Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should! (true, but, it also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t)

 

  I had a good couple of days with a small group of recruiting leaders in  Barcelona.  I think they enjoyed the workshop, though they didn’t agree with me on everything  eg my suggestions on career sites in my last post.

One of the resources I’d suggest this group, and others, look at if they want to know more is the slides and videos from the recent Recruiting Innovation Summit in the States (successor to the previous Social Recruiting summit I attended irl last year).

I love the presentation from Nilofer Merchant on curating performance and culture.  This is beautifully presented case for a more talent centric focus in organisations, and I also love Nilofer’s recent post on the same agenda: ‘People Are not Cogs’ (you might remember one of my early posts on this point too).

And I think Amy Wilson provides a great review of the evolution of some of the key tools in recruiting technology too.

But my favourite session is the one on location-based mobile recruiting from Craig Fisher.  I’ve also seen Craig present at TRU and HRevolution and the importance of the tools, and particularly the approaches, he describes, are starting to get through to me now, so for example I’m trying to put more focus into tools like Foursquare than I have to date.

I’m also trying out the SocialCV (pictured) which aggregates data from social profiles to provide a more social media oriented, and therefore real-time, search tool on individuals / potential employees.

At one point in his presentation Craig suggests that even if these tools seem creepy at the moment, their use is going to spread.  Plus there’s nothing dark going on here – all the information that these tools use, and Craig is suggesting that recruiters and sources should tap, is available in the public arena.

I’d agree.  I do sort of understand recruiters’ / HRs’ ethical concerns about using social data for background checking (I still love Enterprise Rent-A-Car Donna Miller’s quote that using social media for recruitment checking is like “going into somebody's house and searching through their bedroom drawers”) though I suspect even this is going to change.  But it is already forming a major role within selection, and clearly has a key role within sourcing too.

So you may think you shouldn’t do it (even if you can) but of course, this does mean other recruiters are going to be doing it, even if you’re not.  No prizes for guessing who’s going to find that active or particularly passive candidate the first.

 

Technorati Tags: Recruiting,Innovation,Summit,Nilofer Merchant,Amy Wilson,Craig Fisher,theSocialCV,sourcing

 

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