WEB 2.0 AND RECRUITING

I waited patiently to respond to the LSU fan.  Just over a week ago The University of Alabama won the national championship.  Enough said!

Maybe the Alabama quarterback was not the best in the country, but he got the job done.  In fact, Greg McElroy has not lost a game since starting as a quarterback way back in the 8th grade.  While in High School he won a state championship at South Lake Carrol in Texas and now a national championship at the University of Alabama.  I'd say that is a great record.

What does this have to do with recruiting?  Recruiting is the life blood of your organization.  Recruit great employees and your organization, whether a business or a football team, has a better chance of being great.  When evaluating a recruit you have to do your best to ignore opinions of people who don't know the facts.

Recently I was on a recruiting trip to Ohio State.   I was waiting in the lobby of the Engineering Career Center for my next appointment.  I took the opportunity to scroll down through my e-mails and noticed an interesting cover letter from an applicant.  It started out like any cover letter - this is my name, what I want, and how I can help your company.  The last sentence is where it got interesting.  The applicant said, "I'm sorry the quarterback at Alabama sucks." 

Really?  Was this applicant that crazy to think that would help him get an interview?  At some point you have to be smarter than that and put the school rivalry behind you.  This applicant is an LSU grad and today, 11/7/09, LSU and Alabama meet for their annual showdown.  The applicant could not resist making a jab at me and my school since he is from LSU.  Guess how far that resume went!  If he would say something like that in a cover letter imagine what he would say once he gets hired and "loosens" up a bit.

There were 5 students waiting paitently in the lobby and I read this cover letter out loud to them as an example of what NOT to write to someone who can help you get a job.  They laughed and said they could not believe the guy wrote that to me.  I'm waiting until after the game to respond to his e-mail. Should be interesting!

Marty Brack

This is the last day of the required posting for the class I’m taking at the University of Alabama. The postings for the last 30 days have been about Web 2.0 and recruiting. This posting once again highlights the definition of Web 2.0 referencing the work of John Thompson in “Don’t Be Afraid to Explore Web 2.0.”

Web 2.0 sites allow anyone to contribute content and to participate with other users in editing and even combining or remixing existing content with other material to repurpose it for additional uses. Thus content on the Internet is no longer static; it is changing and dynamic. A distinguishing Web 2.0 feature is the increasing significance of the individual user, as anybody (even a fifth-grader) can create and upload text, as well as audio and video, to the Internet. Another characteristic is the reliance on user participation, often referred to as the “wisdom of the crowd” and the “architecture of participation.”

Web 2.0 has an inherent trust in people and what they can contribute when working together toward a common goal for the greater good. If Web 1.0 (even though we did not know it was “1.0” at the time) was a read-only medium, today’s Web 2.0 is read/write. The Internet’s first era of mass use required users with programming skills to contribute (upload) material to the Internet. Early Internet users found that material in a manner similar to going to the library to find and take home a book.

In contrast, Web 2.0 users still go to the library (i.e., the Internet), but instead of figuratively just taking home a book to read, they now enjoy other possible uses, including contributing comments, changing the contents, and having others simultaneously read the material in real time. Several thousand Web 2.0 applications have become available in the last few years. These applications are generally free to individuals (Thompson, 2008).

REFERENCE:
Thompson, J. (2008, June). Don't Be Afraid to Explore Web 2.0. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(10), 711-778. Retrieved August 31, 2009, from Academic Search Premier database.

Marty Brack
E-mail: mdbrack@crimson.ua.edu
Cell: 205-837-4098