Digital Recruiting

Understanding The Medium

I get a little wound up by the lack of understanding people have of media in the ad agencies. This is not a ‘you don’t understand so you are stupid attitude’.

It is a …

PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SELL THINGS YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.

I will send my apologies as I am about to rant about http://www.i-jobsforreal.co.uk/ - a little bit inspired by the article by Graeme Wright on ri5.co.uk. This is not aimed at putting the event down - but it is an excellent example of people not understanding mediums.

The basis that you need to understand is how the structure and nature of a medium meet the requirements of the communication campaign. So shall we have a little look at the nature of secondlife.com and Graeme has already looked at the structure.

This is how second life describes itself.

‘Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its Residents.’

If you then think about why people use virtual worlds … well it is to get away from the everyday world. People are looking to live a different life. So will they use it to look at an everyday job?

When you look at computer and human interaction – I always quite like Persuasive Technology by BJ Fogg - three key areas are important

1. A tool that makes things quicker
2. A social actor that improves communication and provides support
3. A medium that provides experience.

Where does second life fit into these three areas – well it is a medium that provides experience. Is second life a symbolic or sensory medium? Well it is a sensory medium that gives the opportunity to provide experience – so does the concept fit?

The event is described as the first virtual careers fair – I remember working on one of these in 1999 (it was awful but I would suggest that does not make this the first) and I even remember one for grads on msn last year with totaljobs (that was not much better but at least it was a careers fair). So I am positive it is not the first - maybe the first one on second life.

Sorry I was wondering off then. When you look at the concept – people could use the second life medium to improve their interview techniques, experience group events etc … and talk to employers - all to help with their real life job applications. I am not saying they will - i feel people use second life to live away from the real world - not within it.

This is the process for candidates on the site.

First, you need to choose a role and company you’re interested in, register and upload your CV. The closing date for receipt of CVs will be 9 October.
The organisation(s) you have selected will then review your CV before selecting a limited number of candidates.
Next, you will be notified as to whether you have been successful in getting a virtual interview.
We will send the application forms and CVs of successful candidates to the companies which they have selected for approval.
If you are successful, we will invite you to the event and provide you with all the information you need to prepare for your interviews.

When I look at this … it is not a careers fair. I always though the idea of an event is that you can wander around, get information, ask questions and maybe stumble upon a company you do not know.

Maybe I am being thick … it happens a lot. But this seems nothing like a careers fair and really they seem to be just using second life to conduct an interview. Well to be honest that is what is says on the site.

If this is what is happening … the point of second life has been missed. The BBH move to build a virtual advertising agency – hit the point. Second life is an experience and an experience that is based within the virtual world.

This world can reflect and even support the real world – but the basis of the interaction should be within the virtual world – not the real world. That is why people use it. There is no point running this in second life using the methodology on the site – unless you just want to say you are doing something on second life.

Sorry for singling out this event BUT it is a perfect example of people doing things because they are new. We should work with new mediums, this is the only way we test and deliver innovation.

BUT we really do need to improve the level of understanding of mediums within the agencies and clients. Because if the structure and nature of the mediums don’t meet client objectives then the campaigns will not work – this is a perfect example of an idea missing the point of the medium.

You see examples of this across all levels of the industry from simple job posting campaigns through to the main digital recruiters in the UK. If we say we understand the media – then we should actually understand the media.

http://www.i-jobsforreal.co.uk/ misses the point of how people interact with the internet, the concept of a careers fair and the nature of second life.

The future starts right here and right now

An interesting set of comments are still growing under the post below but I wanted to take the debate in a slightly different direction

I’ve been in the USA for the last week and am actually currently blogging this in San Francisco (hence the time of my post!). While I’ve been here I’ve met with a number of “self styled online recruitment experts” (yes they have them over here as well!) and had a lot of time to ponder what is happening in the US market and how there might be learnings for the UK.

By far the most interesting trend here is the growth of aggregators and vertical search engines such as Simply Hired and Indeed.com. The business model is so simple yet so effective. Gather a critical mass of content (jobs) via various means, mash it up with millions of jobs seekers across numerous affiliate sites and widgets and then target / monetise this content using a Google Adwords model .

Now the key point here is that these sites aren’t some kind of USA only revolution, they are already over here. Simply Hired powers the job search on MySpace globally which already makes is a massive player in the UK and they haven’t even got an office here yet! If you also throw into the mix things like Jobsite’s new Facebook App, it makes the debate we are having about traffic and auditing in the post below totally out of date and totally irrelevant.

In my view measuring and auditing generic traffic figures is already a waste of time but these new trends make it explicitly so. Simply Hired doesn’t care how many people view its home page, Jobsite is using Facebook to deep link candidates to relevant site content thus extending its audience reach in a way an audit can’t quantify and, as Sinead points out in the comments to the post below, technologies such as AJAX are changing the old rules completely. You wouldn’t dream of asking Google for its ABCE audit figure or NORAS stats before using it and we need to think of the emerging “job board” market in the same way.

