Technology has transformed the way search consultants find and communicate with candidates during the recruitment process. When I commenced working in the staffing field we used the phone, email and the post to communicate. Search research was primarily done through boolean internet strings and telephone sourcing, how things change…. Now there are multiple platforms to gain information and access.

After reading The Social Technologies on John Sumser’s blog HR Examiner, I was inspired to write this post. John says we are in the “primitive beginnings of a new social media universe”. Although he argues “there is little, if any, real innovation in the fundamental processes and procedures of HR and Recruiting”. John presents the current raw social technologies in a list here.

The fundamental’s may be the same (conduct thorough research; maintain regular communication with candidates), however the modes available have increased.

I attended a meeting recently with Martin Warren, a thought leader in Australia, he mentioned that recruitment technology has changed more in the last five (5) years than it did in the previous 50 years. His view is that recruiting is going in the direction of social media. Databases are in a constant state of decay whereas people are readily updating their social media profiles, this information can be accessed in real-time (one way is by an opt-in application with Find.ly, another is through online research).

Candidates have become accustomed to having options and the managers of tomorrow will insist on technology tools, don’t become a dinosaur!

Curious about the tools I use? Here is a list of the applications that are part of my everyday work at present:

Word processing and spreadsheets – Microsoft office
Email – YahooMail, Windows Live Mail, Outlook (with Xobni add-on), Gmail, Roundcube.
Video and Messaging – Skype, Facebook
Networking  – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ , Online Groups
Task lists – Workflowy.com
Presentations – Slideshare
Blogging – WordPress
Outsourcing – Elance.com

One of my favourite sayings is “there is nothing more certain than change” (but not change for the sake of change). In my opinion, keeping up with and adopting useful smart technologies, within an organisations guidelines, is helpful to delivery of recruitment and search services.

Na-Nu Na-Nu (Mork and Mindy reference for those that watched the show)