RCEuro Member Blogs

It's been some time since I last blogged as Alan and I decided that we needed to rebuild and re-brand the Beta of Recruitment Community Europe and at the same time build our Pan European members and marketing database.

This week I was fortunate enough to be a speaker at the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam. It was also great to spend a couple of days at the conference with fellow speaker, Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting, a true thought leader in this space.

The event was put on by Thys Spragers and his team at KREM , one of Holland's leading consultancies in this space. With over 190 attendees in this current climate, it  shows the interest in the topic and also reflected the quality of the speaker line up KERM had put together.

The morning saw two true visionaries in the social media space. The first speaker was Jeremiah Owyang , Senior Analyst at Forrester, blogger and commentator on the sector. Second was Urs Gasser , Executive Director Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

I will be posting two articles going into more detail on the implications of their research on the future the recruitment industry.

Jeremiah was able to share the results of the recent Forrester Survey: The Future of the Social Web.  He started with a great story to highlight the changes we are seeing in society; a teacher who teaches 12 year olds (in the US) and she told him about 3 things her class couldn't do;

•  They could not read her handwriting - but not just hers. They were so used to using the keyboard they found it difficult to read any handwriting.
•  They hated doing homework, no surprise there. But when they were asked to "frame" their home as a blog and send it over by computer they really engaged.
• On a test instead of answering questions which they did not know the answer to with a "don't know or some other answer" they all put "IDK", the text term for I don't know.

The whole premise of Jeremiah's presentation was that  in the future power will shift from "brands" to communities and that "communities will represent companies".

Jeremiah believes that the on line social experience will evolve through 5 eras;

•  The Era of social relationships - Mid 1990's - today
•  The Era of social functionality - Today and on going.
•  The Era of social colonization - late 2009
• The Era of social context - 2010
• The Era of social commerce - 2012

The next speaker, Urs, delivered a great presentation.  He and his research team at Harvard have been conducting an ongoing research project called "When Digital Natives enter the workforce - are you ready?"

In this study, our generation are the digital "immigrants", we moved to the web as we were not born with the web as the "natives" are.

Urs sees both challenges and opportunities to parents, teachers, marketers and employers as these first generation born digital natives enter the workplace.

So what are the key characteristics of the digital native?

• Always online
• Multiple identities: personal, social and all shaped online
• Extensive disclosure of personal data
• Culture sharing
• Creators, no longer passive users
• Peer collaboration, online activism
• Learning through browsing
• Wresting with amount and quality of information creates a generation of multi-taskers

These characteristics will create real challenges for organisations and particularly HR.   In my article, I will explore these issues and also the opportunities in more detail.

In the afternoon we split into two groups and Paul and I headed up the recruitment element.  I will look in more detail at Paul's excellent  presentation in an article next week.

As a hint, focus on the company's online reputation!! After what happened to a major UK retailer recently brings home the power of the social web.

Other speaker looked at "Social Banking" and "gaming".

Overall a great day, spending time with wonderful company and some truly inspirational speakers with great knowledge and insight.