How the web could democratize recruiting
I’ve been thinking lately about how much opportunity there is for the web to change the way we manage our careers, find job opportunities, and recruit people. There’s a lot of money riding on this, but somehow online career services haven’t changed much since I worked in the Web 1.0 version of this industry 10 years ago.
There are a few things that were true 10 years ago, and they probably hold true today:
1 – Employers want access to the passive job seekers.
With unemployment approaching 10% in the US, there are a lot of good people out of work right now, and I know more than a few of them. But as an employer looking for the best talent, what about the other 90%? Do you want to hire the best person available, or the best person for the job, period? The best person for the job may be working for a competitor right now. These candidates are often referred to as “passive” job seekers, because…
2 – Most people are open to a better job opportunity, but once employed, they aren’t usually looking for it actively.
The timing isn’t always right to make a move. But if it is, then for the right opportunity and terms, most people could be lured away from their current jobs. As an employee, it’s always good to stay in touch with your professional network (and by extension, the job market) because circumstances can always change, particularly in this economy.
3 – The best candidates come through employee referrals.
Any corporate recruiter or hiring manager will tell you this. Internal referrals come pre-screened. The ramp-up is usually faster when bringing people back together who have worked together before. These hires are cheaper to find, compared to, say, a retained search. They’re lower risk hires. Every company I’ve ever worked for, large or small, has offered employees a cash reward for candidates hired off a referral. But these programs are often buried among other HR programs, and take too much effort for the average employee to engage with on a regular basis.
4 – People find their best job opportunities through their professional networks.
It’s true for me, and for most of the people I know, so I’m saying it here in bold print. With the exception of my first job out of college, I have always gone to a new opportunity through (or because of) a professional connection. Interestingly, I’ve received competing job offers from companies where I had no prior connection, but as it turned out, I always chose the connected situation. I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but a personal connection is certainly a powerful decision factor.
So if all of these things are true, then why do most career websites still look like the online version of classified ads? Granted, there are some excellent services these days, much better than what I was involved with in 1999. Job search engines like Indeed.com come to mind. Indeed.com delivers amazingly relevant search results, pulling from seemingly every source of jobs on the web. You can save these searches and set up alerts or an RSS feed, just like with Google.
But what about my social graph—professional, and personal? I’ve already told the social web what I do for a living, where I live, where I’ve worked, and nearly everyone I know. Why isn’t the social web paying me back by surfacing cool new job opportunities every day that I’m directly connected to through my network?
I think LinkedIn gets this, but their success here is severely limited by what appears to be a strategy of emphasizing the job listings they sell directly (a search for “sales” within 50 miles of midtown Manhattan yields 354 listings. Indeed.com has 41,000.)
LinkedIn partnered with job search engine SimplyHired several years ago, and it’s a nice feature on SimplyHired that job seekers can access relevant professional contacts as they dig through job search results, via the LinkedIn API. Indeed.com also offers social graph integration through their Facebook app, and LinkedIn’s API. But these use cases only apply to active job seekers.
Here’s an idea for finding passive job seekers through referrals:
Take the comprehensive, up to date index of a top job search engine (Indeed.com is #1 by the numbers and as a service, in my opinion), and filter it through my profile and social graph wherever I manage it.
In my case, LinkedIn for professional contacts, and Facebook for friends and family. LinkedIn is king, but other places could include Plaxo, Spoke, Xing, Hoover’s Connect (VisiblePath), Ecademy, Xobni, Gist, MySpace, Twitter, and just about any place where people have profiles, connections, and would accept career content.
Where is the leverage point? Companies are already willing to pay their employees for referrals. So why not leverage this incentive, along with the tools to turn all employees into recruiters, and drive good candidates into the recruitment funnel.
So imagine you’re happily employed at Company XYZ, and one day while you’re checking LinkedIn, a window pops up that says:
“Hi. Your company, Company XYZ, is looking for an Account Executive in New York with 5 years experience, according to Indeed.com. Sally is a direct contact in your professional network, and appears qualified based on her profile. Click ‘OK’ to forward this opportunity to her and check her interest in it. If she accepts your recommendation, it will go directly to your company HR department and a recruiter from your company will contact her. If she is hired, your company will pay you a $2,500 referral bonus, 90 days after her start date. Click here to refer.”
The UI certainly needs some work, and there would be some development required to achieve this technically, but there’s the idea. If the matches are high quality and of manageable volume, and the recipients can opt in, I’m guessing most people will click the referral button. The delivery of this service would also require a business partnership, and some selling by the partnership. But I think companies would readily embrace something like this.
Many companies are already willing to pay an employee a $2,500 bonus on a successful hire, so why wouldn’t they chip in an extra $500 for LinkedIn and Indeed to split. I bet they would be willing to pay much more. Perhaps the model is a pay-per-referral. Either model is based on value to the hiring company, as opposed to the absurdly outdated and low-value classified ad model of job boards like Monster.
As a user of a service like this: if it were one click, I’d send job opportunities to people in my network every day. By doing so, I could really help someone, it would strengthen my network, it could ultimately improve my connections within my own company, and not to mention, it’s easy money.
What do you think? Would you refer people in your network in this way? Would you want to see relevant job opportunities from others in your network, with an internal recommendation already attached? Please post comments. If you currently work in the online career industry, or are involved in recruiting, or see ways to improve how we manage our careers through the web, please share your perspective.
