How Twitter and Crowdsourcing Are Reshaping Recruiting

How Twitter and Crowdsourcing Are Reshaping Recruiting

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/09/how_twitter_and_crowdsourcing.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-TOPICEMAIL-_-OCT_2009-_-TECHNOLOGY1

1:12 PM Friday September 25, 2009
by Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd

Tags:Hiring, Internet, Social media

Why don't more companies use Twitter to hire the right job candidates?

Most companies still think of Twitter as a marketing and communication tool. As individuals, we know that Twitter can function as a kind of super-email: for instance, last week, Karie was in Denali National Park, and was staying up late to watch for the Northern Lights. She sent a tweet out at 2 am Alaska time, and by 2:10 had four responses, including a link to a YouTube video to watch as a substitute if the lights weren't visible.

We also know that there can be an opportunity cost in nottweeting: last month, Jeanne was at the Legg Mason tennis finals watching Andy Roddick lose in 122-degree heat. After the four-hour match, she wrote a tweet about it — and before she'd even left the stadium, several followers sent replies asking why she hadn't met up with them to watch the match together.

So think of the untapped potential opportunities for companies looking to source and attract talent. As social media is used inside the company to increase collaboration, communication and innovation, it's become important for recruiters to locate prospective employees who are also users of social media. Using Twitter can level the playing field so that smaller firms can find those people as effectively as the Fortune 500 do. And those companies who have turned toward Twitter have found it an efficient way to identify passive job candidates who might not be scanning job boards.

Some companies are going beyond posting tweets about new positions to using the wisdom of the crowd to actually write a new job description. Consider what happened at Best Buy when they posted a job description for a position as Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing. The qualifications included one year of active blogging experience, a preferred graduate degree, and 250+ followers on Twitter. Yes that's right: the number of followers you have on Twitter is now finding its way into a job description. This led to internal commentary, and spawned a number of blog posts and dozens of re-tweets and conversations.

What happened next is an indication of the future direction of recruiting: in listening to these conversations, Best Buy decided that the community had other ideas — and good ones — for how this job description should look, and what the qualifications should be. As a result, the job description was crowdsourced, and anyone with an interest was invited to post qualifications to the job role on Idea X, a forum for Best Buy customers and employees. The final job description spoke to the traits of the social media revolution we are all experiencing: humor, collaboration and authenticity. For instance, the revamped job description included a requirement that the Senior Manager "understand the following acronyms: RSS, SEM, SEO, PPC, CPM, CPC, LOL, IMHO, WTF, API, B2C, B2B, CTR, IM, PV, RON, WWW, TTYL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, WYSIWYG and, most importantly, RTFM." It's unlikely that Best Buy would have come up with that on their own.

Welcome to the new world of recruiting, where the nascent list of organizations using Twitter and crowdsourcing to locate the best candidates includes a wide range of companies and industries: Accenture, Burger King, Hershey, Intel, Mattel, Microsoft, UPS, even the US Department of State. But is your organization on the list?

Has your company used Twitter to find talent or crowdsource job descriptions? We hope you'll share your experiences with us here.

Jeanne C Meister is an internationally recognized workplace-learning consultant dedicated to delivering competitive advantage, innovation and improved business results for organizations. Jeanne is the host of the blog, www.newlearningplaybook.com. Karie Willyerd is the Chief Learning Officer of Sun Microsystems and has been the Chief Talent Officer or head of executive development for three other Fortune 500 firms. At Sun Microsystems, she has led the organization to win over 20 awards for innovation excellence in learning. Jeanne and Karie are the authors of the book The 2020 Workplace (forthcoming in Spring 2010).

