Recruiting on Second Life - the sign of things to come?

By: Dean Best - 14 September 2007 10:25

What do IBM, the Vancouver police department and France's number two retailer Auchan have in common? In the real world, not a lot, but online it is a different matter.

These are just three of the growing number of organisations to turn to the virtual online world Second Life to fast-track their recruitment procedures. In Auchan’s case, the aim is to recruit 300 departmental managers in a recruitment roadshow that starts on 22 September and tours major French cities until 6 October.

Auchan has booked 150 billboards in areas of Second Life that are frequented by French-speaking inhabitants to advertise its recruitment fairs.

Touching a billboard with an avatar takes the Second Life inhabitant to a page on Auchan's recruitment website talent.auchan.for.

"Second Life is a universe full of promises, which attracts people with a very modern outlook and keen on innovation," explained Auchan's HR director Joel Fabiani.

It is also a way of reaching candidates who would be impossible to reach cost effectively by any other means. In its search for qualified young candidates, Auchan gives Second Life citizens a freephone number (+44 825 00 21 61). Inbound calls are filtered for suitably qualified candidates, who will be given an interview slot at the nearest jobs fair.

The significance of using Second Life to do pre-selection for interviews is enormous in France. The standard procedure is for potential candidates to submit hand-written 'lettres de motivation' that are intended to combine literary flourish and sychophancy seamlessly.

The simple fact is that years of word processing and the widespread use of photocopiers (for which jobseekers are marked down) means that the age group in which Auchan is trying to recruit are simply inaccessible through conventional channels.

Peter Crosskey

Comments on this blog post

While I share your interest in this extension of Auchan's recruiting presence on the Internet, and have posted on the topic on my blog http://shoppingbasket.wordpress.com/, I'm not convinced that this initiaitive is as significant as you make out. The arrivial of monster.fr about eight years ago, and the emergence of cadremploi.fr and apec.fr, amongst many others, has meant the slow but sure disappearance of the hand-written 'lettres de motivation'. Today, the only place to see up-to-date job ads in France is on the Internet, and candidates typically apply through the same medium, with typed cover letters accompanying MS Word CVs, sent via e-mail or a web form. Auchan's talent.auchan.fr site has been live since 2000, and their Rencontres de Talents have been going on some years too. Really, the only new element here is the use of billboards in Second Life to (hopefully) lead more potential candidates to the website. Which is something of a timid use of the possibiilties of Second Life. Other French companies such as L'Oreal have already gone much further in exploring the possibilities of Second Life for recruitment campaigns, including virtual job fairs and virtual interviews.

shoppingbasket, Belgium