Ok, so Google Wave has been released now to 100,000 people, with many more being invited as time goes by. At first, the userbase will primarily be geeks and Google fans. Nobody really knows how much Wave will evolve, or how important it will end up being. It could flop drastically and become a niche community like Orkut and Knol, or it could achieve its goals and become the de facto online communications tool. All we know at the moment is that it’s a bit slow, has gaps in browser support, and people are quite confused. But it’s fun, quirky, and here to stay.

At the time of writing this, the invites are still going out. The nominations we made as first batch users don’t appear to have been sent out yet, so Wave is currently full of strangers writing haikus, limericks and putting pins on maps together. The majority of the users don’t even realise there is a huge public scene on Wave yet (tip: search for ‘with:public’ to enter the scene, and search ‘-public’ for all your private waves) and are most likely bored of making waves on their own while waiting for their friends to join. Seems the majority of the people getting involved in the public waves were us folks from the developer sandbox, and we pretty much rehashed everything that we did before in this new system. Before long, we had FAQs, Tips and Tricks, and Keyboard Shortcut waves broadcasting their light over stormy waters. Not to mention the all-important community etiquette guidelines, which brings me onto my next point: flame wars. No corner of the internet goes unscathed from that most fundamental human desire to tell somebody just how wrong they are…

That’s right. In a wave created to share funny limericks, we have guys hurling insults over parental guidelines. But it’s not all like that – there were many examples of collaborative behaviour, and it works very well indeed. At one point, there were five people contributing to the same document – all in harmony. Correcting each others mistakes, focussing on their own little areas. While the wave was being built, there were many little blips appearing offering comments on the content, which were noted in real-time, and edits made. These were all strangers. A glimpse of the future? From my perspective, it was great to see the possibilities of shared coding as well, I hope something interesting comes from that too.

We even have robots to make it pretty for us while we type! Confusion is rife though, we’ve been handed this alien technology that goes against everything we’ve learned. One of the more popular waves (135 messages) is titled “I really don’t know yet what to use Wave for.” In the words on one fanboy: “Now all we need to do is figure out what Google wants us to do, and pray in its general direction.”

So, here at 3DMarComms, we’re looking into how we can embrace Wave into HARBOUR ATS. Let’s be honest here, our product names were just born to sail together. Ride those choppy waves into our safe harbour – right? Nomenclature aside, we think Wave is going somewhere interesting and – regardless of the hype and confusion – we’ll be keeping our eyes open. We suggest you do too!

P.S., Say hello if you’re already on there – toneee@googlewave.com

Last Friday we pushed live our ATS product site – www.harbour-ats.com.

At last we have a proper face to HARBOUR®, which coincides with the launch of our “instant ATS” product (more on that in a mo). We’ve been roadshowing the system and the thinking behind it for a month or two now – and (although I guess many would say it anyway even if it wasn’t the case) the feedback has been universally, and overwhelmingly, positive. Quite relieving really considering the time, sweat and bears we’ve put into this even so far. It would indeed seem that those people who have spent a lot of time working with clients using many ATS products out there (probably collectively most ATS product’s out there in the UK space) have all been as frustrated with their experiences as we, and clients we’ve worked, have previously found – which is exactly why we’ve built HARBOUR® ATS.

It seems every other day this ATS or that is sounding off about adding a new function here or a new capability there – but I wonder why they can’t just go back and get the basics right? The stuff that the candidate engages with, or indeed engages the candidate. The stuff the client REALLY uses and interfaces with. The stuff that makes a day-to-day difference, not just another seemingly mostly “just for the sake of it” technology implementation that has little impact to the majority of users. Anyway – each to their own – and in my books the longer competitors are unwilling (or is it unable?) to review their fundamental offer to make it what so many people clearly believe it should be (or at least what it shouldn’t), then vive la difference and each to their own.

We know that we’ll be the new boys (and girls) for a long time yet, so in a move to build that all important user proving of HARBOUR®, as well as flexing the real speed and flexibility of the system in real-time, we created an entry level system we call HARBOUR® instant ATS. You can read all about it on harbour-ats.com, as well as signing up for it, but essentially it’s a sub £500 ATS that offers many of the features of the full ATS and delivered within a matter of hours.

And what’s the flash and bang about? Well I kid you not, we pushed the site live and as we did so the most torrential shower emptied over Tiptree (where I’m based). I checked the site’s all good when live and then go to get a glass of something fizzy to raise to the site’s good health – and it’s at that point that the lightning filled the sky with the immediate crack of thunder directly overhead. Now I’m not a big one for omens, but it got me thinking – when Robbie Cowling pressed go live on Jobserve, based as he was and still is in Tiptree, all those years ago, did he witness an electric storm? Here’s hoping there’s some cosmic internet business lay line running through these parts – in this economy every little helps ☺

Not only is this the question I’ve heard alot lately as I drove down to South Wales with the family to combine a coastal break back in the mother land with an appearance at the AGR (Association of Gradate Recruiters) conference at the very smart Celtic Manor in Newport, but it’s also a business question I’m asking myself and the team as we close in on a more public launch of HARBOUR® ATS.

