Cynics might seeSecond Lifeas just an opportunity for
cross-dressing in cyberspace. But the parallel world of which it is
both exemplar and metaphor is being harnessed by serious
businesses.
At a recent Computer Weekly 500 Club meeting, the chief
information officer of a multinational company identified managing
the
Web 2.0 generation as one of the most pressing issues for
senior executives.
She gave an example from her own experience of an intern whose
first line of attack when tasked with a research problem was to
broadcast the bare bones of it to her digital networks on
Facebook and elsewhere. The CIO held this up as evidence that
the Web 2.0 generation is more innately co-operative and more
instinctively boundaryless that any of its forebears.
However true that may be, there are clearly changes afoot in how
this generation is recruited and managed. We report in this issue
how a recruitment firm hosted a jobs fair on Second Life to draw in
talent from "generation Y" on behalf of
Royal Bank of Scotland, Yell UK and KPMG.
These firms believe they can tap into a global talent pool by
using the virtual world of Second Life. Moreover, they seem to
believe - reasonably - that highly web-savvy, innovative and
entrepreneurial candidates will emerge from this process, where
job-seeking avatar meets recruitment avatar - with no danger of a
clammy handshake.
The application of the phrase "out of the box thinking" to this
recruitment strategy must surely be a temptation. And, to be fair,
people who have been deeply immersed in Second Life will have
gained technical and creative digital expertise that could be
parlayed by real business.
Meanwhile, university students doing the traditional "milk
round" for entry into banking, law, or strategy consulting are busy
eradicating embarrassing photographs from their MySpace and
Facebook pages. A sign that work life and social life are, after
all, separate realms.