The Secret Talent Pool

I came upon this interesting article the other day.

According to a study by the Consumer Electronics Association, one third of adult gamers spend 10 hours or more per week playing games. I don't know about you, but that figure is a lot higher than I expected. Another surprising statistic? 58% of teen females play online games. In an industry traditionally dominated by the male sex, this figure is certainly surprising.

...this might be another talent pool that organizations start looking into. Of course, I'm not encouraging that since the last thing people want to see is recruiters start infiltrating the gaming forums. It can be done tastefully of course, but organizations have to tread carefully...

Scary Research Tactics

I meant to post this last week when I happened upon this article, but as often happens...life just gets hectic sometimes.

Check out this link.

Can you imagine if any evil recruiters got their hands on this when the flaw was discovered? The horror...the horror...

The Future of Recruiting = The Modern Sports Organization

Here’s a thought. What if recruiting evolved into what has happened in the sports world? What if due to the talent shortage in the workforce, recruiters were forced to start tracking students while they were in high school?

You look at how NBA scouts have progressed from evaluating college talent…to watching high school talent…and now, they are beginning to “drop” by middle school games. Why? NBA organizations value talent. To them, keeping track of these kids as early as possible gives them an “edge” against other organizations who don’t. You know the ins and outs of the individual. You know what they like. What they don’t like. You know what they can do…and what they might eventually be able to do. NBA organizations keep track of all this stuff because you never know when the next LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, or Tim Duncan is going to come along.

An extreme scenario…but is it really that far off for the business world? Corporations have begun to assemble competitions among business school students in increasing numbers. Do you think they do this for the heck of it? No. It’s a way to scope out potential talent at the university level.

Some companies have taken it further. They have high school competitions. Again, it’s conceivable that many have used these competitions with an eye towards the future.

Any thoughts?

Eureka!!...I mean, Eurekster!!

I came across this cool little social search engine the other day, Eurekster. What's different about Eurekster compared to the other search engines out there on the web? It allows YOU to create what they call "swikis" to search what you want to search for.

What is a swiki? Just think of it as a natural extension of personal publishing on the web...very much like a blog, podcast, or personal webpage. The unique thing about this search engine is that it's community powered, meaning that the engine you create begins to learn from its community of users as they search. Moreover, as the creator of the swiki, you can choose which websites to exclude or "promote" in the search results as they pertain to the relevancy of the community that you're trying to establish.

The premise behind Eurekster is simple: let publishers of web content, communities, and communication services offer more relevant search to their audiences and "to earn their share of the $5 billion paid search and advertising market." I'm a much more visual learner than the average person, so it might help you to see this tool in action. I picked a popular swiki on the main site of Eurekster for video games (at the risk of labeling myself a geek). You can either search for something unique by typing a keyword in the search box, or picking from the "hot searches" box. You can even compare search results to the same search on Google.

A cool web tool? Most definitely. Can it be used as a professional tool for recruiters or HR departments? That's still up in the air. There's definitely potential though, which is why I'm going to be tinkering around with this thing until I can find some use for it. ;)