With information technology advancing at an ever increasing pace, there are inevitably going to be new products on the market to help recruitment specialists do their jobs more efficiently.
At a recent Recruitment Technology conference several new products were launched and a couple of them caught my eye.
One product I was impressed by essentially aggregates all public information about a candidate or client so it can be viewed easily in one place. The information is gathered from a variety of social media sites and other online channels (such as reviews on Amazon). The software also automatically removes any data that might contravene EEOC or OFCCP regulations.
Another product which interested me was one that allows companies to utilise the social media connections of its employees with an automated process of ‘viral job marketing’. The product has been on the market for a year now but it has recently been enhanced with graphical metrics, hundreds more channels for job-posting and a further degree of automation.
Only time will tell if these applications make the impact that their developers hope, however products such as these certainly indicate an intention by developers to tap into the vast and growing amount of data that is available on Social Media. Long gone are the days where you had to network extensively via phone to find out where the best candidates and potential clients were. New technologies will never replace traditional methods of networking (speaking over the phone etc) but they may automate the more mundane tasks and allow us, as recruiters, to work more efficiently and creatively for our clients.