My Dad just sent me a Fortune article called “I got my job through Second Life” all about real people and real companies finding jobs directly through Second Life. It reminded me that most every job I landed over my career was through my small network of friends and associates and how the same has been true for my business exceler8. Here’s an excerpt from the Fortune story.
“And just as the way we surf the web changed, the way that corporate America does business has changed in this middle space. Case in point: the most radical dotcom 2.0 recruitment wave is happening in virtual reality thanks to Second Life. Instead of posting a resume on Monster.com that will hopefully net a flesh-and-blood job interview, your avatar can be interviewed and hired all within Second Life, often for jobs possible only in virtual reality.”
“People who have been in SL since its inception might not be professional content developers, but they have become experts,” says Brandon Berger, senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive’s Digital Innovation unit. Hence, Ogilvy has hired a lot of people directly from Second Life to execute projects for the big name clients who have worked to be in Second Life.”
Imagine arriving for your Second Life interview in this little number…
I first heard about Second Life from Jim Stroud and went to check it out after our phone call. Back then (which wasn’t that long ago) SL hadn’t yet exploded on to the front page of every business magazine, blog page and tech site known to man. Despite my complete lack of interest in online role playing communities (which is strange given my dweebiness and love of online community) I recognize that I have to be involved in SL because it is a highly relevant community for my personal and business interests. I am a social media geek after all. While I find SL’s interface complex, limiting and ultimately boring, I’ll keep trying it for the promise that it holds in meeting real people. There ARE interesting people in this community. And just like other interesting communities, our exposure to the new people we meet in them expand our horizons on all fronts.
Hey Shannon, does this qualify for the category you coined “Job Search 2.0“?
Technorati Tags: Second Life, SL, Job search 2.0, social media marketing
EXCELER8ion is where Shannon and Julian Seery Gude write on Social Media, Interactive Marketing, Technology and Internet Business Topics. 
8 comments ↓
Hey Julian,
Interesting timing, just had a meeting here about SL. I’m intrigued by the possibilities for recruiting in SL in innovative ways, but not interested in being a part of SL myself, I have enough to keep me busy in my first life.
My humble opinion: So, SL is a fantasy world essentially where one can do things not possible in the real world right? i.e. flying. In looking at some of the sites that companies have put out there they are basically copies of what those companies have in the real world, Reuters has a news tower, each floor of which has different streaming news from their site, why wouldn’t I just go to the website to get that same content? American Apparel has a clothing store, again not much thrill or innovation there especially if I have to pay for a shirt in Linden dollars. Both in my opinion are uninteresting and not real innovative. More interesting would be to do something in second life that you can’t do in the real world. Why not use SL to test the response to something that would be too expensive to test in the real world? Like complicated campaigns or product ideas. Yeah, great I can go to all the IBM auditoriums across their 7 acres, but what can I really do there that’s interesting? Not much yet, so therefore I don’t see the value in it. Maybe the companies that are there will change and become more interesting in SL. I predict the real success in SL will come from companies using it to do things they can’t do in the real world, not just copying real world to virtual world.
Hi Josh, Thanks for your comment - very helpful.
I think you’ve got a great point about how some companies are using SL. You’re right, I don’t want to just see the same old shit in SL that I could get on a web site. There should be something unique and entertaining (and useful) here. I think that a lot of this initial corporate content is from the knee jerk “I’ve got to be there” reactions companies are having to SL *OR* similar to web 1.0 when we first started putting up web sites and we all discovered that simply putting our same stuff online failed to leverage the power of the web. And while we’re on the topic of useful…If I was looking for a cool job and I can reach a hiring manager via SL that wouldn’t normally answer my e-mail or phone calls then SL gets *way* more interesting - really fast.
and this comment from Tiffany over at Magic Pot of Jobs via my same post on RecruitingBloggers:
“I am the last person to disparage the networking opportunities from online communities that spring up around games or other forms of entertainment. I’ve been part of all kinds, and actually met my husband through the game that surrounded the release of Steven Spielberg’s A.I.. I’m part of a huge and high-profile World of Warcraft guild and have met lots of interesting and real-world successful people though it. Let no one doubt my online community networking cred. (Proud to be a nerd, yo.)
But I’m not in Second Life. I just don’t get the appeal. What’s fun about it? Don’t get me wrong- I’m THRILLED that it’s working out as a networking and connection tool for people, seriously. But I don’t understand why people play. It doesn’t seem fun.
Like you, Julian, I’ll probably take another stab at it just so I can see what the buzz is about. But I just don’t get it…”
of our clients’ jobs online, folks don’t even have to post the job themselves. I’ll be interesting to see how and where it catches on. And if there will be a centralized version of it. Does anyone else really wonder about this whole Second Life thing? Julian posted about how Second Life is starting to hire in the virtual world for real life positions. How can an online persona really reflect how someone is in person? I suppose that people said similar things when online job boards and databases hit the market. To
[...] Good observations Tiffany. A lot of the things that are mentioned in Second Life aren’t that interesting. Is propositioning someone you don’t know with an avatar of yourself somehow new and cool? Josh left me a good comment on our blog about how companies should be using SL to do things that can’t be done in the real world, instead of what a lot of companies are doing, which is trying to replicate the real world on SL. Seems really on point to me. You can see his whole comment on the original story here: http://www.exceler8ion.com/2007/01/25/second-life-starts-cranking-out-jobs/ [...]
Getting A Second Life…
The more I read about Second Life the more I want to spend some time on it. The thing is, I am having enough issues with the real one I have. Is creating a second one an escape like a…
While I am thinking out loud, I already have a couple of projects I have started and not yet finished that are closer to my heart and more likely to benefit me in some ways with the business life. Julian at EXCELER8ion has Second Life starts cranking out jobs. It is the recruiting potential that has me interested in this, not so much the make believe place where I can have x-ray vision. Any volunteers to help me get started with a Second Life identity? If so, I would be willing to give you some blog
[...] my cellphone. 2. I’m in the mood for love. (Simply because you’re near me.) 3. Whomever rolls in for an interview like this, deserves a job. 4. So, you don’t have to be crazy to do this? [...]
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