Anyway – we are indeed nearly there – and once I’m back at 3D MarComms HQ and have polished off a few bits and bobs then we’ll be in a position to launch www.Harbour-ATS.com – probably mid next week TBH. And if you want to be amongst some of the first to know then go there now and leave your email address and we’ll ensure you’re top of the “people to tell” list.

What a busy summer this is turning out to be – best I make the most of family time at the pleasantly warm beach and get offline while I can

We’ve been on the road for the past couple of weeks telling a lot of people about HARBOUR® – to which we’re pleased to report that the reception has been universally positive. But what with all that talking and pitching the system we became aware that alongside a bag full of differentiators and USPs, what sets HARBOUR® ATS apart in the first place is how it’s been built from the core to deliver unprecedented flexibility, configurability and speed to deployment.

So it got us thinking. If it’s really as good and as intuitive  and as fast to set up as we think it is, why not construct a  truly entry level version that can be live and the user trained in less than 24hours? And what about pricing it so a Recruiter could put it on a credit card? And so HARBOUR® instant ATS was born.

So what d’you get?

• Up to five live jobs at any one time, all branded with your logo
• Unlimited candidate processing for 3 months
• Jobs posted to twitter
• Branded sub-domain url for all jobs
• Each job has ‘send-to-a-friend’ facility
• Multiple recruiter accounts
• Activity summaries emailed to your designated email account
• Create unlimited online application forms/versions of
• Create auto-sift questions within application forms
• Auto-acknowledgment of applications
• Bespoke email templates for mass or individual candidate communication
• Automated interview scheduling
• Multiple media response tracking and reporting
• Set up within 12-24 hours (*Monday-Friday – 8am-6pm GMT)

And all this for a sub £500 price tag.

When’s it live?

The system is live and working right now (we’ve already got our first client proving it), but we intend to launch it proper off the back of a dedicated HARBOUR® ATS site which will go live in about two weeks (w/c 13th July). And whilst we “beta live prove” the system we’ll also be distributing some promotional codes for completely free set up to those who fancy being an ATS pioneer (you may even get a badge too .

So watch this space (or any other that has driven you here) and we’ll be sure to point you in the right direction when the HARBOUR cat is well and truly out of this particular ATS bag.

Well – here we are then.

1 year – 12 months – 365 days – 8760 hours – 525,948 minutes

Not exactly the easiest of economic environments within which to start a business it’s true, but at the same time we’re more “glass is half full” type of guys than “half empty” and we know that even within recruitment there are still opportunities if you have your offer bang on (together with a modicum of luck being in the right place at the right time and a seemingly limitless appetite for kissing lots of speculative frogs).

If you’d said 12 months ago this is where we’d be on our 1st birthday, business wise, we’d have been very happy with that – but of course the expectations and ambitions that drive you also morph as the year progresses, fueled by a healthy measure of impatience, so it’s only when we look back at this juncture and remind ourselves what we hoped for when we started, that we then allow ourselves a momentary pat on the back.

The first couple of months worked out nicely through projects where we partnered with ThirtyThree – the two biggest being refining the underpinning system that drives the many recruitment consultant sites (UK & global) that are all part of the SR Group, and then into a really interesting one for Virgin Group (careers portal here, my write up about it here). Both projects helped us learn more that would shape our own steps forward, proved our capability to deliver on time and on budget and also demonstrated how we set out add value every step of the way – but it also re-enforced our belief that being completely “off the shelf” just wasn’t good enough for modern business requirements, as no matter how “established” or “fixed” a potential client believes their process to be, like everything in life, there’s a need for it to continue evolving solutions efficiently and swiftly post-deployment.

So off the back of Virgin we knew it was time to set about investing our time and effort into our own product, for whilst being hired hands is fine, it’s not what we set out to do for always. And now, having launched HARBOUR® to Recruitment Ad Agency land and had some very interesting conversations over the last month we’re approaching our 2nd year with what we believe to be a kick arse system that everyone we’ve spoken with is very impressed with and agrees offers a new level of candidate and recruiter centricity that will really realise massive e-recruitment efficiencies for those who use it – a long way over and above the usual suspect ATS providers for sure. But most exciting of all is the fact that through those conversations, as well as having spoken with some media, our thinking has continued to evolve too and so we’re now finishing off a neat product offer that we hope will help us get that all important off the ground client profile, all based around HARBOUR® ATS’ unparalleled flexibility, configurability & speed to deploy.

