by Kevin Wheeler
illustration by Josh Cochran

With the intricate realities of social networks creating new
connections between companies and those who might one day work for them, the competition for creative talent has become an online guerilla war. Is traditional recruiting in danger of becoming irrelevant in the face of the vast scale of the network? Can higher-level, more experienced talent be lured to a company through the same networks that galvanize younger candidates?

A year ago Jeff Hunter, the head of HR at Electronic Arts, the world’s largest developer of computer games, faced a dilemma. How could EA find the vast numbers of talented software engineers, programmers, and creative game designers it needed to stay ahead of its competition? Hunter not only needed lots of candidates, he also needed lots of top notch candidates. You might think that there is an infinite number of young men and women ready to step up to the challenge of working at one of the world’s biggest, baddest, and brainiest game companies, but in fact you would be wrong. In the end, Hunter had to reengineer EA’s entire electronic recruiting strategy.

Hunter’s quest to solve this dilemma tells a startling tale about the evolving nature of candidate/employer relationships. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the United States, there is a growing consensus that the way companies find, select, and even develop people is broken. Employers can no longer merely cull the best candidates from the many, dictating the recruiting process and timeframe. Indeed, as they struggle to adapt to candidates’ demands, they may find themselves happy to have any qualified applicants at all.

The simple fact is that the number of talented candidates is shrinking due to educational and demographic changes sweeping the globe; as a result, candidates are getting more and more control over the recruiting process. The new talent generation doesn’t want the safety of a “big name” organization; what they want are opportunities to engage in creative projects—a trend that is levelling the playing field by challenging small firms to compete for the best people and large firms to find better ways of attracting and engaging quality candidates.

Call them Generation Y or Millenniums or Gen Next—anyone under 25 today has what Boomers might think a rather unique view of work. Many find the prospect of corporate life unattractive at best. If you are independent, entrepreneurial, technically savvy, and intolerant of bureaucracy, corporations seem increasingly like the parodies of corporations we see on The Office. It’s not merely a question of whether a company is entrepreneurial, either. To new talent, there is a clear difference between entrepreneurial get-up-and-go and the levers of innovation seen in a company like Google. Understanding this need for authenticity—showing them how to find meaningful work inside a company, giving them honest answers, and helping them find unique opportunities—is therefore key to reaching them.

This strategy is one reason why Google China recently put its star researcher, Kai-Fu Li, not long ago snatched from Microsoft, on the university speaking circuit. Li’s purpose is to raise awareness and excitement about Google and establish the company as the employer-of-choice for new Chinese engineering graduates. At every appearance, he showcases the innovative work now being done at Google, drawing thousands who then turn to Google’s website for job information.

It’s a far cry from traditional recruiting, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg of change that recruiting must go through. As Jeff Hunter discovered, technology isn’t just a tool to manage information; rather it is a tool to build brands, create excitement, and channel relationships between people, businesses, and employees. Technology has offered promise to recruiters and candidates for some time, but until recently these promises have clustered around the administrative side of recruiting—not about how to find great people or engage them in conversations and learning. Boomers may find it hard to understand, but the new talent generation is all too comfortable with relationships that are not conducted face-to-face. Indeed, for under-25s, relationships formed in chat rooms, email, and other web-based media are just as strong as those we might make in the “real world.” And the best recruiting sites work hard to emulate that sensibility, focusing on interactive opportunities and online relationship building.

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