I'm still on a hiatus after a busy first-half which took me to 3 countries and more than 15 national/international conferences as well as two of the most unusual gigs Mark and I have ever attempted (one was a series of focus groups for another country interested in examining US career management practices and the other was an audit of the challenges facing the US Intelligence community in hiring first and second generation US citizens- but that is another story).

 

Even while we're preparing for the remainder of the year, I don't think I've ever seen an industry as ready for change- job seekers are as angry (with good cause) as I've ever seen them and employers aren't much happier with the status quo.

 

New models, some quietly developing for years and others, newly bursting on the scene or quietly developing a proof of concept are proliferating in record numbers. It also doesn't hurt the impetus for change that we are now in the midst of the demographic shifts everyone has touted for twenty years...the staffing pain is here right now and it is real.

 

Here?s a short list of what we see bubbling and boiling - 5 observations/predictions that Mark and I have commented on privately:

 

1.    Social networks are reinventing themselves and shifting from a few publicly accessible applications to hundreds of closed or semi-permeable systems built around an assumed affinity characterisitic (company, association, fraternity, etc.).

 

While the news continues to focus on Facebook and MySpace, services like Affinitycircles and Selectminds are two of more than a dozen social network applications gaining market share and traction amidst the hype. Organizations are seeking the ability to define affinity around their core mission.

 

 

I?m in the process of choosing an application for my college, Stevens Institute of Technology, before the year is out. There are 16,000 living alumni from this small engineering school. The college has always recognized that fostering collegiality among its alumni can lead to significant side benefits but this is a new level of engagement. The critical piece is overseeing the development of a non-advertising network model supported by donations, subscription or membership that cements the natural credibility of the organization as a trusted steward of personal information. The potential is enormous.

 

2.    Reality-based print and radio classifieds (as well as their online job board analogs) are in their last stages as pure plays that represent a company's openings...and nothing more.

 

 Employers will soon stop paying for the exposure of their job openings.

 

Employers will however pay for:

- Distributing job openings to networks that matter.

- Targeting (seo) potential candidates in a way that looks more like a rifle shot than a shotgun

- Matching capabilities that can translate the language of job seekers and employers to one another

- Screening leads to identify contacts. Screening contacts to identify prospects. Screening prospects to identify candidates. Screening candidates to identify applicants.

- Assessment and Testing of applicants to predict which will be more successful.

?with one caveat. The tools need to actually work and they need to engage the job seekers?not tick?em off.

 

Itzbig and Checkster are examples of successful industry pioneers who have learned and returned with new ideas on new platforms rather than continuously attempting to refine virtual analogs of broken processes. I likened Itzbig's job board and contact management mashup potential to the day Dick Fosbury decided that the Western Roll wasn?t as effective as a backwards leaning flop (see Wikipedia). Checkster on the other hand attempts to get the jobseeker to engage in self-assessment behaviors on specific jobs criteria with more hooks to make it effective than anything we've seen before.

 

On the job board side and of major note is Jobing which only recently had its coming out party despite years in the making. More evolved than any of its competitors will likely give them credit for, Jobing has quietly defined a true grass-roots, local strategy and implemented it successfully in more than a dozen locales at a time when most others are still trying to vie for attention by calling last years failed strategy "hyperlocal".

 

And speaking of hyper, the efforts of the three largest job boards this past year to partner with just about every willing newspaper in the US was inevitable. These partnerships are, for the most part, in name only. True synergy- combining print and online in a way that leverages the strength of each in a common goal is still elusive and years away- but there is hope where there once was only desperation. I?m convinced the likely outcome is that one will buy the other out and then amazingly their combined classified income will seek to match what newspapers alone made 15 years ago.

 

In 2007 Job seekers will pay for:

- Job Coaching...if the coach has the ability to help make the companies a job seeker targets truly transparent- i.e. guide connections to people (using social network apps). There are now 30,000 coaches- most are still clueless. There are no standards.

- Cleaned up and highly targeted leads. The Ladders has no competition.
Perhaps the seeds are being planted for job seekers to soon pay for

- The Truth about their chances to compete for a specific job. (Something employers will resist doing to the very last). We are finding a few more firms willing to play but delivering is still like searching for the unicorn...a difficult hunt without a horn, a horse and a lot of glue.

- Access to ALL the jobs existing on a company website in a given location in a given industry with a specific title that were posted in the last 24 hours. Still a mystery. Only the claim is commonly found today on most sites.

 

3.    Candidate care is increasingly becoming the central tool employers use to measure whether their process is effective.

There may not be consistent standards around whether the candidate is (as we maintain) anyone who throws their hat in the ring or, (as in most cases) restricted to the qualified candidates selected for final interviews. Still, this year, the interest in and the number of competitive companies who are actively developing, measuring and improving their candidate care efforts has exploded.

 

4.    Online Video is the medium of the moment.

An explosion of video related products in staffing is evident from almost any perspective you care to use. At the SHRM conference in Las Vegas where 750 vendors populated 1350 booths, I counted more than 2 dozen video resume, video screening, video interview, and video job description services. In addition to the publicity of YouTube, the ease of use, low cost and the ability to capture so much more information than text or even audio has contributed significantly to ramping up new approaches. I still think that searching the actual .wav or mp3 file itself to develop a paired comparison of qualified candidates against specific job criteria is a must and still a ways off. I?m especially a fan of developing virtual job shadowing capabilities- combining video and blogs of new employees during their initial weeks of work.

 

5.    International integration is the number one challenge for companies that view themselves as global. 

Conflicting international mores about selection are the true poster children for cognitive dissonance. Increasingly, global staffing leaders have made the effort to learn what local practices will truly benefit the  firm and what practices need to conform to a global model. Efforts to build global staffing pages have made significant headway in the last year.

 

This Fall?s conferences that Mark and I plan t attend (including ERE, HR-XML, KennedyInfo, OnRec and the HR Technology conference where I?ll be moderating a panel on new recruiter technologies) are all quite promising.