Hi Vanessa,

That's a great post. I definitely think that corporates need to relax their policies to allow usage of web apps, especially in countries such as Australia, where the usage is still very limited.

Although Facebook is quite popular, Linkedin is still in its infancy. Last I heard from a contact at Linkedin, they had approx 900K users in this country, of which only about 25% would be what you call active users! = approx 3-4% of the white collar workforce.

In addition, I think a lot of corporates themselves are still struggling how to engage clients, consumers & potential employees through such mediums at the moment...

Cheers
Kunal

I look at it the other way: A company that doesn't use web 2.0 has less competition for jobs. A company that does use web 2.0 is wading through an unstable mire where the rules haven't been established yet. Makes for some great stories, but good business? Not so much.

On the technical side (which is where I reside), most companies simply don't have the expertise and experience to use these tools properly. The idea, say, for a DBA to be completely dependent on pretty pictures that are several levels of abstraction away from what is really happening is anathema to a lot of senior people.

Of course, Oracle is a big corporation and wants and needs lots of 2.0 types. But small/medium companies? It's still often a mistake.

And I must say, linkedin has some crappy interfaces.

The root problem is that corporations needs and peoples personal lives are not congruent. Would you really want your college-daze indiscretions known to one and all?

Thanks for your comments,

One thought of using Social Media/Networking sites from a business perspective is that conversations are happening in the social media space about your company regardless of whether you are there or not (for both large and small orgs).

You can either not participate in those conversations and think everything is fine, or you can get online and talk to your customers/clients/candidates and help them with the things that they want from your company (whether that is company information, customer service, support, etc...) Social networking sites provide another communication tool which allows us to talk to each other similar in the way we use a phone or email or fax machine.

Thanks both for your comments.

Barfo, from a recruitment perspective the usage of 2.0 tools would be even more cost effective sources for small/medium companies
Why? First because it is free. Not all the companies have enough resources to have an specialized team dedicated to 2.0 recruitment.

Second, because you can reach a wider range of candidates. From my point of view, it is not a competition on the number of roles but on the quality of candidates you manage to enter into the process. In other words, you can identify them upfront and there's no need to wait for them to apply.

On the personal part, I have all my different accounts configured, which means people will only see my "professional" profile as all the rest of information (including photos, tags, etc) are only available to my "real friends".

The notion that people's personal and professional lives are distinct and should be kept so, is so old that it just doesn't hold true in todays times... and the question is why should it? We spend most of our life at work (8-10 hours / day), and accept it or not, bring our personal lives to work each day. So, why can't we let our customers, or prospective employees take a little peek at our personal lives too? In my opinion, this just makes a corporation seem humane...

In fact this is exactly what some of the more progressive organisations (large and small) are leveraging to successfully create a unique culture for themsleves! And more and more employees are being drawn towards such organisations...

And the most efficient way to do so in today's times is by using the power of the internet or so called 2.0 web technologies... LI, FB and twitter each have their drawbacks and may not be perfect, but by far the best of the lot...