At work a few weeks ago, I was asked to answer questions for an upcoming InsideCRM story on the promise of Web 2.0 technologies for human resource departments looking to make internal changes. My focus is really on employer branding and the candidate/employee experience, so I have no idea if my input was ever used, but thought I would post my responses here on EXCELER8ion as well to see what our little community has to say. How would you answer these questions?
- How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?
- What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?
- What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?
- Do you have any other thoughts on these or related issues?
Here are my responses:
How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?
Web 2.0 is a term used to describe the tools that people are increasingly using to connect to one another and share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and more. The information that is shared can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. This ‘user-generated content’ and the web sites that contain it are often grouped into the term “Social Computing” or Web 2.0 web sites. Popular social mediums include social networking web sites that allow two-way communication, message boards, as well as videocasts and podcasts, blogs, wikis, social search and tagging, and rss are connecting people and distributing information in new and efficient ways.
What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?
Utilizing the web 2.0 principles of authenticity, collaboration and participation – solutions are being developed at a rapid pace to allow companies to easily incorporate real first hand stories into their career web site and within social networking groups such as those on facebook. As compared to more traditional offerings, web 2.0 is about communicating, not advertising. Creating, publishing and distributing authentic information about an organization creates opportunities and forums through which to directly connect with customers, employers, or talent. Utilizing these principles will introduce a level of transparency, authenticity, and credibility into how an employer is perceived. Building employee social networks or participating in social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and facebook, allow companies to communicate with customers and candidates where they already spend time online.
What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?
The authentic information that is generated and shared through social web sites can powerfully influence the overall perception of a company and give the audience, customers, as well as potential job candidates, a deeper and real understanding of an organization as an employer - greatly affect their consumer and employer brand. Concepts such as Social Search, tagging and ranking could be introduced into the career site. Social search results that are validated by the candidate community help to highlight the pages that they found most useful:
- Tagging: Candidates could tag content themselves based on words that they would use to describe the content. It will create “bottom up” categorization, which will be more relevant to the candidate community.
- Audience Rankings: Candidates rate the importance of content, pages, announcements or news, which will make it simpler for other candidate to uncover what is important and create a mechanism to provide feedback to the employer regarding where the career site user interests really lie.
HR specifically would benefit from utilizing evolving applications and tools that use concepts from web 2.0 such as social bookmarking and social networking to enable the sharing of information; collaboration; sharing information across different units and to help the important information bubble to the top - but within a secure framework.
New ‘web 2.0’ mash-up technologies are enabling the aggregation of data from multiple data sources, saving time for the HR staff by putting their most important information and common reporting tasks at their fingertips and adding insight to their most important work in order to work facilitate better decision making processes. Such data aggregation mash-up tools help bring disparate data point together (ATS Metrics; Job Board Metrics; Career Site metrics; Employee Research Data etc) and summarize existing data into useful new forms that promote analysis and informed action.
Do you have any other thoughts on these or related issues?
When making a career choice, candidates are searching for real “behind the scenes” information about a potential employer and they are often willing to spend the time to look for it. Web 2.0 tools and principles enable employers to make there career site that authentically communicates their employer brand and provides a window into the “employee-experience”. It has never been easier to literally “show” candidates the employee-experience by incorporating social features into the corporate career web site. Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep.
EXCELER8ion is where Julian and Shannon Seery Gude write on Social Media, Interactive Marketing, Technology and Internet Business Topics. 
8 comments ↓
Great interview Shannon. You’re a true pioneer and influencer for our industry. I hope that your insight and expertise helps to ease the fears companies have in implementing 2.0 tools.
Wow! Great and insightful words Shannon. I’m a true believer in the growing use of web technologies being used in the shifting recruitment paradigm. You said it all in a very common sense and easy to read way. Nice!
Charee - Thank you very much. I do have such a belief and passion for connecting people on a very real and authentic level, and sometimes that leads to road that is rough to travel. I appreciate your words more than you know.
Bill - I have been told throughout my career that I seem to be able to bring techy concepts down to a very common sense level, I am glad that what I have to say is viewed that way so thank you for your comment!
The ability to connect with people through new online tools is transforming our world and our expectations about how we make money and work. The effects on corporate America and the global economy will be profound.
Shannon, I concur with both Charee and Bill. You are a leader of this crusade…and you speak the language of the people. Though many companies have not yet awaken from their slumber…or they are very much awake and are afraid for anyone to see what’s behind the Oz curtain. Know that we continue to watch, learn from you, and emulate you. Keep making us proud!
Shannon,
This is a great post! It really simmarizes it all.
Additional comments below
On question 1 (defining web 2.0(, what I would add are web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax. These technologies are very user-centered and aim at providing a better user-experience.
There are also other technologies revolving around SOA and SaaS. While not strictly web 2.0, these are technologies that support web 2.0 applications. Can you really have a web 2.0 app if you don’t have an API that is available for other applications to use?
On question #2 (available solutions)
you summarize it all: web 2.0 is about communicating. Social networking sites are one great medium for supporting this communication. However I see 2 issues with your statement “where they already spend time online”:
1. As an individual I may not be that much interested to have my colleagues and my boss on my Facebook (or Orkut, Hi5, Xing, Viadeo, …) network.
I might be more interested to have a separated, dedicated “social” networking site that is related to my job
2. As an employer, I may want to have a greater control over what is exchanged by who than Facebook allows me.
I know we all say that employers should open up, but the reality remains that Intellectual Property is something that is to stay for quite some time still.
Whatever open the employer is, it might not be very fond to have proprietary information (e.g. client names, sales numbers, …) flowing in this social network that might include competitors.
It seems to me there are needs that are not filled by the current solutions. That might be where corporate social networks such as SelectMinds and AdaptiveIn come into play.
To secure employee engagements, comms channels internally must match the technology of external, customer-facing websites. Certainly, RSS feeds are useful because they allow employees to tailor the company news that is most relevant to them. General Motors, in the US, has had impressive results with employee portals and RSS news feeds.
Hi all
I just stumbled across this blog through a blog search. Great site, which raises some of the issues that I and my colleagues are struggling with right now.
I’m a senior consultant in the employer branding department of Danske Bank Group, a financial services company in Northern Europe with 25,000 employees. We have worked strategically with employer branding since 2003 and have come to a point where we want to rethink our multichannel approach to include web 2.0 in our external activities aimed at potential employees.
Our approach is involvement instead of communication. This means that web 2.0 is not simply a question of meeting potential applicants in their own media, but also of meeting them in new and different ways where we are asking actively for their influence and input.
This is based on the old, but true wisdom:
Tell me, and I’ll forget
Show me, and I’ll remember
Involve me, and I’ll understand
As a 1st step we have decided to take on the challenge of web 2.0 at external sites instead of our own career website. We have also decided to postpone use of major sites like facebook for a variety of reason, including risk analysis (content as well as resources). Instead, we are for now using a micro site (http: kampus.nu) aimed at students at Danish universities and business schools. The experiences during these first couple of weeks have been overwhelming. We have asked for input, and not only do our target groups comment and come up with great ideas - they have also begun using the site to interact with each other.
I am interested to receive any input and experiences on one of the most basic issues for us: should web 2.0 be undertaken at own or external sites?
Ole Bech-Petersen
Danske Bank Group
i need all resum job seekers for working in company
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