Online Talent Communities Replace Job Boards
Zappos opened a new era in recruiting late last month when it announced it would no longer post job openings on its own website or external job boards and instead rely on an online talent community to find employees.
A person interested in working for the online retailer must come to Zappos’ new careers portal, sign up to become a Zappos Insider and upload a resume or LinkedIn profile. That will open a two-way communication between the person and the company that one day could lead to a job.
Zappos describes Insider as a “special membership for people who want to stay in touch with us, learn more about our fun, zany culture, know what’s happening at our company, get special insider perspectives and receive team-specific updates about the group that you’d like to join.”
Job prospects can stand out by asking Zappos employees in their social or professional network for a referral, submitting video resumes or following Zappos recruiters on Twitter.
The program is designed to eliminate the huge waste of time that online job postings have become and find a better way of reaching those passive candidates, who are not actively seeking a job but would take one if the right offer came along.
The Insider portal is powered by Ascendify of San Francisco, which makes cloud software that helps companies “leverage social technologies” to acquire talent, says Matt Hendrickson, Ascendify’s chief executive officer. The 2-year-old company has almost 20 other clients including GE Software, Teach for America, Huddle and Deloitte.
The program has been described as a social network, but Zappos says that’s a misnomer. “The goal is not for insiders to get to know each other, it’s for us to get to know them and them to get to know us,” says Mike Bailen, Zappos senior human resources manager.
Although the industry term for what Ascendify provides is a talent community, Hendrickson has also described it as a “private social network” that employees can place on their career site and control.
It works like this: People join the community with their LinkedIn or Facebook profile or by uploading a resume. Ascendify creates an online persona, similar to a profile page.
People who join can see recruiters’ profile pages and send them short, 300-character messages, which recruiters can respond to quickly. They also can view the profiles of hand-picked employees.
Candidates can see if they are connected to current employees through Facebook or LinkedIn and if so, ask for a referral. Employees can see who in their LinkedIn or Facebook network has joined the talent community and post comments about them that are visible only to recruiters.
No more job boards
Although it’s possible, none of Ascendify’s clients post their entire employee directories in the talent community, nor do they let candidates communicate with each other.
Zappos is the only Ascendify client that has turned off job postings entirely, although it will use highly targeted marketing for hard-to-fill positions.
Others could follow Zappos’ lead.
“It’s an acknowledgment that in today’s market, the job board is just not useful anymore,” says Kris Stadelman, director of the Nova Workforce Investment Board in Sunnyvale. “It’s generally speaking, a black hole” that creates a “negative relationship” with companies.
Job postings were created mainly to help companies comply with employment laws. Applicants who happen to see an opening during the few weeks it is posted might spend 45 minutes filling out an online application, which goes into a computerized tracking system. If the applicant gets any response, it will likely be a computerized rejection.
Zappos has said it received applications from more than 31,000 people last year and hired just 1.5 percent of them. That means it had to reject 30,000 people – including current or potential customers.
Reducing turnover
With a talent community, people – even the happily employed – can sign up in a few minutes. If, at some point, a job opens up that might be a fit, recruiters can contact them, sparing the need to reject thousands of unqualified people.
Amber Grewal, head of talent acquisition of GE Software in San Ramon, says Ascendify helps her compete for sought-after talent such as mobile developers and user-interface designers, because it’s new and high-tech and lets her develop a relationship with prospects. It also works on mobile devices. “If I go to a meet-up, I can have my phone or iPad” and quickly sign up people for the company’s talent community.
Tom Spengler, chief executive officer of Granicus of San Francisco, a cloud platform for government, says his firm has cut way back on the use of recruiters (saving about $20,000 per position) since it started using Ascendify about a year ago. It has also reduced job postings on sites such as Monster.com and Dice, but still uses Craigslist for entry-level jobs.
It has also reduced turnover. “We are doing a great job of finding people that fit into the culture,” he says.
Will Granicus ever eliminate job postings? “I don’t know,” Spengler says. “It would be great if we could. It’s expensive.”
Source: Online Talent Communities Replace Job Boards by John Kathleen Pender
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