I mean it when I say that Twitter got me my job,” says Kevin Smith, currently working as a software developer at Gnoso.

About a year and a half ago, Smith was restless, and, as he wrote on the Web site Marketing Profs Daily Fix, “I was joining the ranks of people who read Dilbert for the empathy more than the humor…. I was stuck in Office Space hell, right down to the Hawaiian shirt day.”

Early in Smith’s job search process, he started using Twitter, a free social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send and receive text messages of 140 characters, known as tweets. Tweets are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users, known as followers, who have subscribed to that person. Smith first started using Twitter as an outlet, as he says, “to whine about my current job.” One early tweet read, “i’m officially the only one in the office choosing to not wear a hawaiian shirt. /sigh.”

Not surprisingly, this was not the route to success. But what Smith did next got him his dream job. Smith decided he wanted to work in the programming language Ruby and used Twitter as a way to find a Ruby community. Inspired by the community of peers he was surrounding himself with, he started tweeting about his favorite articles, notices on upcoming conferences, and other subjects that came to him. About the same time, he made a checklist of his criteria for his ideal employer: small, local, collaborative, open to new ways of doing things, focused on quality and design, made up of a community of Mac users, and generally a place where everyone was expected to be continually learning and improving his craft each day.

Shortly after making up the list of criteria, Smith realized that one of his new Twitter followers worked at Gnoso, a company that happened to meet most of his requirements. Smith went to the company’s Web site and was immediately drawn to its philosophy: “Imagination. Function. Beauty.”

Smith sent in his résumé and waited a few weeks but heard no word. So he sent a message to the follower he knew was from Gnoso, and after several more tweets and some LinkedIn messages, Smith was offered an interview and, eventually, a job as a software developer at Gnoso.

Peter Waldschmidt, the founder and CEO of Gnoso, said this about the process of hiring Smith: “We were able to get a good idea of Kevin’s skills and interests just by conversing over Twitter for several months. While it doesn’t remove the need for interviews, it makes the interview process more like hiring a friend than hiring a stranger.”¹

Now compare Smith’s job search experience with traditional networking. Often in networking, the communication is face-to-face or via e-mail. When there is a meeting, it lasts for a short amount of time, is usually over after an hour, is followed by thank-you notes and perhaps a onetime connection on LinkedIn or Facebook. That is typically the end of the process for many candidates.

But by using social recruiting in a job search, the process continues. After going off their separate ways, the two parties continue to interact through social networking tools and have an opportunity to continually make an impression. Some of the control in the recruiting relationship moves to the candidate, who can place him-or herself on people’s minds each day through the use of social networks. A recent survey conducted by Jobvite of 115 human resource recruitment professionals found that 80 percent were using social media or social networking for recruitment and that this practice was increasing among 39 percent of the sample. Additionally, among those using social networking for recruiting, LinkedIn is now used in seeking job candidates by 95 percent of recruiters, while Facebook is used by 59 percent, having gained 23 percent in a one-year period from 2008 to 2009. Twitter already ranks third, with 42 percent of respondents using the tool for recruitment purposes.²

RECRUITING REDEFINED: SOCIAL RECRUITING EMERGES

As we saw in chapter 1, shifting workforce demographics mean that Millennials will be the dominant segment of the workforce in 2020. Table 4-1 shows how companies are redefining the recruiting function to focus on social recruiting.

TABLE 4-1: RECRUITING REDEFINED

Challenges: Expanding globally

Traditional Recruiting: Recruiting fairs in high-growth countries

Social Recruiting: Sourcing of candidates on social networks

 

Challenges: Finding talent

Traditional Recruiting: Job boards, search firms

Social Recruiting: Facebook groups, crowdsource job specs

 

Challenges: Attracting talent

Traditional Recruiting: On-campus interviews

Social Recruiting: YouTube channels, employees’ video contests

 

Challenges: Building relationships

Traditional Recruiting: Several face-to-face interviews

Social Recruiting: Twitter groups, parents at work programs

 

Challenges: Communicating company values

Traditional Recruiting: Research on company Web site

Social Recruiting: Links to company YouTube channels, Facebook groups, or Twitter posts

 

Source: Future Workplace.

 

Rather than recruiting candidates on college campuses, companies are becoming virtual talent scouts and utilizing a range of social media tools, such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Second Life, and Twitter, to attract and engage tomorrow’s workers. Recruiting heads are going where Millennials live—online—to find the people they need, many of whom may not be actively looking for a new opportunity. These social networks have become very influential in sourcing talent, establishing relationships with candidates, and beginning a conversation with a wide range of influencers. After all, prospective job candidates like Smith are proactively seeking employers that hold the same values they do: authenticity, personalization, collaboration, innovation, and a desire for a social workplace.

Second, as companies go global, the recruiting function must lead the effort to source a global talent pool as efficiently and effectively as possible. This means creating a presence on Facebook or Second Life, so your company’s recruiting can reach the more than 350 million people who now have profiles on social networks.