So what then for us as an industry if press style auditing and traffic measurement is dead, what do we focus are collective energies on?

There has been much talk about the happy day when it will be easy to measure cost per hire and collectively compare job board performance that way. I’ve got some news for you….yes this will absolutely be possible but when it’s the norm for clients to do this the last thing they are going to do is share the data! There is global war for candidates / talent going on out there and all the demographic data shows that it is only going to get worse over the coming years. No client in their right mind is going to want to give up any competitive advantage they have

So what do we do? Well I think the way forward is clear…not easy, not short term, potentially controversial but nevertheless clear. We need to open the debate up to the people who will drive the technology that will make the measurements….the ATS providers, multi posters like Broadbean, the cookie trackers, the ad servers and the potential inventors of future technologies. Between us we need to agree a shared language, techonology and culture of results based measurement. Even though the end stats won’t be shared I’m sure every job board or future “provider of candidates” would be over the moon if they knew their performance was being judged in a consistent and fair way.

So what’s the first step? Well it’s not going to be a short journey, in fact it is going to take years. So despite what you might currently think about UK buyers currently being generally unsophisticated, we need to start this right now. It’s not about new research or new industry bodies at this stage it’s about a culture change in the UK online recruitment industry. We need to talk about measurement at every conference at every networking event and on every blog. I’m sure they will be many rows over format but if we all keep having the proper debate and agree on the shared goal then things will start to emerge that take us forward.

In the last year it has become crystal clear that this industry is changing faster than any us can keep up with. Now is not the time to bury our heads in the audits, surveys and outmoded behaviours of the past!

Job board traffic statements – what price integrity?

So here’s the thing. I recently became aware of how some job boards (well one, but I'm not trawling through every audited traffic statement to check all - at this stage) seek to massage their figures in a manner that is really sticking in my throat. So I’ll ask this question:

When you read about a site’s Unique Users and Page Impressions do you too take that as a face value statement of the overall traffic that comes to the site and has the potential for coming across your job? An indication of the audience that you’re paying for access to?

I did – fool that I am!

Now of course those of us who’ve been dabbling in this world for some time know full well that the UU & PI figures have long since proved any significant value in terms of predicting potential success of a job board and its audience and therefore plays little if any part in online media planning today. The insistence of placing such importance on such a measurement comes from days past when all a media planner had to understand to assist in / justify their planning was ABC & VFD figures. It also panders to the egos of grown men boasting about how big their share is to an, unfortunately, sometimes not very educated / savvy buying audience. But for me this isn’t about how useful the UU and PI figures are – this is about the fact that when any metric is presented, especially when presented in a manner that’s making the most of its independent verification, it needs to have integrity behind it.

So when I discover that a job board is also counting the traffic visiting sites they’ve established that are, in my understanding of it, closed to advertising my vacancies on, then I start to get very annoyed and feel pretty cheated. And, just to clarify further, I'm not talking about a job board with a network of sites which have specialist niche job boards attached that are counted as part of the overall network UU & PI figures - I'm talking about direct recruiting entities for direct recruiting activity (be that client or agency) that I could only appear on were I recruiting within that organisation.

Now I don’t want to get into the game of naming and shaming (been there and scrapped over that one before), and I don’t particularly want anyone else to (but it is a free blogosphere – well kinda). I’d rather see if anyone else has an opinion on how sacrosanct you view the integrity of audited statements and whether you feel at least a little narked that you too may have been taken for a ride by someone hoping you wouldn’t turn to the 'network domains' element of the ABCe audit report either.  Then perhaps if enough people are at least a little miffed by this practise and the people responsible are reading this they’ll get the message and next ABCe audit they’ll do the decent thing (no matter how painful in terms of shedding some reality on their figures) and only count sites that are truly reflective of the audience I, or my clients at least, believe they are buying into when we're quoted their figures.

I know things are seldom absolutely black or white, but am I really being ridiculously naïve? again?! Or perhaps it's just all a misunderstanding and when the mistake is realised there'll be quick moves to correct the over-submission of domains error.

