It’s always hard to grab students’ attention at careers fares when the guys in the corner have a tank to play with. But the latest communications technology offers some attention grabbers that can also demonstrate that innovation isn’t just a word in the recruitment blurb.

Mobile apps offer the opportunity to link on a very personal level with graduates. With the potential for downloads at career fairs as well as from your website they bring an instant buzz factor and, if the app has been designed for long-term usefulness, they can help build long-term relationships.

Essentially, there’s the option to focus either on smart functionality or brilliant content. The latter is not the easy option since simply providing a mobile download of your web content is unlikely to hold the attention unless it is suffused with the wit of a Stephen Fry. Smart functionality can range from harnessing the mobile phone features such as camera and location or linking to social networks, such as Twitter and Linkedin. Local area networking is a feature that could be used to share information at an event as well as providing students with ongoing file-sharing capability in their own networks.

We recommend centering your app around a theme, whether it relates directly to your company or to a broader area such as a general careers manager which could carry your brand banner.

Touch screens are not limited to iphones and rail ticketing machines.  The latest technology touch screens can use any glass surface from a coffee table to a large exhibition panel to project an interactive display through the glass.  Those who have seen the film ‘Minority Report’, will have an idea of just what can be achieved using this technology and how exciting that could be in an event space.

Creating an interesting and visually captivating journey within the software environment of the display is key to successful user engagement. None of us gets too excited about ticket machines, or just using a finger to point at a website.  A true minority report experience requires creativity and visual excitement, but need not break budgets.

Whichever digital experience fits the practicalities of your recruitment campaign, creating an interesting and visually captivating journey will ensure your company projects the up to date image this year’s high flyers will appreciate. Attracting innovators has the potential to feed energy into the cycle of innovation and creativity that is vital to the competitiveness of organisations today.

Internal Communications – HR 2.0?

Over the last few years, new opportunities have arisen for HR teams to leverage social media and Web 2.0 in internal branding. Social media is now being used extensively through corporate platforms to unify, establish collaboration, create innovation and even to establish corporate standards across large multinational corporations. While the uptake of social media is most apparent in the US, adoption by global companies is increasing awareness within Europe. Rapid technological development is also bringing social software tools within the reach of smaller businesses.

In a survey of 20,000 HR professionals, Birkman International found that many people working in HR are fully aware of the potential of social media technologies, such as blogs, social networks, social bookmarking, wikis, content syndication, mobile computing and online video (83%). However, opportunities exist to improve their knowledge and experience and turn awareness into effective usage.

When asked which Web 2.0 technologies they use more than once a month, the clear leaders were LinkedIn (75%) and Facebook (66%). More surprisingly, almost half (45%) are also using Google Reader and 28% use Twitter. Using social media for recruitment purposes is the obvious starting point for web thirsty HR professionals and LinkedIn, Twitter and videos distributed through platforms such as YouTube are the most popular platforms for this.

Best practice for social media requires a clear distinction to be made between internal and external communications. For external communication HR teams need to work closely with marketing teams to contribute to building a strong, branded community that brings consistency of brand experience from recruitment to customer support. While businesses tend to have clear distinctions between departments, audiences are oblivious to such lines of demarcation and will wander freely through the information available through online channels.

The first requirement for internal social networking is a social media policy to give employees clear instructions about what is acceptable and what isn’t in their use of social media. The next requirement is to set objectives and to develop a content strategy that makes the best use of each of the available media to ensure your communication brings a rich user experience. Video is an important component internally as well as externally, whether it is to improve internal understanding of your brand by demonstrating values in action, or by using video to bring a closeness to communication across distant locations or from senior personnel.  Blog content can also be valuable to bring access to leaders within the business to develop better managers and nurture best practices.

Above all, web 2.0 is about collaboration and two-way conversations. This is where concerns about privacy often inhibit participation and companies can miss out on the benefits of social media. However, with an internal online infrastructure, managed or closed to external participation, companies can enjoy the benefits of social media without the downside. The HR team can encourage managers and employees to get involved and send as well as receive tailored messages building closer ties across the organisation. It’s also a great way to deliver various types of e-learning to the employee’s desktop.

For a bit of inspiration, here are a few examples of companies who have developed internal social media platforms:

1) IBM has created a social media platform called Beehive. The team created the site in order to help IBM employees to meet the challenge of building the relationships that are vital to working in large, dispersed enterprises today. They’re also exploring whether Beehive can help discover people with common interests or the right skills for a particular project. Incorporating functionality people are familiar with on Facebook, such as a profile page and photo uploads, Beehive allows employees to schedule events and write commentaries in a private, closed environment.

2) Pixar, the Acadamy Award-winning animation studio, has a video wiki for animation collaboration. The company started with text based sharing and then moved to video-based wikis to share information about films in production and to document meeting notes. Once the system was installed, they found it led to increased efficiency and faster film development.

3) Leading IT company, EMC, has an internal social platform called Global/One. Their goal was to create a platform for building relationships on a one-to-one level amongst staff and the corporation with virtually zero-budget toward branding. Over the last three years it has become the driving force behind a cultural shift in a collaborative environment that is spurring innovation, global collaboration and solutions that solve client’s problems. It has created social media “rock stars” within the company who are becoming recognized leaders for their blog writings as the go-to opinion leaders who people respect and follow for their thoughtful ideas and inspiration.

Are you digitally extinct or distinct?

Today, first impressions are gained online. Though you may not be aware of it, people are likely to be making judgments about you based on your virtual self and may choose to either interview you or do business with you based on what they find. Before a job interview or client meeting you are most probably Googled. Now, more than ever, people are using the Internet as a way to find out about the people they are about to engage with in business matters. Managing your identity in the online world is essential, however, not many people do it and many do not do it well.

You may feel retaining your anonymity by avoiding online channels is the best course of action, but, if a situation arises where you are compared to someone with three Google pages filled with links to papers and opinions demonstrating their professional expertise, they’ll probably be the one invited to the conference – or to the job interview.

First you need to know if you have a virtual image and, if so, if it is a good one.

Assessing your virtual image – it’s about quantity AND quality

1. Google your name (using “,”)
2. Now scan the first five pages, which should be 50 results in total if Google is set to default
3. Determine the % of quantity of information: y-axis
   How many times do you appear in the results? Work out the percentage of results that are about you of the total number of results returned (usually 50).
4. Determine the quality of information: x-axis

This requires qualitative interpretation of what the results say about you. Are they saying what you want them to say? In some cases it may be completely wrong to or even negative! Score the results according to this scale:

• Impressive = 1, the results project your unique attributes and the value you bring. The information is structured to provide relevant information to that particular audience.
• Common/Vague = 0, the information about you is relevant, but it communicates nothing unique about you and/or is unclear.
• Negative/Confusing = -1, the information about you is negative/confusing.

Now rate the quality of information according to the key audiences who will use it. Think about their information needs and ask yourself:

• Do your results deliver the information they require?
• Do you project your unique value?
• Is it consistent between sites?

Then add the total of all the boxes.

The figure below shows four potential scenarios: They axis represents the quantity of information about you in Google; the x axis depicts the quality of that information to your personal image. Google your name, how many times did you appear in the first five pages? How accurate and up-to-date was this information? Now think about which quadrant you would sit in.