Third, the Internet has made it possible for most knowledge workers to be located far away from their employers’ physical center. Designers, call center operators, sales people, even many in the human resource department, can work effectively wherever they wish. In this mobile world, texting and instant messaging are surpassing many other forms of communications in many counties, so recruiters must utilize these forms of communication as well.

Last, employers are recognizing how social and collaborative the world of work can be and are incorporating this into their job descriptions. For example, Best Buy recently advertised for a senior manager of emerging-media marketing, seeking job candidates with at least one year of active blogging experience, a graduate degree, and more than 250 followers on Twitter. When the job description caused a stir in the blogosphere, Best Buy’s chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, went one step further—he crowdsourced the job specifications by asking everyone who was interested in the job to help write the job description. The crowdsourced job description spoke to the traits of the social media revolution we are experiencing: humor, collaboration, and authenticity. For instance, the revamped job description included a requirement that the senior manager understand a list of commonly used social media acronyms as well as fully understand all the capabilities of a smart phone. Best Buy is leading the way in using the strengths of the social Web to source and attract top talent.

Job candidates, as well as employers, are savvier than ever before. They have access to unparalleled information about a prospective employer through the social Web and through their own social networks. As these candidates become more connected to one another and their prospective employers, we are seeing a shift from the Information Age to a Collaboration Age, in which workers value constant collaboration, communication, and connection to each other.

In the Collaboration Age, recruiting is both personal and social, so recruitment managers must be part of the social Web in order to source and attract the best talent. The importance of leveraging social recruiting is evident in a comprehensive survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), with recent college hires to the firm. The survey, entitled “Managing Tomorrow’s People: Millennials at Work” polled 4,271 college graduates from forty-four countries about their work expectations. One of the central points of the survey was the role technology played in the work lives of these Millennials, as 86 percent of the respondents reported that they belong to a social networking site and expect to be able to access external social networking sites as well as text messaging and instant messaging on the job. As one participant in this study put it, “Technology will be at the center of everything we do, in ways that may now be unimaginable.”³

The Millennials surveyed see social networking technologies as tools for increasing their productivity, rather than as tools reserved solely for interacting with friends. They believe that technology will be at the center of their lives over the course of their careers and expect employers to adopt the latest technologies and tools in the workplace so they can work faster and smarter.

As more businesses go global, so do the expectations of Millennials in the workplace. Nearly all Millennials—94 percent—expect to work across geographic boundaries. International experience is an essential requirement of their career, with more than 70 percent of Millennials wanting to learn a new language at work. This is understandably higher in countries where English is not the main language, but even in countries where English is the main language, there is an expectation that being proficient in another language will be required to be successful in the workplace of the future.⁴

Even if we assume that the Baby Boomer segment of the workforce will work until the age of 74 years or older, Millennials are the future workforce of 2020. As Millennials make up a greater percentage of professional service and information technology firms, it is these firms that are experimenting the most by using the latest tools to source Millennial talent.

Not surprisingly, the companies that perennially land on the BusinessWeek list of the Best Places to Launch a Career are pushing the envelope as they recognize the ways in which the world of work is changing. These companies are leveraging the latest social networking tools for attracting and recruiting new hires. As standout examples, Deloitte is starting to recruit in middle and high school, Ernst & Young is creating groups on Facebook and Twitter, while KPMG shares videos on its highly customized YouTube channel. The goal of all this outreach is to go where Millennials congregate and build an employer brand that is fresh, authentic, and personal—just what Millennials say they want.

PRECOLLEGE EMPLOYER OUTREACH PROGRAMS

Fearing a worker shortage in the accounting and engineering fields, some companies are seeking innovative ways to build their employer brands as early as the middle and high school years. A major study performed in 2007 by Weekly Reader Research on behalf of Deloitte LLC, entitled “Accounting and the Next Generation of Workers,” found that students were already considering career possibilities by the age of 12. According to Stan Smith, the national director of Next Generation Initiatives (NGI) at Deloitte Services, a division of Deloitte LLC, students pass through various stages in making a career choice. They contemplate career possibilities as early as 10 to 12 years old, consider various types of careers at 12 to 14 years old, and focus on a few possible careers at the ages of 15 to 16. According to Smith, “Our research shows that students are most open to the widest number of possible career choices between the ages of twelve and fourteen years old. After that age, they begin to narrow their career choices. So our focus in the precollege outreach is to develop a pipeline of students in middle school who are exposed to what we do as a business.”

Consider the following statistics: in 2007, there were 16.5 million students in grades nine through twelve in the United States. It is estimated that roughly 33 percent will graduate from high school, enroll in college, and graduate with a bachelor’s degree within four to six years. This means that about 5.4 million college graduates will potentially come into the job market over the period 2011–2014. When the number of high school students who indicate an interest in accounting or consulting is examined, the number narrows to just 2.3 percent.⁵ To avert a potential talent shortage in accounting, Deloitte LLP is creating partnerships with middle and high schools to assist students in their career exploration process. The goal: to turn them into prospective employees at as early an age as possible.

