Social recruiting - is it really Web -2.0

We wrote out a shopping the list the other day yet the next morning still no milk; why do I have to even bother with paper let alone online shopping?

Before the early 1950's shops had a shop keeper who would serve each customer individually and at weekends, they would have a boy (sorry girls) on a bike who would deliver to your house.  Then, Woolworths launched the first self-service stores in response to intense competition from rival chains like S. S. Kresge.

Over the years the self-service concept has become ever more sophisticated but is on an obvious curve.  We now have personal shoppers and home delivery taking us back to before the 1950's; so is it only a matter of time when we get automatic deliveries of certain items based on regular usage so the rest of our 'traditional' shopping is for 'specialist' items only.

 

E-commerce sites, and I hold up Amazon as one of the leaders, have gone beyond just showing special offers when you go back to their site in the hope that you may buy something, they have personalised search working very well.  Career sites are however still very basic in their matching capability but this due for a big change as networking sites take a greater hold over recruitment.

I know we may be a few years before Tesco (Wal Mart for some) deliver my milk, bread, eggs, meat etc without having an order but living where we live, we get eggs, meat and vegetables delivered by local farms/shops without the need for any kind of written order.  And if we don't want our eggs this week, they take them away with them.

And now I'll get to my point!  Surely with the amount of data people are starting to share on social networking sites it should be possible for 'virtual recruiters' (real or synthetic) to identify when someone is ripe for a new job; be it based on their career history, the sector they work in, the company they work for.  I read somewhere recently that social networking allows recruiters to do their job in the way they should i.e. networking, talking to people, finding out what they want/need etc.

Sounds like recruiting will be back in the 50's then with recruiters serving applicants individually based on a more personal relationship and boys (and girls) will be back on bikes delivering great new jobs to people. 

Maybe we are really in a Web -2.0 world?