Follow the leader to find brave new talent

INTERVIEW: Lucian Tarnowski sees social networking as key to thefuture of recruitment and warns companies not to lose touch withGeneration Y

BAFFLED BY blogs, Facebook comments and tweets, many companiesundoubtedly hoped online social networking would be a passing fad.

Now though it is such an integral form of communication for itsprospective next generation of employees that companies risk losingtouch and losing talent if they don't embrace it, especially in thearea of recruitment, believes Lucian Tarnowski.

Tarnowski (26), an entrepreneur named Europe's youngest YoungGlobal Leader by the World Economic Forum and cited as one of theUK's "Top 10 Up and Coming Entrepreneurs", set up a website andbusiness in response, BraveNewTalent.com, two years ago. It has beenlive for the past year and garnered enough initial interest that ithas been named a "Technology Company of Exceptional Potential" bythe British government.

"We spent the first year really building the technology and whatthe proposition was," he says. "It was important that we really gotthe basic concept right."

The concept is deceptively simple - that the youngest generationentering the workforce at the moment is a digital generation thatdoes not see a distinct separation between the online and off-lineworlds. They want - and increasingly expect - their working world tobe accessible online, too.

Enter BraveNewTalent.com, a platform where jobseekers andcompanies can set up basic profiles for free.

Jobseekers can sign up to follow companies, which may be viasocial networking tools the company already uses, like Twitter orFacebook, but BraveNewTalent will also build out a bespoke channelwithin the site, starting at a cost of about pound(s)5,000([euro]6,000).

The company channel enables a site user to follow the company,see when they tweet, see new blog posts, view news stories and soon. The jobseeker can also receive job advertisements from thecompanies in which they are interested and can send in applicationsvia the site. The advantage of this, Tarnowski believes, is thatcompanies know that they can target those people who have alreadyexpressed an interest in their company and the jobseeker hopefullywill get priority for their application because they have alreadyshown an interest in the company.

Compare that to the current situation where companies postadvertisements for jobs as a sort of general broadcast to anunfiltered audience of millions, while on the other side, jobseekerssend out hundreds or thousands of CVs to different companies in ascatter-gun approach.

Tarnowski says they are trying to create an end-to-end solutionlinking the jobseeker and the company.

He emphasises however that BraveNew Talent is not trying to forcechange in the jobseeking world. "BraveNewTalent is riding a change,it's not creating it. That whole change is already happening withconsumer brands; employer brands are lagging."

Tomorrow's employees will come from this digital nativepopulation, who have a set of expectations structured around theinternet. Ironically, in a reversal of roles, it is these nativeswho are more on top of technology and social trends than thecompanies wishing to employ them.

"Generation Y, the Millennials - they are unique for one veryimportant reason. For the first time, the youngest people enteringthe workforce are the most knowledgeable about these new tools andunderstand the core changes and paradox shifts better than the chiefexecutive. It gives them a position of power," says Tarnowski.

While one might question whether there is much power to be had inthe current job market and a slumping global economy, Tarnowskiargues that companies need to understand how to find the desirableemployees within this generation and learn what motivates them toselect one employer over another.

If online engagement and social networking tools are the obviousconnection point, the kind of workplace carrots that lure GenerationY will probably surprise most companies, according to a study,Managing Tomorrow's People, recently released byPricewaterhouseCoopers.

"They're much more interested in travelling globally. The keydifference is their loyalty to their skill rather than theiremployer," says Tarnowski, who was in Dublin recently for the launchof the report. That alone is a major change for companies who areused to luring employees with the promise of security and stabilityin a single location.

They also want an employer that is as technologically adept asthey are or they will go elsewhere.

"If you think about the pace of change in the lifetime of thisgeneration, they think 'I've only ever known radical change -mobiles, TV, the internet - I expect the same from my employer'.They expect the employer to keep up with the times," says Tarnowski.

A key finding in the report is the discovery that even thoughcompanies may be laggards in the area of social networking andcommunicating online, they actually expect a high degree oftechnical competence from employees with such demands in their jobs.

"A lot of the chief executives that we talked to around the worldsaid that the education system isn't doing what the employers needit to do, so the employers are doing the educating themselves," saysMark Carter, partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ireland.

Tarnowski sees that gap as an opportunity. He says his company isworking to make online training materials available to prospectiveemployees in advance of them applying to companies, so that they canbring their skills up to par for potential jobs.

"We would let the employers train and develop and distributematerial to the candidates off the payroll. We would make access toeducation free, offering training courses in advance of the job."

Meanwhile, his pitch to companies is that BraveNewTalent "willbuild a community of people interested in your company, who want towork for you."

Rather than the relationship being one way and transactional -from the employer to the prospective employee - engagement is nowtwo-way social recruitment, much more attractive to youngeremployees.

"I just see BraveNewTalent as a really obvious answer," saysTarnowski.

The question will be whether those Millennials want a singlepoint of contact for companies - as seems likely in some form - orprefer to graze independently across the net's social byways forcompany information and contacts.