We’re not delusional though, and in the current climate our strategy is about ensuring we hang on in there until the world comes back, building clients and reputation wherever we can. But one year in we now have the clearest idea of what we’re about and how we’re going to get where we want to go. The theory we had in our heads when we started out has held up very well so far, and to be honest so have we in practice too, so now it’s time to take it to the next level – what exciting times

I was recently approached by OnRec.com (”The Magazine for Online Recruitment around the world”) to contribute to an article. You can read the article here – Using social media and Web 2.0 effectively (with additional contributions from Jamie Leonard, Euan McDonald & Lucian Tarnowski). I thought I’d post my full thoughts here too.

How can recruiters use social media and Web 2.0 effectively to engage candidates?
The best way to use social media to engage candidates is by first ensuring you understand your target audience. If you have an idea of where they may already be congregating online or what they’re consuming (by way of web content) then it’s a great idea to ‘listen’ to them first whilst you work out what you can bring to the party. If you’re hoping that a couple of tweaked press releases every other month will in any way be engaging then you’re setting yourself up for a very public fall, or worse: indifference.

Put yourself in the audiences’ shoes because they’re asking “What’s In It For Me” and if you can’t answer that with some degree of empathetic certainty then best manage your expectations right down from the start. Engagement requires the buy in of both parties – and if you aren’t offering anything compelling or interesting then you can’t really expect to reap the benefits.

But once you are confident that you know your audience then the best advice is just to get on with it. You’ll soon know whether you’re hitting the right note and raising any interest, and then: keep it up; keep listening; stay true to your brand values; show integrity; keep looking for other avenues to broaden that reach. Overcoming the initial inertia is probably the hardest part of the whole thing, after all then you’re just doing online what you do in the real world.

What are the benefits and also pitfalls to avoid when using social media and Web 2.0?
The very least you should achieve is an enhanced search engine profile (Search Engine Optimisation), because the search engines love regularly updated content – and you should be producing that if nothing else. But the full rewards, if you get it even modestly right, are very compelling:

• The potential to broaden your recruitment horizons – reach outside of traditional, potentially stagnant talent pools and desperate active job seekers.
• The opportunity to change preconceptions about your business that might otherwise have harmed your recruitment activity (often without you knowing).
• Influence / balance online conversations that would otherwise negatively affect your employer brand.
• Reach passive candidates, establishing and then maintaining a front of mind presence with them.
• Differentiate from the competition – tangibly.

The main pitfall to avoid has certainly got to be underestimating the time commitment this will require. For some people the ability to write engagingly comes more easily than for others, but either way once you’ve started any such activity then you have to keep it up, otherwise that can often be perceived more negatively than not starting out at all (stagnant blogs or poorly updated social media groups can speak louder of your organisation than the outdated content). Another pitfall is not being prepared. If you haven’t listened then you won’t know what you might come up against, you won’t add any value and worst of all, you might not have anything interesting to say (in the target audiences eyes at least).

And finally it’s important to remember that nowadays people “trust peers over marketers”, so be ready to take the rough with the smooth as people will look to openly validate your messages against other (sometimes disgruntled, often highly cynical) commentary. If your company isn’t willing for you to be open and honest, perhaps your Employer Brand is actually as much fiction as fact, then maybe it’s best to get that right first before opening yourselves up to the full frankness of the web.

How do you see social media and Web 2.0 developing and influencing the recruitment industry in the future? What will be the next big change?
I think that web will increasingly force the transparency of employer propositions’, certainly within key skills markets. Companies will begin to understand the tangible business value of being THE “Employer of Choice” and invest in managing their Employer Brand more fastidiously, doing so from the inside-out, also realising the benefits of actively encouraging an open culture to further enhance the external Employer Brand.

Potential candidates on the other hand will increasingly hear about jobs through any number of web touch points, peer to peer networks being increasingly ubiquitous, but will also have more and more sophisticated “search agent” type tools that will scour the web on their behalf, sifting through information and collating “must read” lists that will include appropriate job opportunities and articles/comments about previously flagged target prospective employers, all bundled together with their other daily news and active interest subjects feeds.

And what this will all mean is a significant shift in the balance of recruitment spend from what is still overwhelmingly focussed on attraction based activity to a far greater investment in long-term Employer Brand management and broad reach digital engagement activity. Why? Because companies will grow to realise that the new web paradigm is more a technology underpinned attitudinal one than a new medium to be controlled, so getting someone’s attention becomes a (still) crucial but fundamentally relatively smaller part of the overall business picture.