Though companies have sought to shape public school curricula before, previous efforts often focused on teaching students vocational trades or providing certificates in specialized forms of technology. Now companies are starting to tout their employer brand to students as young as 12 years old. These partnerships represent a new dimension in the business world’s growing influence in public education.

Smith points to what he sees as a perfect storm in the demographics impacting the accounting profession. Quoting a survey conducted by Robert Half, a leading employment firm, Smith estimates that there will be a 26 percent increase in available accounting jobs through 2015 due to two factors: a wave of Baby Boomer accountants set to retire by 2015 as they begin to reach 70 years of age and a decline in interest in accounting as students seek higher-paid employment in fields such as consulting and information technology. These forces have combined to make the field of accounting one that will see a talent shortage in the near future.

Smith’s solution is a three-pronged program, including (1) a prescriptive curricula for K–12 students entitled Life, Inc.: The Ultimate Career Guide for Young People, by Neale Godfrey; (2) an accompanying “virtual coaching” system that encourages students to look at their likes and dislikes though an interactive Web site found at www.nealeslifeinc.com; and finally (3) an online business simulation entitled Deloitte’s Virtual Team Challenge. This online challenge showcases what it is like to work in business. Taken together, this approach will expand the talent pool by encouraging students to take a look at business as a career and, with this as a base, to consider a career in accounting or consulting at as early an age as possible. Deloitte Foundation has funded the program to date, and future expansions in 2010 include going beyond high school students to Army-family teens on bases throughout the world as well as to veterans returning from war and their families.

The importance of this can be seen in a story Godfrey and Smith relate about the life of Dunia Fernandez. She is now age 35 and works as the director of Pathways to Success at the Maricopa Community College Foundation. Fernandez grew up in East Los Angeles, California, after immigrating to the United States from Mexico at an early age. She received a full scholarship to Brown, graduated in 1998, and then went on her journey to find a career she was passionate about. Along the way she tried law school and teaching, and she now works in an executive position where she manages eight staff members. As Fernandez looks back at her career journeys, she reflects, “As I entered college, accounting was not in my horizon. If I had known about what the job of an accountant really is—using quantitative, communications, analytical, and investigative skills—I would have chosen this as a career right out of college. But I had no exposure to accountants growing up, no role models that were accountants, and no one to turn to about what the job of an accountant was really all about. However, now, after my life has taken me towards accounting, I find I love it. I now manage a budget of more than two million dollars, and I have learned accounting as an executive. There is no question that if I were exposed to what the accounting profession offers at an early age, I would have chosen it.”

Building these early school partnerships is proving to be a valuable vehicle to avert a talent shortage of engineers as well as accountants. Lockheed Martin projects that by the year 2018 half of its science- and engineering-based workforce will be eligible to retire. Meanwhile, interest in engineering as a career is declining among U.S. students. In a 2007 survey of more than 270,000 college freshman conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA, only 7.5 percent of enrolled college graduates expressed an interest in engineering as a career—the lowest level since the 1970s.⁶

This is compounded by the fact that national security restrictions preclude Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors from outsourcing their jobs overseas.⁷ Today Lockheed Martin is facing a serious strategic question: how to develop the pipeline of technical workers in the areas of engineering, the natural sciences, and computer science, as these workers make up half of the current workforce. Jim Knotts, the director of corporate and community affairs at Lockheed Martin, shares his view of the importance of companies getting involved early in the career exploration process.

According to Knotts, “We decided as a company in 2007 to create partnerships with both high schools and their middle and elementary feeder schools in areas where the company has a corporate presence. So during the last eighteen months, we developed partnerships with high schools and middle schools in nine states across the U.S., including California, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia. Our goal is to have partnerships with at least 25 states by 2012, totaling 10,000 students that will be exposed to the Lockheed Martin Engineers in the Classroom curriculum program.”

The Engineers in the Classroom curriculum program was developed in partnership with the nonprofit firm Project Lead the Way and includes eight full-year engineering courses in digital electronics and civil engineering as well as five ten-week programs in beginning robotics for middle school students.

Essentially, the Engineers in the Classroom curriculum program has four components: (1) engineering coursework, (2) extra-credit engineering projects, (3) individualized projects under the supervision of Lockheed Martin engineers, and (4) Lockheed Martin Scholarships that are merit based and directed to students who have completed the engineering curriculum in high school.

The Lockheed Martin Engineers in the Classroom Curriculum program is particularly important in light of statistics from the National Academy of Sciences that estimate that the United States will graduate roughly 70,000 undergraduate engineers annually, while China graduates 600,000 and India 350,000 engineers, respectively. While the exact size and nature of the shortage of engineering talent have been disputed, there is agreement among economists and other experts that engineering as a profession provides the United States with the capacity to innovate, which is central to the growth and success of the country in the global marketplace.⁸

Deloitte’s Life, Inc.: The Ultimate Career Guide for Young People and Lockheed Martin’s Engineers in the Classroom curriculum are just two examples of how forward-looking companies are responding to potential talent shortages. These companies are committing financial and human resources to the K–12 school systems in an effort to position their respective professions as desirable at the earliest age possible. Expect to see increased levels of innovation and commitment like this as employers seek out innovative ways to source the 2020 workforce.

