Not long ago, Second Life was a relatively unknown virtual world, populated by characters created by hardcore techies. Today, this 3D creation is part of our everyday life. Teachers and lecturers are already using it to inspire a new generation, and now advertisers are visiting this piece of cyberspace in a bid to recruit staff.
Yell, producer of the Yellow Pages, has tapped into this virtual world to run a real-life recruitment campaign. It uses a group of avatars (digital characters) dressed in yellow T-shirts, who hang around a virtual phone box on a piece of Second Life “land”. The phone box contains links and information about careers at Yell. Cleverly, the company has also installed a kiosk on its plot, so that other avatars can take one of the company’s distinctive T-shirts to wear around virtual town — doing a spot of free advertising for Yell while they’re at it.
The company is believed to be the first to use Second Life in this way, and this week it won the top prize for innovation at the CIPD recruitment marketing awards. Judges praised this creative use of a social networking site as a “brave use of a new medium that pushed boundaries”.
With the internet now an established source of information, and social networking sites such as Second Life, Facebook and MySpace bookmarked on computers the world over, it’s perhaps not surprising that recruiters have decided to turn to this virtual world in the name of business. After all, Second Life is “home” to more than seven million people across the globe.
But with some people still getting to grips with text alerts and logging their details with online recruitment websites rather than flicking through newspaper job ads, does the average job hunter need such innovation to draw them to a company? Will we even think about visiting sites like these to look for work?
The answer is probably not – at least not yet. “There is a huge group of people who look at these (social networking) sites, but I don’t know anyone who would look at them to find a job,” says Gavin Anderson, creative director at the recruitment and communications agency ThirtyThree.
“We want people to be creative, but the best place to put your recruitment message is where people are most likely to look for it.” And that place, he believes, is not yet Second Life.
Anderson, one of the CIPD award judges, says the industry was not “anywhere near” exploiting the new developments in technology to their advantage. It will require money and “a bit of a leap of faith” from advertising agencies before this sort of marketing becomes the norm.
The problem, says Anderson, is that companies are finding it increasingly hard to find, and keep, good staff, so clients are resorting to the safe “tried and tested” methods of recruitment.
However, Tsz Wu, head of interactive at Work Communications ad agency, believes it’s only a matter of time before more companies advertise – and people find jobs – this way.
Wu says our need for a better work-life balance means we will increasingly want employers to seek us out for employment, rather than the other way around. “We don’t want to think of looking for a job as work,” he says.
Job adverts and brand names need to appear in places where we play and go for entertainment online - social networking sites included. It’s all about sparking an interest “when someone’s head is in the right place”.
“Just putting adverts in the classified section means you have to be mentally in that place to think ‘I want to look for a job today’. But it’s not about looking for a job at any one moment,” says Wu. “To say job ads should only be in the classifieds is outdated. It needs to be a totally flexible approach. Second Life is where you start getting the cross between real life and virtual play and entertainment.”
Isabelle Hung, head of national resourcing at Yell, agrees. She says the company did not venture into Second Life to boost recruitment figures, but to attract passing trade.
“It was not a decision to attract more candidates to apply. It was an idea from our advertising agency, out of the blue, that would reach people we wouldn’t normally reach, so people would say Yell is a company that we should be considering for a job,” she says.
“People who are looking for jobs are going to go to job pages,” she adds. “This is a way of catching people and making them realise that there are other companies to consider than Virgin or IBM. This is to ensure that our brand is out there so people think about us when they are looking for a job.”
It appears to be paying off. More than 300 visitors came to the Yell website through the Second Life phone boxes in the first 24 hours.
Dave Runacres, national account director at TMP, the agency that developed Yell's advert, said Second Life is already being used as a marketing tool in the US, particularly to host virtual careers fairs. “This is the first time it's been used this way in the UK,” he says. “I think it will catch on. There’s been lots of interest. It’s really creative.”
Perhaps a reflection of the technological “slow burn”, as Anderson puts it, is that this year’s CIPD Grand Prix went to an offline graduate recruitment campaign by the defence technology and security company QinetiQ. The campaign, which also won in the best graduate advert category, was described by judges as fresh and thought-provoking for using images of war and bombing to get its message across. Quite a contrast to a stroll in a virtual world.
Other winners and finalists this year were hospital wristbands to promote an NHS project, beauty therapists to promote Virgin Atlantic, abandoned tennis balls to recruit tennis coaches and a sculpture of a phone placed in a shopping centre to promote sales openings at Direct Line.
It seems we may have to wait a little while longer before the avatars start coming our way.
The Guardian
