Recruitment/Talent Hunt in Second Life – Initial Considerations for Organizations

Author: David D’Angelo

 

About Author:

David has worked in Human Resources for seven years primarily as an analyst.  He is a member of the International Association for Human Resources Information Management.  David’s Blog “Recruiting in Second Life” can be read on the ere.net blog network and was referenced by Governing online in their September 2008, article “The Reality of Virtual Reality” which appeared in “The Managing Technology Letter”.  His article “Try Second Life Beyond the IT Department” appeared in September 19, 2008, online issue of ere.net.

The technology has very much arrived for virtual worlds to impact real world business and they will only improve in time.  Many of the early adopters have reaped the benefits of these technologies and improved their brand globally. 

Many organizations are now recruiting in Second Life.  Universities recruit students, police departments recruit cyber savvy officers, IT organizations look for talent and evidence of it in Second Life, and the list goes on.  You may also have an interest in doing the same.  Where would you start?  This post will discuss some of the discussions and due diligence you will want to perform as you frame your case for recruiting in Second Life.

 

The first step to take to recruit in Second Life is to assess if you have the talent in house or would need to outsource the work.  One caveat to consider even if you have talent in your organization that could conceivably perform the work is that it may be well worth the additional cost to have a professional design firm set up your first virtual presence.  You want to be on a competitive level and project a professional image to recruit professional talent. There are many design firms with competitive prices that will tailor a package for your needs.  Interview several before making a decision. Once you have an established presence in Second Life, your onsite technical staff may be more than adequate for modifications and maintenance.  You may even want to have them shadow the design firm when your site is created so they can perform the routine maintenance. 

 

Your next step should be to define how your goal to recruit in Second Life would benefit your business both directly and indirectly.  You will need a project plan of what you would want to achieve in Second Life along with costs and benefits.  Also, note other stakeholders in your organization who could benefit from your presence.  The obvious benefactor is your marketing and branding team.  They can assist in announcing your presence in Second Life along with leveraging their branding focus.  It is also important to discuss your recruiting strategy with marketing.  They may be able to provide some demographics of your customer base that will give you some indication of how many people you may potentially have an opportunity to recruit. 

 

Be sure to reach out to other areas in your organization that engage in training or travel frequently.  There may be an opportunity to develop virtual training in Second Life and virtual meetings for those that travel or video conference often.

 

It is a good idea to have a discussion with your legal department on your specific plans for recruiting in Second Life.  They will be reassured if you stick to initial recruiting and keep the paperwork, secondary screening, and paperwork outside of Second Life.  You may even be surprised and find an interest in recruiting an intellectual property attorney in Second Life.  There is probably no other target so rich with intellectual property use and abuse as Second Life is.

 

The last step in your consideration is your budget.  In consideration of the difficult economic environment we are in this could be a deal breaker for some.  List the costs of development and having an island in SL along with anticipated benefits.  Some of these such as branding will be intangible.  I would suggest one of the best cases you can make for recruiting in Second Life is to participate in a job fair for minimal costs with avatars that display your logo. There are organizations that might do very well with representation at job fairs periodically.  Those committed to recruiting in Second Life will want to move forward with developing an Island to build on your success in the job fairs.

 

I am certain there are other considerations but I am hoping this will provide you with a starting point on how to frame your analysis if you plan to recruit in Second Life.  One final suggestion is to make your presentation to management in Second Life to give them an ideal how virtual business can work for your organization.

Driving Businesses – Recruitment through Virtual Worlds

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

Vikram Bhardwaj, CEO of Redileon, a Mumbai based HR Firm, gets a hiring contract from a global BPO which wanted to hire a general manager to run its private hotel in Hyderabad. His agency puts a recruitment hoarding on top of a hotel for less than $1. The neon sign ad flashed: “Want to earn $125,000 per annum. We are hiring a GM to run a hotel in Hyderabad.” Within 24 hours, four candidates from Ireland, Philippines, Czech Republic and Dubai are shortlisted and the applicant from Dubai joins next month.