LEVERAGING THE POWER OF YOUTUBE FOR RECRUITING

As individuals progressively become more hyperconnected in their personal lives, spending increasing amounts of time on Facebook, sharing videos on YouTube, and tweeting on the microblogging site Twitter, companies are following in their steps. These companies want to build employer brands where their potential employees are spending their time.

To Brian Fugere, a partner in charge of Deloitte marketing and communications, the power of using social media was made clear on February 4, 2007, during Super Bowl XLI. This was not only the day the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl against the Chicago Bears, it was also the day Frito-Lay changed the game in TV advertising by allowing customers to create a thirty-second advertising spot.

For Super Bowl XLI, the cost of a thirty-second spot was $2.6 million. Instead of having its advertising agency create an ad, however, Frito-Lay decided to create a Web site called Doritos Crash the Super Bowl. On this site, consumers entered their homemade video commercials for a chance to win $10,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Super Bowl XLI in Miami, Florida. The marketing power of consumer-generated content quickly became evident when the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl site got more than 4 million views. Five finalists were ultimately selected from a pool of more than 1,000 entries.

As Fugere watched this revolution in consumer advertising, the idea for the Deloitte Film Festival was formed; this is a competition open to all Deloitte employees, who answer the question “What’s your Deloitte?” in a five-minute video. As Fugere explains, “We started out asking Deloitte employees to create a video about one of our core values, like diversity, integrity, and customer-focused value. But the reaction from Deloitte employees was very direct: ‘Give me a break—that is so boring and way too corporate.’”

Fugere agreed to change the terms of the contest—but not easily. As he admits, “Letting go is a very scary thing to do in business, and especially so for a marketing and communications professional. But I realized the concept of a film festival had to be fun, engaging, and authentic, and certainly not just an exercise to see how well Deloitte employees could memorize Deloitte’s core values.”

With this insight came the birth of “What’s Your Deloitte?,” which asks teams of Deloitte employees to create a video that represents what life is like inside Deloitte. And of course, there was an incentive: the first prize was an all-expenses-paid trip to the Sundance Film Festival.

More than two thousand U.S. Deloitte employees participated in the film festival. What’s more, 30,000 people viewed and voted on the intranet site over the life of the campaign. Fugere goes on to say, “We knew at that point we had won big-time. We hoped for fifty entries and were wildly pleased when we received over two thousand.” The result was an unconventional and noncorporate marketing campaign that is now a key component of Deloitte’s recruiting program. One video stands out among the more than 2,000 entries. It is called “The Green Dot” and has been viewed by more than 27,000 people on YouTube as well as being featured in Deloitte recruiting materials.⁹

In “The Green Dot,” a Deloitte employee is shown working as a client services “superhero,” complete with cape and magic powers. Throughout, a voice-over explains what it means to work at Deloitte in terms of the values, traditions, and daily work of the firm.

Though Deloitte was the first firm to create a buzz on YouTube with its “What’s Your Deloitte?” contest, KPMG touts itself as the first employer to create a customized YouTube channel that disseminates career information to potential new hires about joining the firm. According to Manny Fernandez, KPMG’s national managing partner of university relations and recruiting, considerable time and research was invested in a customized channel for YouTube. Fernandez says, “We did research with college students and found they used YouTube not just for watching videos but to do research on specific topics. In other words, YouTube was becoming like Google as a search engine for Millennials. So we approached YouTube with the idea of creating a college recruiting channel expressively for the video-driven Millennial generation.”

As soon as you log onto the company’s YouTube site, called KPMG Go, you hear the upbeat music of “Huddle Formation” by The Go! Team.¹⁰ Then you have a chance to search for any number of online videos on such topics as global new-hire training, giving back at KPMG, and becoming a senior associate. On KPMG Go you can view real KPMG employees sharing authentic stories of why they chose KPMG and what their experiences at the firm are like. These are not promotional videos created by a marketing firm but actual KPMG employees around the world. KPMG Go also links to an online version of the KPMG magazine, as well as to a careers section on KPMG’s Web site. On the careers section of the site, there is an interactive tool that matches college majors to different practices at the firm. Enter mathematics as your major, and the site informs you of possible employment areas in economics or financial risk management. Shawn Quill, the manager of campus recruiting at KPMG, says, “In our research with college students, we found that as more students play video games like World of Warcraft and have avatars on Second Life, they expect to be entertained while they are being informed.”

KPMG Go has slowly built a brand on YouTube. Now, by clicking on the KPMG Go playlist, you can watch more than sixty videos narrated by KPMG employees at various levels of the firm—from interns to associates, managers, and partners—all customized to target new hires in locations around the world. This is sleuth recruiting, and it reaches out to Millennials in a way they already find comfortable and in a forum where they are already spending their time.

