DotNeil.com

Many recruiters in the UK are new to the idea of using the latest web services (blogging, social networks, forums etc) as legitimate sourcing channels. Most of these web services are free to use, yet recruiters are still sticking to the traditional advertising avenues such as print and job boards, and ignoring resources such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. But now there’s Jobster; the social network for recruiters. I spent around eight months using Jobster during an Internship for one of the UK’s biggest recruitment groups, and during this time I learnt a great deal about the service.

Jobster charges recruiters and HR managers a premium for the privilege of building their own Jobster social network. However, builidng a social network can already be done for free using a personal account on a network such as LinkedIn or Xing. So, not only is Jobster charging for something that UK recruiters aren’t using the free iterations of, but these alternative social networks, such as LinkedIn (whom has over 8 million unique accounts in comparison to Jobster’s <1 million) have a much greater subscriber base. Why would you pay a premium for a social network with a much lower user-base? And how would you ever justify the expense when so many other web services are significantly cheaper (if not free) to use?

As I’m writing this (literally, I’m attending a WebEx’d conference in Seattle from the comfort of my final year student house in Leeds, UK) Jobster are announcing 15 day free trials of the premium recruiter services. The recruitment company I worked with paid a great deal of money for what was actually a ‘reduced price’ trial, so Jobster are now offering a great opportunity to test a proprietary/company-branded recruiting social network, to which I know of no currently available alternative.

So you’ve signed up for the free trial, posted the jobs through the new free jobs posting board, and added candidates to your companies Jobster social network. But the trial only lasts for 15 days; do you sign-up for a premium subscription, or do you forget about all the candidates that you’ve just opened communications with?

By now, the Jobster information management system should have some data on the activity that occurred within your trial network. Statistics on email bounces, click-throughs, visitors, prospects and subscribers will be stored and available for critical analysis. Why not take this data and make a contrast against the financial analysis you’ve made for tried and tested recruiting/advertising channels, e.g. Monster, newspapers, or the industry journal classifieds? I’ve investigated the use of Jobster as a replacement to agencies for RPO accounts by collating data on agency expediture and programming a basic network modelling tool in Excel;

I’ll save a full explanation of the calculations and my findings for another post. But the basic principle was; if we know that agencies cost the company ‘x’ a month, and agency hires take up ‘y’ percentage of our monthly hires, can Jobster source enough new contacts to potentially replace the agency sourcing channel altogether? If Jobster can source enough candidates (while also saving money), a subscription to the service should be carefully considered. If not, stick to the tried and tested sourcing channels, (unless you percieve there to be long-term gains from nurturing a social network community around your companies career opportunities). If you want to get a Jobster license past the finance director, you’ll probably need to make a financial analysis of the service at some point.

Jobster have also recently announced a partnership with Facebook. This is ironic; I had with meeting a senior recruiter last year in which it was decided that Jobster wasn’t right for their practice at that point in time. In the very same meeting I raised awareness of Facebook.

Last year I came the conclusion that Facebook was going to be vital for graduate recruiters come summer 2007. All of my friends are on Facebook, and using it daily. It’s so much more usuable than Myspace because it’s so much easier to communicate with other members (and the never-ending 404 errors on MySpace are only helping Facebook). I only have to glance at the ‘Live Feed’ of my Facebook social network to get an overview of my friends activities via videos, pictures and messages. But very few of these messages are career centric. You’ll see the occasional moan about a 9 - 5, but you don’t see much in the way of sharing job opportunities or the dicussion of work related activities. However, I’m only twenty-two years old, which means that most of the members of my social network are only just getting into their careers, or in the same position as me, and just about to finish University. In two or three years time, will my Facebook ‘Live Feed’ still have as much activity as it does today, intergrated Jobster functionality & features in tow? Or will the 9 - 5’s have really taken a hold on the time that my friends have for using social networks?

I think there’s a few things that Jobster could concentrate on to help their cause;

Create a browser plugin (or piggy-back Facebook’s) - I know some people hate them, but you can’t avoid the fact that they’ve been critical in the success of many web apps. Mozilla made their $52 million turnover last year through Google search intergration with FireFox. LinkedIn and Facebook both have plugins. Why not make a Jobster plugin for recruiters and job-seekers to create real brand-awareness and user-retention? The recruiters could receive deskop style notifications of network activity, and the job-seekers could get notifcations of perspective job opportunities + referral reward opportunities. The lines between the desktop and the browser are increasingly blurring, and Adobe’s upcoming programming environment Apollo certainly won’t slow this.

Push the adoption of referral reward schemes - Most HR managers will tell you that referral rewards schemes work, and that’s without a Web 2.0 service to facilitate participation from people outside the company through automated (and therefore effortless) reward transactions. Jobster could make referral reward schemes much easier to handle.

Serious mobile integration - The mobile web is important, just ask Steve Jobs. Facebook also know this, which is why we now have Facebook mobile. And although I don’t see many people using it yet, adoption will surely pick-up. Jobster.com and the upcoming career centre need to work seamlessly with Facebook mobile.

Integration with Facebook Diaries - I could very well be three months behind on this one, but Jobster should be finding ways to integrate everything they are doing with the Facebook career centre into the upcoming Facebook Diaries on-line TV show. One thing I doubt I’m behind on is Facebook Diaries localisation. Jobster have been slow to localise their own core service to international markets (try typing anything other than a US location when specifying your Jobster profile location), so I’m not holding high hopes for localisation of Facebook Diaries, even though it really could reap dividends. Think ‘Match of the Day’, but for your own personalised Facebook Live Feed.

Reduce the cost of premium services - Jobster are charging too much for the ability to build a social network, especially when your company’s social network comes with a Jobster corporate colour infused cascading style-sheet. The allowance of a small logo at the top left of your Jobster network page isn’t enough. Web 2.0 companies need to remember that business leaders like their own corporate colours and branding; they will go elsewhere if they feel their identity is lost when using a service.

Buying in to a Jobster social network is wildy different from buying credits for Monster. Building a social network should viewed as a long-term commitment. You can’t just use a social network as and when you deem necessary - they need regular updates if you want a respectable ROI. If those updates are all branded in Jobster, is your company really creating awareness of it’s own job opportunities, or is it promoting someone else’s web service?