Does it sounds like any other recruitment process and doesn’t get your attention? Well not exactly! The hotel and the neon sign ad existed not in the real world, but in Second Life, a Virtual Environment. The job however was real.

Rahul Dutta, a Virtual Property Dealer, and the CEO of VR1World has tied up with DepoConsulting to hire people across worlds through the Virtual Environment.

Wipro Technologies is bringing new capabilities to corporate recruitment via its Innovation Isle Island in Second Life. To begin with, the prospective candidates will be able to submit their resume at Wipro’s virtual campus and the initiative will be later become an integral part of Wipro’s recruitment drive.

The IBM Recruitment Center offers diverse topics. Such as: career opportunities both in the development, as well as in areas such as consulting and sales, internship offers, Dual studies at the Vocational Academy, advancement opportunities and much more. This makes it an ideal platform for students, graduates and professionals who are interested in career and development opportunities at IBM.

In Indian Scenario, a lot of MNCs are already using Web 2.0 for Talent Hunt. Jayantika Dave, Director (HR) Agilent Technologies, recently sought out a professional networking site in her never-ending search for knowledge workers. LinkedIn, a professional networking site, allows us to commercially utilise the services,” says theVice President (Strategic Resourcing) at Wipro Technologies. “The traditional channels need to be augmented with some innovation. Social networking sites provide access to profiles that often consultants fail to get hold of.” says Tanuj Kapilashrami, the India head of HR at HSBC. 

A Virtual Environment such as Second Life is a fairly newly discovered jungle to do a talent hunt. Since 2003 the online system has more than six million registered users, of whom around the clock an average of 15,000 to 38,000 actively uses the system (Source: Wikipedia). 

I had an opportunity to talk to Ashima Misri, Ops & Business Development, Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd. She mentioned that there are approximately 2500 active Second Life Users in India. When compared to more than 30 million active internet users in India (Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/indias-internet-users-reach-30-million-637/), the number of active users of Second Life is insignificant.

The possible causes are:

1. The concept of 3D Internet and Virtual Worlds still hasn’t become popular among the common people. Because not many people are regular on Second Life for Social Networking, people resort to build social network on Facebook etc.

2. Mediocre Graphics Card PCs/Laptops. For a lot of people, such a Virtual Environment won’t even be supported on their machine!

3. For Personal Use, people generally take Dial up Internet or up to 256 Kbps   Broadband. It doesn’t give the performance required to immerse people in Second Life. 

During my meeting with David D’Angelo (HR Analyst at Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) who has expertise in Talent Acquisition Systems and Recruiting in Second Life & Virtual Worlds, I was told that in US, there will be large number of retirements and the competition for talent is leading to recruitment in social networks and Second Life. He mentioned that for organizations, Second Life is a great place for screening of Applicants especially over a large geographic area. This is followed by a real world interview on the phone or in person. There are confidentiality issues and legal issues about doing all the work in SL right now. 

There are primarily two models in Second Life for the talent hunt - Islands and Job Fairs which give candidates a few choices. Companies like IBM have their own islands in Second Life where candidates can pass on their resume. Example of a job fair in Second Life includes the food service firm, Sodexho, which was covered by MSNBC in the September 10, 2007, article, “How your fantasy life can get you a real job”. The article details how a job candidate rather new to SL prepared to participate in a Sodexho job fair at the suggestion of a Sodexho recruiter he sent his resume to. His efforts at learning the nuances of SL paid off and led to a job as a chef in the senior services division of Sodexho.

During an interview, what the interviewee says is not the only important thing but how he handles the situation is equally important. Many interviewers want to see how the interviewee acts under stress. If the candidate looks confused like a fish out of water then the chances of his getting the job reduce. This measure is not possible in Virtual Environments like Second Life, which fail to observe the non-verbal communication/facial expressions of the candidate being interviewed.

A Live video streaming of the face and capturing gestures through sensors/vision could compensate for non verbal communication to some extent. The technology is still evolving!