The Recruiting Animal

Recruiting in Virtual Reality

New game offers the possibility

Jerry O interviews The Robert about Second Life, an online virtual reality world that has drawn front page attention from BusinessWeek.

What is Second Life?

Second Life is an online virtual reality game in which you can use real money to conduct Monopoly-style business with other players.

At least 10 million people pay $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe 20 million more log in once in a while.

Real life companies are using it for demos of their products and Jerry predicts that it will replace Webex as a place for online meetings.

Recruiting and Virtual Reality

Recruitainment is the use of online games to test candidates for jobs. It sounds like a virtual world can offer huge possibilities in this arena.

And, for that matter, when is the Recruitosphere going to set up shop in a business fantasy land where an argument about metrics can end in quasi-physical violence?

Or, in which you can interview your LinkedIn candidates in your virtual offices or offsite at Virbucks.

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John Sumser's 96 Tears

I mean blogs

Visions of Johanna Rothman says

If you're a recruiter, an HR person, or a candidate, I strongly suggest you spend time checking out that list... and see which blogs make sense to you.

Jason Davis on Offers

Jay-Dee Jason Davis believes that no formal job offer should ever be turned down.

Recruiters should tell a candidate that a written offer will only be made after she has decided that she wants the job at the salary the employer is willing to pay.

That way, by the time the offer is made, there is nothing to think about.

But what about the verbal offer? How long should the candidate have to decide on that?

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How To Make An Offer

Give the candidate time to think.

Siam's buddy turned down a job offer then changed his mind.

The employer was still interested but didn't trust him. So, they brought in the CFO to size him up.

Buddy fed the wise man a good line and was hired on the spot. What was it?

Don't Bleepin Rush Me

The first offer was made on a Friday and the candidate was told that he had to answer by Monday at 10 AM.

Candidate: Sir, I didn't have enough time to think. I'm not someone who rushes to judgment when it comes to my career so I couldn't accept then offer while faced with that deadline.

CFO: Is this how you make all of your business decisions? We need someone who can act quickly.

Candidate: No, sir. I wouldn't be here if I couldn't make quick decisions. But this is a decision I've only had to make four times in my career. And I it's not one I take lightly.

That's right. It was the old I-didn't-have-enough-time trick. And the old I-wouldn't-be-here-if-I-wasn't ploy. And, would you believe, it worked.

Is This Case Unique?

Compare this to Hiring Revolution's strong warning to severley limit the amount of time a candidate has to decide.

It's a basic principle of the sales hustle to convince a prospect that all the angles have already been covered and that, now, he has nothing more to think about.

But, is that reasonable from the candidate's point of view? Does the candidate, generally, have enough time to make up his mind by the time an offer comes?

See also: Joe Shmoe is s!#^ out a luck

Important Update: Siam adds missing info. This candidate actually turned down the job after giving it serious thought.

He thought that his boss was going to be promoted and wanted to go with him. When the promotion fell through, he decided to revisit the previously rejected offer.

So, it looks like the story he fed the firm was a scam.

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Colin Kingsbury on Business Blogs

A Cynical Realist Speaks.

As blogs become more common, they become less like what made them interesting in the first place.

Political blogs are now mostly places where everyone posts finely-crafted talking points or howls at the moon with their pack.

Likewise, while I'm sure Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit.com) is quite an interesting fellow, I'm pretty sure there are hundreds if not thousands of other interesting fellows out there whose opinions and tastes we will never know about because Instapundit has sucked up 98% of the oxygen in the room.

He will likely not be replaced until he quits blogging. Like every other medium, blogging gives more power to incumbents than challengers, though the balance is far better than TV or newspapers, where challenging the established voices is nearly impossible.

There are still interesting political blogs where good conversations happen with a minimum of acrimony. They are vastly in the minority and are of miniscule impact compared to sites like Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs.

Blogs have not improved the quality of the political discussion, they have simply given more people megaphones to shout at each other with, which is what people want (as measured by what they do, rather than what they say) these days.

Similarly, I see no reason to believe that companies as a whole want to build and sell their products any differently than they did ten or fifty years ago.

Everyone still wants to buy raw inputs for a nickel, put a dollar of labor into it, and sell the finished product for fifty dollars, until somebody comes along and offers it for a buck ten.

Companies will use blogs to manipulate consumers just as they used every other medium. They just haven't all figured out how to do it yet. When they do, they will all blog, and almost none of them will be worth reading.

Update: Jerry O comments on Colin here.

Source. Colin's blog.

Dennis Smith's Revelation Game

The Players.

Dennis, Marketing Headhunter, Jay-Dee Jason Davis, Jimmy-James Durbin, Gretchen, Zoe, ...

Answer these questions.

Marketing Tool or Conversation

Gretchen on Jerry O on Blogs

In a very well-written posting, the Dog Lady agrees with Jeremiah Owyang that blogs are conversations not marketing tools.

To me, a conversation on a business blog is a marketing tool. But a free-wheeling one. As opposed to some obviously biased material composed by PR hacks.

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Obesity Epidemic Impact

Costs & Opportunities

Brian McCrindle, a pediatrics prof at U Toronto, says the parents of this generation will outlive their fat children who will suffer from numerous ailments before they die.

Apparently, 50 % of in-patients in U.S. hospitals already weigh over 300 pounds.

Economic Meaning

A shorter life span for workers wouldn't hurt a job market that favours the young. But widespread health problems could hurt productivity

Obesity in America.org graphs the economic impact.

And CBN.com sees a business opportunity in servicing needs generated by it.

Recruitainment Grows

Online Job Simulation Games, popular testing tool.

Online job simulation games are becoming a popular way to test candidates.

How It Works

L'Oréal has a game in which you become GM of a cosmetics firm. You have to make decisons about R&D, marketing, production costs, quality, the whole gamut of business issues.

As you make decisions the game shows you their impact on your share price.

The Reward

The players with the highest share price index (based on market share, growth, profitability and social responsibility) try to sell a panel of judges on investing in their business.

The prize for a great presentation is a promise that your résumé will move to the head of the pack.

Al Thiffault, HR Director at L'Oréal Canada, claims the game makes L'Oréal attractive to young technophiles.

Generation War at Erricsson

Strategic Age Adjustment Gets Rid of Oldsters (over 35)

Ericsson, the biggest mobile phone company will offer a voluntary buyout to 1,000 of its Swedish workers aged 35 to 50.

They will be replaced by 900 new people under age 30.

Lopsided Demographic Pipeline

Marita Hellberg, head of global HR said the problem is an unbalanced age structure.

There are too many people in one age group. When they retire there will be a personnel shortage unless there are more young people coming up to take their places.

A Good Party Needs A Gadfly

Also, companies that don't hire for a long time go stale. People who work together year after year exhaust their ability to stimulate eachother's thinking in new ways.

So, you don't want to hire a huge number of people in one age group and have them grow old together dominating the company in the same way the baby boomers have dominated the world.

It is also suspected that the company wants young workers in order to stay closer to the young people who are its primary market.

Source: Toronto Star Talkdigger, Slashdot, Digg, Delicious.

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