CREATING A FACEBOOK GROUP TO RECRUIT NEW HIRES

Ernst & Young (E&Y), the number one company in BusinessWeek’s 2008 rankings of the Best Places to Launch a Career, was one of the first employers to launch a group on both Facebook and Twitter. You may think of this as innovative recruiting strategy, but according to Dan Black, the director of campus recruiting for the Americas at Ernst & Young, it is a necessity in this day and age.

E&Y hires more than 5,000 college students and recent graduates a year for internships and entry-level career opportunities in North America. How does an organization with such huge hiring needs find enough highly qualified candidates? In addition to its traditional on-campus recruiting efforts, employee referrals, and advertising on job boards and other media, E&Y was the first employer to launch a group on Facebook to be used exclusively for recruitment purposes.

So far, the response to the E&Y Careers Facebook group has been a great success, with more than 34,000 fans. “It’s very easy to join this,” says Black. “All you need is a profile, and you can search for Ernst & Young. Then once you are a member of the E&Y community on Facebook, you receive updates from the company, take part in polls, and, most important, interact directly with E&Y potential employees as well as E&Y recruiters.”

Competition for top graduates is intense, and by connecting graduates on the Facebook platform E&Y is able to establish a more personal employer brand and a lasting connection with the best candidates. The approach can pose risks as well as rewards, however, as companies that solicit public feedback can receive negative as well as positive comments. But E&Y’s Black believes that companies need to realize they are no longer in sole control of their employer brand—social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, along with Vault.com, the comprehensive job-search Web site, are already bringing increased transparency into the recruiting process.

Black and his team regularly monitor the E&Y Careers Facebook group and respond to queries such as how to get a job at the firm, what types of educational backgrounds E&Y is looking for, and how to get involved in corporate social responsibility programs sponsored by the firm. Black sees E&Y’s commitment to using the latest social media as crucial to finding and retaining the best talent. As Black puts it, “Millennials communicate in vastly different ways from you and me. Many prefer texting and sending IMs to e-mail and phone. The reality is that most incoming college freshmen live their lives online, so it makes sense for us to be there as well. By leveraging social networks, blogs, microblogs, and other new-media channels, we create opportunities for students to get to know the firm on a personal basis. What is really working for us is utilizing these new communication methods throughout the recruiting life cycle. For example, at our intern conference a couple years ago, participants received text messages about the upcoming agenda from several firm leaders.”

Finally, Black adds, “We have learned that brochures, print media campus events, and even our Web site are no longer sufficient by themselves to get our unique employer brand message to Millennials. Millennials want to find their own answers to questions. And they often do this by going to their own social networks. So we have a presence in both places—traditional media as well as in social media.”

When you read the posts in the E&Y Careers Facebook group about the International Intern Leadership Conference, you begin to see the power of going where the Millennials are. Eddie Ho, a graduate of Queen’s University, class of 2008, participated in an E&Y internship in Toronto, Canada, over the summer of 2007. At the end of the internship Ho was offered a position with the firm and has been working there full-time since August 2008.

According to Ho, the intern experience was probably the most important factor in his taking the job. As he recalls, “I’d say it played eighty percent in my decision.” As an intern, he went to the International Intern Leadership Conference and, as he says, “I really got to know the firm well. It’s not easy to understand a firm the size of E&Y if you are just in one office…but when everyone comes together from different parts of the world…it just becomes clear where the firm was going and what might lay ahead for me should I join the organization.”

Following the International Intern Leadership Conference, Ho wrote an extensive post on the E&Y Careers Facebook group recapping his impression of the International Intern Leadership Conference:

If you were interviewing at E&Y, who would you turn to first for information—Eddie Ho, the intern, or the official E&Y recruiting brochure? No wonder E&Y is striving to become more transparent in building its employer brand on social networks.

RECRUITING IN SECOND LIFE: DOES IT WORK?

Beyond leveraging Facebook and YouTube, companies are exploring how to use virtual worlds to attract and recruit a global employee base. Second Life, a virtual community with more than 16 million users, is home to a growing number of recruiting offices and virtual job fairs. These job fairs are beginning to provide job seekers with direct, although limited, access to recruiters at major companies. In most cases, a job applicant has to be invited in, but people looking for work can also go to a company’s virtual building in Second Life and drop off their résumés. You have to become a Second Life member first, but basic membership in the program—all that is needed—is free. In May 2008, TMP Worldwide, a recruiting firm, hosted its first virtual job fair, called Network in World, on Second Life and attracted 1,800 candidates.

As more global firms target tech-savvy job candidates, one way to assess a candidates’ technical skills is to see how they operate in Second Life. For example, employers can see how well candidates are able to create their Second Life account, develop a relatively professional-looking avatar, find their way to the recruiting office, and communicate with a recruiter via text chat or voice. This demonstrates a certain level of technical literacy.

