After our ONREC panel discussion about mobile recruiting, I had a conversation with the manager of a recruitment agency in the construction sector. They told me that they came to learn more about social and mobile as they were really behind the curve. They then progressed to tell me that they are using sms to communicate with their candidates and contractors on a daily basis. STOP!!!! Rewind!!!!
This agency is already more into mobile recruiting than many other agencies or corporate hirers that have an iPhone app or a mobile enabled career pages. This agency has a better understanding of what mobile is really about and treats mobile as something different than an extension to the internet as we know it. Most importantly, this agency is very familiar with the market they service and act accordingly.
Something similar happened to us at Jobsite with Social. 14% of our applications are delivered via applicant crowd-sourcing and peer-to-peer recommendations are being sent at the rate of 100k plus a month – and we started this before the whole social media frenzy began (and many still do not realise that this behaviour is ‘social’). But of course, we were told that job boards did not do social.
Now, the death of the CV as we know it is being proclaimed so let me be clear. The CV as we know it will change and that change is coming. But change is driven mainly by the readiness of the customer to embrace and then shape it around their needs of solving their problem and making them feel good. So far, only 4.2% of users that registered with Jobsite in September also uploaded their LinkedIn profile and 0.9% their twitter handle. We ask them explicitly to add those. It’s still a good number, but it also shows that adoption is still slower than we sometimes think. Maybe it’s just because we’re having an MP3 player moment in recruitment, but not quite ready to be an iPod just yet.
John Sumser, founder and editor-in-chief of the HRExaminer and general sage when it comes to staffing, HR and business, recently said to me: “It’s like 1994 all over again. Nobody really knows how best to use the new developments. Many expensive mistakes will be made. In these times, it is sometimes best to do nothing and just observe and learn. “Wise words, especially when inactivity has been chosen deliberately.
Sometimes we are just too obsessed with platforms, be it Facebook, be it iPhones and we forget that social and mobile are so much more and are often already integrated and performed in businesses and by individuals, with clearer objectives and performance measures than most of the suggestions that you hear from some external specialists.
True, they are not as pure, not as radical, not as all-encompassing as the purist require and it is good to be pushed and to be challenged. True, it is important to innovate to evolve, but it is just so easy to criticise, especially, but not only, when looking from the outside in.
Instead I encourage people and companies to find the things that they already do well. They are not only fantastic foundations to build on further and to encourage change, but they also show the sceptics within the businesses that we are not talking about alien, weird and time-wasting concepts but about solid businesses practises that the company and the people within the company already perform regularly and to great effect. Extend those and connect your new developments and initiatives to your core competencies, your business objectives and keep increasing the convenience and the experience for the customer.
If you want to learn more about the way mobile is used around the world to deliver real value, have a read of this blog by Tomi Ahonen and register with our FreshThinking event. There are only a limited number of spaces, but it will be incredibly insightful.
