As a way to keep up with best practices and what’s new/next in the HR & Recruiting worlds, I read a ton of articles, blogs and tweets to try to keep up. And as a student of the game, I enjoy much of the content. I’m informed by a majority of it, challenged by some of it and inspired by a bit of it.
Today, I wanted to point you to a couple of articles that hit on all three of those categories for me. Some really awesome stuff written and posted on the recruiter resource and community – ERE.net – from Matthew Jeffery – Head of EMEA Talent Acquisition & Global Talent Brand at Autodesk.
The first article written a couple of months ago – “A Vision for the Future of Recruitment: Recruitment 3.0” – should be required reading for all recruiters and includes much of the content and ideas that Matthew shared in his fantastic opening keynote at the 2011 Spring ERE Expo. (Check out the video of Matthew’s presentation – which is well worth watching and thanks ERE for making it available!)
Today on ERE.net is a follow-up article from Matthew Jeffery titled “Recruitment 4.0: Crowdsourcing, Gamification, Recruitment as a Profit Center… and the Death of Recruitment Agencies!”.
In this post, Matthew nicely sums up the evolution of recruiting and shares his predictions for the future of Recruiting (4.0). Here’s an excerpt:
Recruitment 1.0 encompasses traditional recruiting over a huge timeline, including good old-fashioned fax machines, print advertising, (post, spray ,and pray), and Rolodexes moving into traditional ATSs. Recruiters more focused on processes than end results. The basic any-bum-on-any-seat philosophy.
Recruitment 2.0 saw the move onto online and using technology for recruitment purposes, including the advent of online job boards & online CV searches. While the technology moved forward, the traditional methodology of 1.0 was prevalent, including online post, spray, and pray candidate attraction (aka the recruitment lottery of let’s hope the right-ish person looks at the online advertisement, at the right time and feels willing to go to the effort to apply).
Both Recruitment 1.0 and 2.0 were/are fundamentally focused on the active job seekers, (applying to vacancies, on agency books, and those watching job boards like a possessed predator).
Recruitment 3.0 is a huge leap as it moves recruitment out of its comfort zone. The beating heart of 3.0 is the non-active/passive individual and a focus on “best talent” and building predictable talent pipelines. In addition, the philosophy of “everyone is a potential candidate so engage them” is central. 3.0 takes us into building engaged, two-way, free-conversation based, transparent communities. This is anchored by things like employment branding, marketing, and PR. 3.0 is not only concerned with building communities but mapping key competitors and seducing cream-of-the-crop talent with your brand and in-house opportunities.
So what exactly is Recruitment 4.0? Grab a cup of coffee (or a Diet Coke) and a snack and take a few minutes to read the rest of the article. It’s meaty stuff to chew on.
Regardless of the size of your company, to stay ahead of the game and compete for talent in the “new normal”, you’ve got to be thinking about how to evolve your recruiting practices. The information contained in these two articles by Matthew Jeffery would be great to utilize as a discussion starter with your recruiting team or CEO and as you’re thinking about goals, objectives and making plans for 2012 and beyond.
What do you think about some of the ideas presented? Are we really ready for Recruiting to become a profit center and to include games in our recruiting processes? Will job boards meet their (constantly predicted) demise? Will recruiting agencies no longer be necessary?
I’d love to know what you think.