Additionally, recruiting in Second Life allows an organization to interact with a geographically diverse pool of prospective employees. The firm comScore reports that 13 percent of Second Life residents are from Asia, 61 percent are from Europe and 19 percent are from North America.¹¹ Think about the economies of scale in reaching a global prospective population of job candidates without having to travel or incur the costs of renting meeting rooms, buying food, paying for airfare and hotel rooms for speakers, and providing the raffle prizes typically given out at a traditional event. Making the onetime investment in Second Life in-world assets (meeting spaces, presentation screens, and so on) is significantly less than conducting comparable events in person. When you consider that global companies often recruit in thirty to forty countries, creating one “virtual recruiting office” means that cost savings quickly add up.

Polly Pearson, the vice president of employment branding at EMC, shares her perspective about how the recruiting world has changed in the last few years: “I was entertained recently when a new college graduate told me how much time he put into his résumé and cover letter and how upset he was that the company he sent it to didn’t respond as he might expect. Did he really think that’s how it worked?”

Instead, Pearson sees more companies using virtual contact in areas such as Second Life to attract job candidates. In October 2007, EMC held its first career fair in Second Life, where job candidates interviewed for EMC positions in marketing, technology, and sales. The EMC career fair lasted three evenings over the course of two weeks.

To date, there have been 3,780 hits on EMC’s Second Life recruiting headquarters, as shown in figure 4-1. This has translated into 307 candidates applying to EMC, with 23 actual interviews conducted in Second Life. Of those interviewed in Second Life, 80 percent were asked for second-round face-to-face interviews. Two were hired by the company, and they are still employed after one year.¹²

In addition to building a pipeline and database of job candidates in Second Life, there are huge benefits to creating a recruiting presence there. One of the biggest and most obvious benefits is cost savings, as a onetime expense today can be used at literally any time. Pearson explains how these savings are calculated: “We estimate that an average career fair in a single city costs about $10,000, but along with setting up the career fair you have to attract candidates from that city who have the time and inclination to meet with you. With Second Life, once a company creates a presence in-world and procures the branding materials that go along with this, there is really no further cost.”

Figure 4-1: EMC on Second Life

Source: EMC.

Another benefit is the ability to reach a global audience in record time. While EMC advertised its Second Life career fair only in the United States, the candidates who arrived were from places as far flung as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan. Recruiting in Second Life is a relationship accelerator. Pearson notes, “The full immersion of Second Life makes the experience of getting to know the job candidate happen much faster than what could have been accomplished on the phone, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn. The recruiter gets to know candidates better, sees their initiative and interactive skills, and observes what they laugh at, how they interact, and what they are wearing for the interview. In Second Life it may still be ‘dress for success,’ but the focus is on ‘impress for success.’”

You may be wondering what it is really like to go through a job interview in Second Life. Does this mean you never meet your prospective employer face to face? Simone Brunozzi, a 30-year-old technical professional from Italy, shared his Second Life recruiting experience on his blog, “Thoughts of a Technology Evangelist.”

Brunozzi then recounts in his blog how he participated in a series of in-world, phone, and face-to-face interviews. He finally landed his “dream job” at Amazon.com six months after his first interview in Second Life. During the six-month interview process, Amazon and Brunozzi were learning about each other while using an arsenal of social media tools. So although recruiting in Second Life did not replace in-person interviewing, it did allow for Amazon to cost-effectively prequalify Brunozzi with regard to his technological, communication, and networking skills, while Brunozzi, as a prospective employee, had the opportunity to showcase his digital literacy skills to sell himself.

Are companies outside information technology using Second Life to attract and recruit new hires? The answer is yes. Canada’s Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is the first organization of its kind to use Second Life to recruit tech-savvy job candidates. The VPD started offering recruitment seminars inside Second Life in order to attract police candidates from around the globe. Kevin McQuiggin, who is in charge of the department’s tech crimes division, notes that almost every major crime these days has a technological aspect to it. As he explains, “Any new media that comes out, any new form of communication, crime is going to migrate there…. As we move into the future, we’re going to need people who understand technology—those who are conversant with it, are Web-savvy, that understand the impact of it, and understand how to use it.”¹⁴

Even given the prevalence of identity theft and various cyber-crimes that continue to challenge police departments, McQuiggin notes, “Many police departments are not prepared to use technology to solve crimes. Internet- and technology-related crimes, from fraud to harassment, are becoming increasingly common, and almost every major crime involves technology in some way, shape, or form. So recruiting in Second Life allows VPD to see a job candidate’s Web skills as well as their investigative and analytical skills—something that can be observed as they are interviewing in the virtual world.”

Recruiting in Second Life makes business sense as companies seek employees with digital literacy skills who are comfortable with new technologies and able to network on a global scale. What seems like a fad now will become mainstream in 2020 as organizations realize the business benefits of sourcing global talent in virtual worlds.

USING TWITTER TO RECRUIT EMPLOYEES

Twitter had a huge growth spurt in 2008–2009, during which it grew a staggering 1,382 percent.¹⁵ Part of the appeal of Twitter is what the technology writer Clive Thompson calls “ambient awareness.” By following quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines.

