts can read. Again, these benefit the websites by engaging other users.

The effects of both status and rewards are increased because they are doled out unpredictably - new people joining your friendship group on MySpace say, or a new comment on your blog. This ensures users frequently return to the site to check for changes.

Fogg hopes that by studying how well these strategies work, he will be able to quantify them and discover new ways in which people are open to persuasion. "The web is a huge lab for studying human psychology," he says. "I think what we are seeing with Web 2.0 is which persuasion technologies work and which do not."

From issue 2583 of New Scientist magazine, 02 January 2007, page 30

Web 2.0 – Explaining Excellence or is it Excellence in Explaining?

I am always impressed when something is explained in an engaging and easy to understand way.

As would only be fitting in an explanation of what 'Web 2.0' is, why it evolved and what we need to consider now that it is here, the below link is to be found on one of the leading examples of what web 2.0 personifies – Youtube.

I watched this video and it was the the first time in a while I have been really really impressed. (Well not since I read the Long Tail last summer :o)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

with over a million views of this video, I guess I'm not alone......

Gootube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpEtArdI50s 

Nice.  And the supporting Gooootube (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=GooooTube ) section is fun too.

It looks like Cadbury's Creme Egg have come up with a good way of combining their marketing with YouTube's technology and reach.

It's funny. And it's not really in any way invasive or intrusive(in terms of creating something too corporate and not at all in keeping with YouTube's style and approach), with the video clips that have been sent in by members of the public support the current marketing/brand messaging.  But my favourite aspect is that its still funny, entertaining and very much on brand for YouTube.

Obviously, this is not recruitment related, but to be honest, the stuff that has been seen on there so far that is recruitment-driven has been, to be polite, particularly bad (no offence Matt). 

Maybe this provides us with a bit more direction as to what can be done by corporates wanting to use this platform, and could provide inspiration to our creative teams about what we could be doing.  I was certainly impressed.

Nice work Cadbury's (or your marketing agency) - now I'm off to buy my first Creme Egg of 2007 (honest) where I'll no doubt think that they've shrunk again this year...