:-]

Some Very Big Numbers

Just back from holiday and am still digesting what’s been written while I was away. While I’m pondering it all and also penning a new post, I thought I’d share some Facebook stats I’ve just found quoted, sourced to Facebook themselves :-

• Over 150,000 registrants daily. That's 1 million a week since January.
• 35 million current users as of this week
• Half users are outside college.  That number was zero in Sept. 2006.
• 0ver 40 billion page views in May 2007
• Average visitor stays 20 minutes
• Most growth is among people over age 25.
• 47,000 Facebook groups.
• #1 photo sharing app on the web. 2.7 billion photos on site.
• More than 2000 applications. The Top 10 are: Top Friends, Video, Graffiti, MyQuestions, iLike, FreeGifts, X Me, Superpoke!, Fortune Cookie & Horoscopes. The smallest of these has over 4.5 million users.
• London the biggest Facebook city with nearly 1 million users registered in the London Network

Out of all of this the part I actually find most interesting is the 2.7 billion photos....thats a lot of tags, links and entry points for users to invite their friends to sign up

Those are some very big numbers and they have got one hell of a virtuous circle of growth. Inevitably this will slow but I'd be very amazed if Facebook is just the passing phase or flash in the pan some people are claiming it is!

From the Classifieds to the Personal Ads

Google's recent declaration of intent to assemble the most comprehensive database of personal information has shed some light on the future evolution of recruitment and digital media. Google’s ultimate aim is to use the data at its disposal to make the experience of its users much more tailored and rewarding.

The future of advertising will be all about Personalisation.

Rather interesting was the example that Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, gave during this announcement "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'."

It is obvious that Google see the digital age and its targeting capabilities as being the primary avenue for candidates to secure their ideal career. It’s also apparent that the digital age represents huge opportunities to engage in effective and accountable dialogue with prospective candidates across a range of industries and geographies.

With Google purchasing the ad serving technology firm Doublclick, MSN buying aQuantive, the owner of Atlas ad serving tracking technology and WPP buying 24/7 Real Media, the leading players have at their disposal the tools to monitor and track online users behaviour like never before.

As a result they will be able to provide industry leading tailored messages in their conversations with target audiences. As we all know, having a conversation with someone who actually ‘knows you’ is more engaging and has the propensity to become a longer term relationship.

With The Age of Dialogue comes real value for the job seeker, a bespoke service can be offered, it's as if you have your own personal recruitment consultant without all the disadvantages that a real life one can bring.

It’s important to note that this new era and its technology truly brings the job seeking conversation beyond the realms of job boards. This is why, more than ever, Job board needs to be harnessing the technology that enables them to really know the job seekers on their site and more importantly provide them with the personalised service that meets their career needs.  If they do not provide this service they will be supplanted and become redundant.

Having attended a Fish4jobs breakfast meeting this morning about their job search functionality, it was interesting to see that they recognise this and are providing amongst other things, RSS feeds and Amazon type search functionality for their job seekers. This is just the start and obviously this is the area of development that will determine which job boards survive moving forward.

The trialogue has arrived

I did not write this but thought you would find it interesting - so for those of you who want to read the original source.

http://www.i-level.com/resource-centre/opinion-pieces/trialogue.php

For lazy people - here is the trialogue

Andrew Walmsley, co-founder of i-level
13 June 2007

When Moses climbed the mountain to collect a set of tablets, he wasn’t expecting a consultation exercise. No focus groups had been conducted, and no quantitative research. The tablets came with commandments on them, and there was a certain amount of implied definitiveness that came with that term.
And media’s been pretty much like that for most of the several thousand years since then. A small number of people told a large number of people what they thought, and there was very little opportunity for the mass to respond – and if they did, it was subject to the editorial control of those in power.
Which is why when the web appeared in 1994, people started getting excited. A new paradigm was emerging, they said. In the future, where there previously had been a monologue, there will be a dialogue. Consumers will be able to respond to communications just as easily as they can receive them, and the implications for brands are enormous.
I went to a conference in 1996 in Edinburgh, where hundreds of marketing and media folk debated hotly the exciting opportunity this new world of dialogue would bring their brands. We spent three days talking about how brands would be able to have a dialogue with consumers, and that this would be a more powerful means of communication because of the level of involvement that consumers would have.
Throughout the debate it was clear what benefits a dialogue with consumers could have for brands. The trouble was, there wasn’t much in it for consumers. Speaking for myself, I don’t really want to have a dialogue with Persil, or Sainsbury’s or Yoplait. I don’t even want to have a dialogue with Audi or Vodafone or Selfridges, in which I would normally be expected to be considerably more interested.
Ultimately I want them to get on with being them. Make my clothes clean, connect my calls – the hygiene factors are important, but the emotional elements are just as much theirs too, and I either buy into them or I don’t.
So the ability to create real, meaningful dialogue often ended up being too costly, too difficult and often simply too much work for the value generated.
But emerging over the last few years has been a new dynamic, infinitely more powerful than the dialogue ever promised to be, more threatening, more revolutionary and more valuable.
When we look back in another ten years, we will see that the true impact of digital media was not to find new ways to connect brands to consumers, but in connecting those consumers (or “people” as they like to refer to themselves) to each other.
This simple fact has created a new ecosystem.
Now, people collaborate together to create software, which they release back onto the web where it outperforms the ‘commercial’ competition. They share information about medical conditions, challenging the authority of the medical establishment. They co-operate to drive down fuel prices, publishing the cheapest price for your postcode. And they join forces to bring down brands who let them down, publishing video of underperforming products.
The age of the Trialogue has arrived.
The challenge this poses for brands is that they’re no longer handing down the tablets. Their consumers have relegated them to the position of supplier, and are talking about them, not to them.
Whilst this is a threat to those who adhere to the status quo, it’s an opportunity to those brands who can reinterpret themselves as facilitators. They recognise that the bulk of the discourse will take place between consumers, and their role in this is to enable, empower, listen and just occasionally, talk.
The trialogue will influence every aspect of marketing, from product design (threadless.com) through to product recommendation (tripadvisor.com), and its potency derives from opportunity brands now have not to talk at people, but to be a small part of billions of their conversations.