And the next big change?
Joe Public and the Corporate World have a long way to go to get up to speed with what is possible today. The vast majority still barely get Web1.0, so there has to be a period of catch up and consolidation as the technology already here gets converged and simplified – and that’s actually what is going to be the big change: a massive swell of new and existing internet users switching from just accessing 2 or 3 elements of the web resource to becoming immersed in the complete social web.

The systems, technology and downright mindboggling cleverness underpinning the web will continue to evolve at a lightning pace too (not least in pursuit of the next next big change – The Intelligent Web), but I believe a large part of the focus will switch from “what” can be done to “how” it’s done – most importantly delivering the user experience that enables the greatest number of people to engage with each other as efficiently as possible. And with the Internet increasingly being where we store our information and where the software we use runs from (as opposed to on our local hard drives) so barriers to access will continue to diminish and remote functioning capability improve, all furthering the swell of immersed users – welcome to the age of Cloud Computing.

So Amazon are just about to launch their second generation kindle e-book reader – and as someone who’s an avid e-reader (you’ll often catch him squinting at a PDA where he’s downloaded the latest Terry Goodkind) my partner in crime here, Tony, immediately fired through the news of it’s impending release.

You can see the old (left) and new version (right) here:

The old & the new Amazon e-Reader - Kindle

It seems those that like new things are going to be lapping it up whatever – one comment seemed to sum it up: “Still ugly. Still Expensive. Still want one”.

But what we can’t work out is why they’re keeping with the full keyboard. It just makes it too big – doesn’t it? And let’s face it – we all know it doesn’t have the capability of a netbook, so you’re not working on it – and if the developers don’t have the ability to create a complete iPhone-esque touch screen interface at this time (we all now that’s where this will go though) then surely they could create a simpler interface that could cope with all you’ll be doing on this version of the Kindle without eating up space? Others are managing to get a better balance e.g. Sony Reader (although there are many things that differentiate the Reader and the Kindle – not least Kindle’s wifi ability and a vastly greater library to chose from).

It’s still exciting to see the future evolving before our eyes (as we touched on in regards to ePaper in an earlier post this year), but I wonder if sometimes product designers lose sight of what they’re actually producing at this release time and detrimentally affect this generation of the product because of that – in this case (in our opinion/experience) an eReader where the keyboard just seems a little in the way and uneccessary.

Still – clearly Tony’s pushing to try and get one through on expenses whatever!

I saw something last year from the BBC about the next generation of e-books, or e-paper to be more accurate, that I meant to blog about and never got around to. An article in the Economist last week reminded me of the original story that caught my attention – and so if it’s still current enough for The Economist then I say it’s still current enough for us!

Digging around I found this recent excerpt on You tube from the company itself:

This really excites me on a number of levels – and not least that the originating brains in this product are British (well done the very clever people at Cambridge Uni).

But the main thing catching my eye is the way this development shows how today’s technological leaps will actually start to look more (as opposed to less) like mediums we are used to traditionally using/interacting with. Things these days evolve at a frightening/exciting pace (depends on which side of the fence you sit), that’s a given, but we as humans don’t. Papers are the way they are because of centuries of ‘user acceptance testing’ creating a mass communication platform that enables humans to best ingest a broad range of information – and with ePaper we can see how it’s coming back full circle (from paper -> computers -> hand held devices -> ePaper). It’s clear to see for ourselves from these kinds of exciting developments  how eCommunication can reach from the desks and mobile devices of the geeks and early adopters, and from the night time “nothing on telly” home based user, into every-one’s every day life.

OK – not everyone’s, I don’t think you’ll ever get my Dad to part with his paper, but I’m thinking that what we’re seeing here is the foundation of the next mass audience multimedia device through which tens of  millions will access the web as their primary route, and it’ll do it far more ubiquitously than internet through mobile phones. I mean, sure, phones are getting better – much better (I’ll probably blog at some point just why I was so blown away by the iPhone I converted to at the start of the year) – but even with the figures about internet access through mobiles increasing year on year, it’s still a very limited experience. An experience that more often or not I’d generally leave to partake in when infront of a proper terminal (unless it’s a simple text or location based engagement I’m requiring). So there you are, I’ve said it: I just don’t think that the mobile phone in the UK (certainly in its current guise) will ever really become the ubiquitous internet access point that many have predicted (year after year after year). But something like ePaper on the other hand – where the experience is more akin to a newpaper and the potential engagement far richer and more user centric – now that I could really see taking off.

And at that point if any news broadcasters & publishers out there are still in business having been bold and smart enough to understand they’re playing the long game, I bet then they’ll be glad that they kept investing in their brand identity, maintaining and building their brand following – because that kind of loyalty is very expensive to buy (in terms of cash and time), and it’s those with that brand loyalty behind them that will have the eye of the reader with targeted adverts and track-able engagement to properly monetise from all their media routes – text based and rich media.

Probably