It’s too bad that The Box exists. “What box?” you ask. The one that organizations pat themselves on the back for thinking outside of. Now, that’s not to say that outside-the-box thinking is bad; quite the opposite. It’s just an unfortunate truism of business that The Box is where lots of businesses find a comfort zone for what they do, and then they “think outside” of it once every blue moon.
) l- D$ g2 k$ u8 {) R' M5 c* q6 lSourcers, recruiters and HR departments often find a nice comfy spot in The Box and set up camp, and candidates regularly follow suit. As we touched on a
couple days ago, candidates often generate resumes, maintain their networks and approach interviews in the old familiar ways. Maybe you’d respond, “Yeah, but I place candidates” or “Yeah, but I found a job.” Granted, but what about the ones you missed because you couldn’t get out of The Box?
4 z G0 A' p, @; c% KThink, for instance, about the video resumes we mentioned in
a previous post. Shocking? Maybe. A little ridiculous? Sure. Getting
TONS of exposure for the candidate, his MySpace page, the blogs that post the video? You bet. It may seem like it lacks focus at this point, but that kind of novel approach coupled with an
online network that can create fast, accurate matching has the potential to be the
future of job discovery.
/ a) `+ y' h/ Q5 mSimilarly, some organizations are trying novel approaches to attract top talent. A couple
recruiting videos that recently made the rounds through the blogosphere show that effort. One, by Ernst & Young is a creative attempt, if nothing else. The other, by online video start-up Vimeo is zany and engaging and has the potential to attract some high-quality creative talent.
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Of course “outside-the-box” doesn’t necessarily mean “indulgent.” It doesn’t necesarily mean taking candidates “snow rafting” or offering free tickets to “baseball games and wine tastings” (from a
Lucas Group Article). Then again…
" {9 ~: W& Y* W; @; n5 Y0 Z8 EHowever, it may mean establishing contact creatively, especially if you want to lure
Quiet Working Professionals. That’s what videogame developers Red 5 did when they tried to recruit world-class designers by sending a recruitment package nested like Russian dolls with an iPod in the center. On the iPod was a message from Red 5 President and CEO Mark Kern about why the cadidate should come work at Red 5. They hired some of the top QWPs they approached, and their “resume flow is about 10 times what it was before the campaign,” according to Kern (from an article on
WSJ.com.
, Y4 A. G" w r& i* _0 mEven among the niche job markets popping up out there, you can see a lot of innovation and creativity, and that has the potential to be a good thing. Still, none can offer what our network will be able to: the fine-tuned threshholding, privacy protection, plus accurate ranking and matching. With it, we’re offering candidates and HR professionals an outside-the-box solution.
Here’s your ticket.