Why employer brands should listen to online conversations - Guardian OBO vs. British Gas

We're often talking about the need for brand owners to 'listen to the conversation' and to develop cogent online reputation management strategies. Why? Well, if you don't know what people are saying about your organisation, how can you respond? For corporate recruiters, if you think of the internet in terms of a long tail of opinions and experiences, how do you begin trying to ensure that the prevailing view is positive?

It's not always easy however to articulate why - and how quickly - social media conversations happen, so I thought it might be interesting to consider this example from the Guardian's over by over ( OBO ) coverage of the recent England vs. India test match. To give this some context, the Guardian 'commentator' is watching the game on Sky TV and providing a loose overview of the action, whilst engaging in email banter with readers. It mightn't sound very compelling, but it's actually quite a social / engaging way of following the game. Anyway, Mike Adamson was reporting on this session; England are in trouble at 94 for 3, but - most importantly - Mike is not happy with British Gas. The entire session is basically taken over by participants giving BG a kicking, and it graphically illustrates how fast bad news spreads and how willing people are to dive in with their experiences, which are then in turn commented on and shared. These kind of exchanges happen in real life all the time of course; but it's not recorded ( and searchable ) as internet conversations are. And the audience to this little exchange is likely to run into 000s. The same treatment, of course, is also meted out to brands as employers, whatever the industry. ( One of the most visceral has to be the Professional Pilots Rumour Network which has a forum "...the beancounters hoped would never happen. Your news on pay, rostering, allowances, extras and negotiations where you work. Let others in the industry make educated choices on where the grass is less brown" )

So, a good reason for brands to take notice therefore. The question in this case is - have British Gas? In the 18th over Mike prints the following:

I'm going to open the floor up to Chris Armstrong all the same: "I'm going to incur the wrath of every other OBOer here, but I'm afraid I can only report good things about British Gas and my HomeCare 400 policy, they've come quickly (OK, within a day or two), phoned me half an hour before hand so I know they're coming, and fixed the problem and s*dded off." At least you can say this session of the OBO now contains a balanced arguement. For once.

So what's happening here? Has a real person bothered to write an email to defend British Gas??? Has Mr Adamson suddenly been gripped with a desire to be even handed?

I don't think so. I think what we're looking at here is BG moving fast to ring alarm bells at GU towers, and to organise the intervention of 'Chris Armstrong'. The use of light swearing suggests someone trying a bit too hard to be *real*, but the real giveaway has to be the precise use of policy name and exact capitalisation in 'HomeCare'. 

What do you think? And whose clients / brands have suffered at the 'hands of crowds' like this?

I've changed and you haven't........

Microsoft Digital Advertising viral....not specifically about recruitment but beautifully illustrates the shift that needs to keep happening. The recruitment process has always been a "dialogue". By embracing digital channels in the correct way " recruitment advertising" can and should be the same

Smoking

I am moving to Stoke - Smoking

Second Life

In all my years of working with it, the thing I like most about the Internet is its ability to make me continually rethink and change my mind.

Rather annoyingly my attendance at tonight's Chinwag Big Summer Party was curtailed by the need to go home and sort out a leak in my bathroom. While I was waiting for the plumber to arrive I started to write an article about Second Life for the blog. It was basically along the lines of how bored I was with the endless press releases about various companies launching in there, how few people were ever in there at one time, how difficult it is to find anything and the fact it gave me motion sickness the last time I spent any time in there!

However at that point an ex colleague who now works at Web 2.0 experts Cheeze IM'd me and invited me into their parallel Chinwag Big Summer Party.......in Second Life! Considering I was sitting at my PC waiting for a plumber I surreally had about 20 mins of fun dancing like a fool and drinking virtual cocktails. Some nice branding in there for Chinwag Jobs as well. I'm still far from convinced but there could be something in this Second Life thing yet!!

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