Community Driven Recruitment - Sam Michel's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference

Over the past few weeks I have been doing a mini-series of posts about the key elements from each speaker’s presentation at the Enhance Media the Year Ahead Conference (you can see a list of them below).   Sam Michel, Founder of Chinwag talked about community driven recruitment.  Sam’s background is in the digital media industry.  Chinwag is a community for new media and digital marketing professionals and includes the job board “Chinwag Jobs”.

Sam started his presentation by talking about the history of Chinwag.  The site was launched in 1996 using the old style internet groups and was called uk-netmarketing.  Members would communicate via a discussion forum type system where every message posted was sent out individually to each member of the group.  I found this interesting as I remember using the groups as potential sourcing ground for candidates in the late 90s.  Now Chinwag consists of three main areas: Chinwag.com community - which has forums and resources, Chinwag Jobs – which is a specialist recruitment website and Chinwag Live – which are informal (live) panel debates.

Sam’s idea is that community driven recruitment enables you to connect with individuals within a specific niche and by “humanising” the contact you can build strong relationship with potential contacts.  He talks about how corporates should engage in community recruitment; ensuring they have a candidate centric approach, staying on top of what is being said about your company and knowing how best to handle it. 

He talked about organisations ensuring they have a “community policy” which sets guidelines for employees usage (ie, you may say anything on the web as long as it doesn’t bring the company into disrepute or break laws).  This was a thread that was touched on in two other presentations during the event.  I wonder how many companies have one in place – especially one that is kept up to date as internet usage evolves?

Sam finished by briefly mentioned their recent digital skills survey.  The headlines of the findings are (you can view the full report here: http://www.chinwag.com/reports/chinwag-jobs-skills-shortage-2007):

· 97% of respondents find it either difficult or impossible to attract the right digital staff for their businesses
· 76% of respondents find it difficult to retain staff within their companies.
· Most businesses have increased the amount of staff working in digital during the last year, with more permanent staff joining than leaving.
57% of respondents reported that the digital skills shortage impeded the growth of their business in 2007.

Other blog posts (and articles in the newsletter) I've written about the conference are:

• How e are you? - Tim Elkington's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference
• Employer Brands and Social Media - Paul Harrison's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference
• Profiling for Recruitment - Charlie Atkinson's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference
• The Year Ahead Conference Review – Luke Mckend of Google
• The Year Ahead Conference Review – Westley Gillard of Zappy Mobile
• The Year Ahead Conference Review – Josie Fraser

Comments

[Sam Michel]

Thanks for the write-up Louise, although the photo definitely proves I've got a face for radio!