Recruiting in China

Many companies are still getting their heads around Web 2.0 and how they can use the real interaction it brings, to engage more effectively with job seekers and potential employees. There are some great sites, notably the new Microsoft site but in reality the vast majority of companies have struggled to grasp the Web 2.0 concept. Well all the geeks in geek land have come up with the next level if interaction - Web 3.0 aka The Semantic Web. In simple terms it means information that is understandable by computers without human intervention - enabling computers to perform more of the boring work involved in finding and sharing information on the Web.

So what will that mean to anyone who uses the web to recruit (nearly everyone!!)?

The search engine spiders that find web pages based on certain keywords will gain an understanding of natural language. They will be able to read the pages rather than simply respond to given words and so will be able to deliver more targeted contextual jobs. There will also be software applications that we will all have called Intelligent Agents that will make decisions online for you without the need to ask you first. As an example; a job board wants to send you the jobs that it thinks fits your criteria, but first it has to 'communicate' with your intelligent agent. Think of the intelligent agent as your personal PA - if it doesn't think the job is for you it simply won't tell you about it!

So, this creates an interesting future problem for companies, as they have to 'sell' their jobs on two levels - firstly to get past your non-human intelligent agent, and secondly to appeal to the emotional real human, namely you!! So for recruitment advertisers of the future, just simply writing adds 'appealing to your emotions' will not get past your new PA! This will get all you SEO specialists thinking hard now, won't it!!

Obviously, Web 3.0 is a little way off, but companies can start to think about some of the forthcoming challenges of the SEO, by looking at your current way your company brand is perceived by job seekers and future employees. Balance the rational and emotional messages you are giving out to them, and realise that to be a recruitment success in the future, these new PA's will make more decisions than the candidates will!!