How Human Resources hit the 2.0 level.

Bye bye human contact. That simple comment, slowly reflects on what has happened to us in today's society. Because of Social Media we are less prone to have actual conversations in today's world, more now than ever before. A friend of mine and I recently had a discussion about the loss of true emotional contact one receives, when it came to getting a job. You do not introduce yourself, or anything of that nature these days, instead you go to a website or submit an e-mail...hoping for days on end that you will get a call back. Instead of spending hours on end ranting as usual, I would like to focus on this particular topic, how social media and technology has affected the Human Resources world. A lot of people will tell you that the job market has changed in the last five years, especially with the downfall of the economy. The job market has changed a lot because of the economy, but most people forget that technology/social media has a fair amount to do with the changing of HR practices as well. Let's look at Joe. Joe graduated from college and needs to find a job. So he goes online, because nobody does paper applications anymore. The day and age of filling out a paper application is gone as many companies have decided that it is more environmentally friendly and that it will save them thousands of dollars. Joe knows this, so he decides never to leave his apartment, instead spending hours on end searching through job websites such as Monster, Indeed, and Craigslist. Joe is the typical person. To find that dream job, there is no reason to go out anymore. You simply stare at your computer for eight hours a day hoping for that one call/e-mail back. Joe finally finds a job he wants but as he applys for the job, he ends up coming to a 35 page questionnaire asking him his thoughts on drugs and would he ever steal from the company. These surveys, more properly called likert surveys are used to weed people out who do not fit the particular companies personality assessment. Joe now, just like every other applicant spends hours just to fill out this survey, not answering the truth, but answering what the company wants to hear, like the average American. I have had thousands of conversations about these surveys and I personally think that they do more harm than good. Joe spends the next few days wondering if he's going to get hired. He looks up the companies management online and e-mails them wondering if they received his e-mails and if there is anything more that he can do. Two weeks later, after not hearing anything at all Joe gets the message he dreads. An automated message saying that he did not get the position he wanted. Now I am writing you the story of Joe, because we have all gone through this. We have all sent out a resume and not heard anything back. I believe that the HR process needs to be reworked in someway to avoid this confusion. Regardless of my thoughts one can tell just how much technology has changed the HR process in the last five years. I understand that now more than ever before that HR specialists are being bombarded with thousands of resumes, but there has to be someway to fix this mundane process. What does Joe or any other person do at this point? They revert back to their social network. This has led to the power of Social Media in the work place. As soon as you land your first job, you learn one thing, no matter what anyone says, your network matters even more so than your qualifications do, when it comes to getting a position. Social Media is now changing this through such career oriented sites as Linkedin.Com, where you can keep complete track of your professional contacts. So as you plug away at your job, trying to find the best fit for you, plug away at your social network as well. You would not believe it but your peers might be just as useful in finding that dream job.