Google Wave: Should Recruiters Care?

Have you heard of Google Wave? Although the technology is still in its early development, it has been released in a limited fashion to those who have signed up. I was among the second wave of invites and have been using the technology for almost two weeks now.

There's lots of discussion whether it will catch on, but if you'd like a cogent explanation of what it is, I direct you to this article.

The question for me is how the tool might be applied to hiring situations. As the Daniel Tenner article points out, Wave is a significant improvement over email for a number of good reasons. Considering how much recruiters live out of their Inboxes, it's worth looking at for no other reason than that.

In addition, it might take the place of IM for chatting with candidates online, so it's got serious potential if I can keep all of those conversations confined to one tool and don't have to go hunting for logs.

I'm also intrigued about the capability of adding others to the conversation on the fly. Imagine having an initial conversation with a candidate and then inviting the hiring manager or future peers onto the Wave conversation. The continuation would be absolutely seamless. If the hiring manager wanted to catch up, all he or she would need to do is replay the wave.

Sharing work examples via pictures or attachments would be simple, making such documents available to all.

In addition, private messages to the hiring manager could be sent within the wave that could definitely help guide the conversation toward salient interview questions.

For the time being, I have to content myself with dreaming. Wave is still only available via limited invitation (sorry, I don't have any invites left!). Another downside that I hope will be addressed is that I don't get notifications when my waves have been updated. I just have to keep checking back.

The technology has tremendous potential and I look forward to seeing whether it receives broader adoption once it gets into full release.

ERE blogger Jeff Schwartzman gives some of his thoughts about using Wave for recruiting, too. I don't think some of the applications he mentions for recruiting are viable yet, but he does point out a few other possibilities.

Job searches need social media sherpas, too

This weekend's business section of the Chicago Tribune included an article about how senior executives are finding junior employees as effective guides to train them in the proper use of social media. For those who have not been in the job search for a decade or more, it's equally if not more critical that they find someone to lead them into productive use of social media applications.

The best quote from the piece was "It's very easy to set up a social networking account. What's harder is figuring out the appropriate way to use it, something that will really help our business." Especially for older workers who have not fully embraced the web as a social instrument (Forrester would call them Inactives or Spectators), having someone who can easily show a way to participate rather than just set up an account can make a big difference in the length of a job search.

(Creative Commons image by ikerender)

Broken Hiring

A friend from the Information Security sector shared this article with me this week. Of greatest concern to me was the painful statement about how the organization went dark on a candidate who was clearly a senior level IT executive up for a Chief Security Officer role:

In the weeks that passed, I sent the CIO two follow-up e-mails, I also e-mailed the HR director in California. All three were met with silence. I also left the CIO two voice mail messages -- one on his office line, the other on his personal cell phone -- and neither was returned. After three weeks, I received a phone call from the HR director telling me the CIO was unsure about the position. He was contemplating diminishing the role to a lesser grade and I was, of course, overqualified, and so were the other candidates.

Thank goodness for an HR director who at least had the courtesy for good follow up. Many companies do not even appear to have that level of common courtesy. Regardless of whether the position had been diminished to a lesser grade, the CIO should have taken it upon himself to get back to each of the previous candidates by email at least and explain that the role had changed. The fact that he and other IT leaders are being asked to do more with less is not surprising in the least. The fact that he left his "dirty work" for the HR director is just lazy. A few minutes to send of a personal email to each candidate for such a key position would make perfect strategic sense. Budgets may open up one day and one of those candidates may be the next CSO--better to keep the lines of communication open for the future than to create ill will.

My one hope is that executives who have found themselves out on the street as part of this downturn will take a moment and remember their own unpleasant experiences as applicants once they get back to a new position.

If you're wondering about a courteous period to wait for following up on interviews, here's a recent guide I found from Goodwill Industries:

Job Search for Social Media: Ideas From the Trenches

Last week, I gave a talk to about 140 students at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, College of Engineering & Applied Science. I was asked to speak to the professional development seminar about some practical ways to use social media tools for the job search. Since I have had a few requests for my thoughts on the topic from people who saw my status update on LinkedIn, I decided to create this blog post.

Manage and Optimize Your Job Search Using Social Technologies

1. You should have a LinkedIn profile. Particularly of you're a technology professional, you should have one. It should be filled out fully because that's how hiring professionals find you--by searching for key words related to your experience. You should be connected to your friends. You should have endorsements and if you've got a blog its feed should be connected here (WordPress is particularly easy).

2. You should have a Slideshare account. Not only should Slideshare be used to upload white papers or presentations you've given, but also it should hold a copy of your resume in PDF or Microsoft Word format. Make it easy for someone to obtain your resume. If you're worried about getting spam in the form of phone calls or emails, you have remedies. Namely, a Google Voice number will allow you to screen callers and an email address dedicated to your job search can help defend your "good" address from would-be spammers.

3. Obtain a Google Voice account. It's free. Google Voice allows you to obtain a phone number in the area code of your choice. When someone calls that number, it rings all of the other numbers you provide for it. Yes, that's right. It rings your work phone, your home phone, and your mobile if you wish. It will even ring a temporary number if you're sitting at a desk that's not yours for the day. Even better, it sends you an email transcript of all voice messsages and can SMS messages to your phone. That part's still a little rough, but you can usually get a pretty good idea of what the call was about.

4. Expect that professional stalkers--recruiters if you prefer the term--will find you in unexpected places. Namely, they will look start looking for you more and more often on Facebook. Although this may cause you considerable discomfort, especially if you keep personal photos and have a crazy uncle who keeps writing embarrassing things on your wall, it's going to happen. While the majority of recruiters still do the majority of their talent hunting on LinkedIn, the number differential all but guarantees that we will see a migration of recruiters to Facebook. There is evidence that's already happening.

5. Save yourself the headache of browsing by setting up agents on Indeed and SimplyHired. These job aggregators scrape all of the job boards as well as niched professional sites and corporate career pages for job listings. These listings can be broken down geographically, by keyword, job title, and company name and delivered to your Inbox daily or weekly.

What tips do you have for just seekers to make the most of social technologies?