Additionally, according to a survey by the employment portal Job-Hunt, more than fifty companies are using Twitter to recruit new employees. The firms using Twitter for recruitment include the ones you would expect, such as Deloitte at @joindeloitteUSA and Ernst & Young at @Ernst_and_Young. But there are also traditional firms, such as Hershey Company at @Hershey Company, and even the U.S. Department of State at @DOScareers.

Interestingly, the story behind how and why the Department of State came to use Twitter is a good example of how organizations are beginning to migrate from Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter in their recruitment strategies. According to Rachel Friedland, a recruitment marketing consultant with the Department of State, Twitter has been used as part of the department’s recruitment efforts since 2006 as a way to build employer brand awareness, communicate specific details about career opportunities, and connect candidates directly with diplomats in residence located throughout the United States. Friedland says, “In our efforts to reach potential job candidates with the right diversity (inclusive of diverse languages, skills, cultural and educational backgrounds, geographic locations, perspectives, ethnicities, thoughts, etc.), experience, and knowledge, we need to communicate on their terms and on their turf. We believe having a presence on Twitter is of central importance to sourcing the next generation of diplomats (Foreign Service generalists and specialists) and civil service professionals. In recruitment and outreach, we continuously have to answer the questions ‘What does a Foreign Service Officer in the Economic career track do?’ or ‘What does a Foreign Service Security Engineering Officer work on?’ or ‘What’s a day in the life of a diplomat like?’ Using Twitter allows us to answer these questions in short bursts and in the process communicate the positive day-to-day realities of a range of careers at the U.S. Department of State.”

The Department of State also uses Twitter to announce networking events it hosts across the country to recruit new hires for the U.S. Foreign Service (most are quickly sold out). Using Twitter to post links to articles on topics such as what the job of a head of a U.S. embassy is all about helps inform potential recruits. Candidates can also follow Twitter links to interviews, including one with Luis Arreaga, the director of recruitment for the Department of State, explaining how employees at the Department of State work around the world. By using Twitter for recruitment, employers can readily view not only an individual’s tweets but all the messages from prospective job candidates. Open, transparent. and authentic, Twitter provides all of this in recruiting job candidates.

EXTENDING RECRUITING TO THE PARENTS OF EMPLOYEES

Though the recruiting process may start in middle school or high school, it is also extending externally to include the parents of Millennial employees. Imagine being a typical new hire, 23 years old, whose company is hosting the annual Take Your Child to Work Day. If you have no children, you may still want to share what you do at work with your family. If you work for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, you can invite your mom and dad to the Take Your Parents to Work Day. It has become part of the recruiting story for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

As related by Kate Cronin, the managing director of Ogilvy’s New York office, “Last year, we conducted an employee survey to find out what we could do to create an environment that is friendlier to all of our employees, including our Millennial employees, and can be used as a way to keep them excited about working for Ogilvy. We formed a panel of Millennial Ogilvy employees to brainstorm how to create a more engaging workplace, and Take Your Parents to Work Day came out as a suggestion. This team identified a need among Millennials to share their accomplishments with their family just as older employees do with their children.”

To her surprise, during the first Take Your Parents to Work Day, more than 30 employees brought their parents to the office to learn about the PR business and its client base, participate in a brainstorming session, and then conclude with a cocktail reception. “When I was their age,” says Cronin, “I certainly would not have wanted my parents anywhere near my office. But life has changed for this generation of Millennials and their ‘helicopter parents.’ These young professionals often speak to their parents daily, and many consider their parents their closest advisers. So we thought: why not?”

What Cronin did not realize was that she was tapping into a global phenomenon. Patricia Somers, an education professor at University of Texas, estimates that, according to a study of parental involvement at fifteen universities, 40 to 60 percent of parents from all socioeconomic groups are helicopter parents.¹⁶ So it is no surprise that most colleges now offer a freshman orientation workshop for both the new incoming students and their parents. Somers says this parental involvement starts long before Millennials reach college. It begins in secondary school, when parents use online programs to track their kids’ test scores, help them write their résumés, use their own networks to land them an internship, and even attend their college interviews. It does not stop there. Nearly 10 percent of employers report that parents help their children negotiate salary and benefits, and 15 percent hear complaints from parents if their kids do not earn enough money.¹⁷

Look at what is happening in India. Companies there have found that keeping parents involved in their employees’ lives leads to greater productivity and job satisfaction. A recent research study by Towers Watson & Company indicates that companies in India are increasingly involving parents as a way to engage the entire family unit. India has the highest percentage of highly engaged workers in Asia, with 78 percent of engaged employees as compared to 58 percent in China and 39 percent in Japan.¹⁸

Cronin and staff expanded the vision of Take Your Parents to Work Day to include an ongoing panel of the employees’ mothers to talk about how they are dealing with osteoporosis. Ogilvy PR has a client that produces one of the leading drugs in this area, and Cronin felt that as long as it was hosting a group of Boomers, it might as well engage them in a subject of interest to both parties. This panel of “Ogilvy Moms” has become an ongoing community, regularly e-mailing their suggestions to their children and requesting updates on what Ogilvy is doing in this area. What started as a tool for engaging Millennials has now developed into a competitive advantage to recruit new hires and keep their families engaged with what happens to them on the job.