Content Consumers Want

Content Strategies Will Differ By Target Audience

This is the first document in the "Branded Content" series.

by Lisa Bradner

with Jaap Favier, Evadne Cokeh

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As the economy continues to slide into recession, advertisers are curbing spend in all channels, including online: Publishers like AOL, Yahoo!, and the New York Times Company reported a decrease in online advertising revenues in Q4 2008, although year-on-year growth still appears strong. Whether softness in online advertising is a temporary or longer-term trend is up for debate, but even the specter of slowing growth in online advertising forces publishers to look again at paid content models. Forrester forecasts that US online consumers will spend $7.6 billion on online content in 2009, with two categories — video games and music — accounting for more than half of that spend. In most categories, only a small percentage of consumers are doing the spending. To reach consumers who are willing to pay for content, publishers need to understand the distinctions in demographics and attitudes of buyers in each category. Consumers who pay for online video, for example, fit a typical young, male, early-adopter profile, while those who pay to access services like Angie's List and Zagats.com are slightly older and less enthusiastic about technology.

see more details here http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,53810,00.html

Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM SaaS Solutions

by William Band, Pete Marston

with Liz Herbert, Sharyn Leaver, Mary Ann Rogan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CRM software-as-a service (SaaS) solutions have moved beyond their previous status as a specialized deployment option and into the mainstream. According to Forrester's Enterprise and SMB Software Survey, North America and Europe, Q3 2007, more than a third of IT software decision-makers in North America and Europe tell us that they are already using, or are interested in using or piloting, SaaS applications to support their customer-facing business processes. But CRM professionals worry about the true total cost of ownership (TCO) for SaaS, feel challenged by integration and customization issues, have qualms about data security, and find SaaS pricing models and contracts confusing. To understand the best practices for overcoming these challenges, Forrester interviewed CRM SaaS early-adopter companies and talked with leading CRM SaaS vendors and professional services organizations. Smart companies use five best practice strategies to succeed with CRM SaaS solutions: build a solid business case; negotiate a sound contract; use a proven implementation approach; establish strong data security procedures; and create robust governance and support structures

NOTES & RESOURCES

Forrester interviewed 16 individuals from user, vendor, and professional services organizations. User companies interviewed included: Citizens Financial Group, Equifax, High 5 Sportswear, IAC Search & Media, Polycom, Seagate Technology, Shaklee Corporation, and Symantec.

social networking audience is growing rapidly

The social networking audience is growing rapidly. In 2008, 79.5 million people, or 41% of the US Internet user population, visited social network sites at least once a month, an 11% increase from 2007. By 2013, an estimated 52% of Internet users will be regular social network visitors. The steady stream of updates and news will become a weekly or even daily habit for many people. That stickiness is good news for social networks, which are still struggling to develop workable ad models.

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For additional information on the above chart, see Endnote 101298 | 101297 | 101290 | 101296| 101295 | 101293 | 101294 in the Endnotes section.

helpful to group assignments - Bubbl.us

SaaS is fascinating. The interests in SMEs sector is growing but the question is how an independent vendor captures this trend and is able to capitalize it. I have not found the way out either but I know it's a way the world goes, the direction that cant be ignore in the following decade.

I want to exposure myself a little bit more in this field, not only in business use but also in personal use. And I believe the trend will not be waived in personal computing soon while the handy tiny computing device - such as ePC, iPhone, and other smart phone device are sneaking to people's pocket and backpacks.

Here is a interesting application that i found in UBC IT division.

It's an introduction for people who are frequently needing a corporation platform.



Bubbl.us
Another website that can be helpful to group assignments is Bubbl.us. This free web application allows you to brainstorm and create mind maps online. With each click of the “bubble,” a new mind map is made. Each new “bubble” can be expanded or customized to your liking. You can choose to create your own mind map from a wide range of colours, and it can be saved in various sites, using embedded code in blogs or websites. And, since this all happens online, you can easily share your mind maps and collaborate with others in a simple, succinct manner.
http://bubbl.us/

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In-text advertising

I installed a online advertising software called infolinks. It's a text adverstising service, sharing the similar concept with Google AD words but it is advertising by in-text keyword based on your content. I bet you have seen some content is marked by a bouble line beneath and embeded a  link to some certain webpages. Ya, that 's it.

I will post another review after using this new advertising "toy".