As companies reach out and involve parents, they are finding myriad ways to build relationships with employees’ families. According to author and consultant Tammy Erickson, they can, among other things:

• Distribute information designed for parents to students at job fairs.
• Hold a career fair in your community designed specifically for parents.
• Create special FAQ material on the company Web site directed at parents’ likely questions and concerns—retirement, health benefits, 401(k) plans, educational opportunities.
• Hold parent orientation sessions like those held at universities for incoming freshmen.
• Provide incentives for parents to refer their children for employment at the firm.¹⁹

Other ways to build these relationships might include offering discounts on university tuition for the entire family of the new hire, hosting a Take Your Parents to Work Day, and creating online panels of parents.

EXTEND SOCIAL NETWORKS TO FORMER EMPLOYEES

It used to be that when employees left a company, managers would wish them well and both parties would simply move on. Today, even as the era of cradle-to-grave employment has disappeared, it has been replaced by a shortage of talent in key areas such as engineering, accounting, and computer science. A growing number of organizations are finding that yesterday’s employees can be a fruitful referral source for tomorrow’s new hires.

Companies such as J.P. Morgan, Accenture, McKinsey, Bain & Company, and Sapient, to name just a few, are creating the corporate equivalent of university alumni. In fact, many university alumni associations could learn from what the corporate alumni networks have done to nurture and build better long-term relationships. The benefits of these corporate social networks range from building a sense of community among alumni to recruiting former employees, referring potential new employees, and, of course, developing business.

While alumni networks were first implemented in professional service firms such as Accenture and McKinsey, now financial service institutions are joining this group. Take the experience of J.P. Morgan. Catherine Coluzzi, the firm’s executive director of the alumni network, has this to say about its development and evolution: “We started our initiative in the investment bank in April 2008 and by the end of October 2009 we had over 10,000 registered users. While we offer the typical benefits of any alumni network, such as accessing news about J.P. Morgan, attending alumni events, downloading current research, and viewing recent job postings, our newest offering is the most exciting—affinity groups. For example, starting in 2010 we will be holding regular meetings for former J.P. Morgan women who also serve on corporate boards. This niche group of alumni will be able to discuss and debate what it means to be a successful board member. This is just one example of how we are segmenting our alumni audience and offering them exceptional access to their peers.”

In a study entitled “HR Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0” conducted among 537 organizations by Aberdeen Group, 40 percent of organizations were using social networking to stay in touch with former employees and another 29 percent of organizations plan to implement some type of corporate alumni networking within the next twelve months.

These alumni social networks are moving from having one online presence to having well-established groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Second Life, where they announce face-to-face events and extend the community to the places where alumni spend their time.

The business impact of creating these alumni networks is substantial. In a study titled “Corporate Social Networking: Increasing the Density of Workplace Performance to Power Business Performance,” conducted with sixty global organizations, SelectMinds, Inc., found that rehires (also known as “boomerang” employees) who are active on a corporate social alumni network can become fully productive 49 percent faster than other experienced hires and that they remain with the organization twice as long as other experienced hires.²⁰ These boomerang employees have specialized expertise and inside knowledge of an organization that enables them to make a contribution immediately.²¹ If conducted in the right manner, these corporate alumni networks can be central to building a lifelong corporate affiliation and keeping high-performing individuals engaged with an employer’s brand.

As companies transition from their traditional recruiting functions to social ones, they are using as many methods as possible—in person, on the phone, online in external social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Second Life, and by creating alumni social networks. This new social recruiting is transforming the process into a series of interactive, engaging, and at times 3-D experiences. Forward-thinking companies are redefining recruiting to be social, personal, transparent, and collaborative as a way to attract the 2020 workforce.

SUMMARY

• Use social recruiting tactics. Recruiting heads at Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG, and EMC are all building their employer brand online, using the latest social media tools, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Second Life. Why? Because this is where candidates live, so recruiters need to build a presence in order to source top talent.
• Build a business case for leveraging social networks. Before going online with your employer brand, do what EMC did: build your business case and demonstrate economies of scale in sourcing a global talent pool. Remember, your business case comes before piloting the latest technologies and tools.
• Start recruiting as early as middle and high school. It’s never too early to start recruiting. Companies should consider following the example of Lockheed Martin and Deloitte by reaching out to potential candidates as early as ages 12 to 14, when research indicates they are beginning to choose career paths.
• Extend relationship building to parents of employees and even to former employees. Follow the lead of companies such as Ogilvy PR by involving the parents of Millennials in the recruiting and retention process, as they are valued advisers to the Millennial generation, and explore creating social networks of former employees as a way to tap referral sources.
• Factor in the changing recruitment landscape. Understand that the recruiting process is becoming increasingly social and transparent. Today’s candidates value their own social networks as much as, if not more than, the official recruiting messages of employers. Remember, today’s new hires are smart job candidates who do their own research. Be visible on various social networks, and make it easy for candidates to learn about your employer brand.