Get a Life! AND recruit candidates at the same time.

By Bryan Johanson, October 11, 2007

Today I'll share with you the inside scoop on Sodexho's first foray into using Virtual Job Fairs in Second Life. I recently interviewed Anthony Scarpino, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition for Sodexho, and Amy Brooks, one of Sodexho's recruiters who participated in their first ever virtual job fair. Amy recently attended our online Recruiter Boot Camp and graciously volunteered to share her experiences using Second Life to attract candidates.

For those of you who don't know what Second Life is, it's time for you to get a life – a virtual life that is! Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by almost ten million residents from around the globe.

Sodexho started entertaining the idea of using Second Life as a way to conduct virtual job fairs early in 2007. They conducted their first event in May and have subsequently conducted two additional online recruiting events. Below is a screen shot of the main entrance to Sodexho's building in Second Life. TMP (Sodexho's recruitment advertising agency) bought a small island where their customers can purchase beach front property and create virtual worlds to attract potential employees. Sodexho and T-mobile were among the first to take advantage of this new medium.

Sodexho chose to design the site very much like they would an expensive career fair set up in a hotel. Sodexho's branding is prominently integrated throughout the design. As you can see, the room is surrounded by billboards containing information about benefits, culture, open positions (a link to the Sodexho main website), and other important topics of interest to potential employees. The building also contains a slide show station as well as a video that recruiters can use to educate candidates about Sodexho. In the middle of the room is a "stair well" that allows candidate to teleport to interview rooms that are on the second floor of the building. Sodexho has also experimented with using the theatre to conduct training sessions and they even ran a simulated "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" type game to educate their senior leadership team on the capabilities of the technology.

The building is open all the time and visitors can use the yellow boxes on the table to communicate. One box allows them to submit a resume. The second box sends an IM to one of Sodexho's recruiters who can choose whether or not to interact with the candidate depending on their availability.

Of course no job fair would be complete without some type of gift or giveaway. Sodexho spared no expense. All candidates who came to the job fair received a virtual hover craft (with the Sodexho logo on the side of course) that they can use to explore the rest of the island and travel in other virtual worlds – a clever idea and a huge winner from the candidates' perspective.



Wednesday morning Anthony Scarpino gave me a personal tour of the site. Of course, I had to sign up for my free identity the night before. I didn't have much time for customization, but I have to say the process was relatively easy and a lot of fun.

Amy gives us a flavor for what she learned as a virtual recruiter:

"One interesting discovery was just how similar a virtual job fair is compared to an actual job fair. We all wore Sodexho shirts with our logo, we interacted with candidates in very much the same way we would in a real-world job fair. We were basically doing the same things we would do in a real-world job fair, just in a different environment."

Recruiters who participated had to create their own avatars and learn how to move them around in the environment. They also created a series of prescripted notes and greetings that they could use to communicate quickly with candidates.

Amy reports that it was "fun, exciting, and interesting. We are always looking for new and innovative ways to source good candidates." Below you can see some of the avatars used by Sodexho recruiters.

Will Sodexho do more events in the future? Absolutely! But they have learned some important lessons in the process.
Targeted events are better than general ones. The first event was focused on all open positions and involved many recruiters. It was too general. Anthony admits that "in the future we expect to run more targeted events focused on specific hiring areas." They recently ran an online event focused exclusively on Facilities Management positions and had a very good response.
You never know who's going to show up. Conventional wisdom assumes that the virtual world is an ideal opportunity to recruit the younger generation (Millennials). Amy and Anthony's experience suggests that their participants were "all over the board." This was unexpected. "We had people with 5, 15, and even 25 years experience in our industry attend the event," said Anthony Scarpino. Part of the unique demographic can be attributed to the invitation-only nature of the event. However, all participants had to go to Second Life on their own, create their own avatar, and learn how to move and interact in the virtual world.
Even virtual worlds take time to create: Don't expect to put up a virtual career site overnight. One important take-away from my interview with Anthony and Amy is that it takes time to design the site, choose what information you want to offer, and brand the site appropriately. Sodexho's site was designed in about a month and the cost was "quite reasonable" according to Anthony. While I wasn't able to get the actual costs, Anthony did mention that it was less than the cost of a couple of ads in the newspaper.
Training is required: Recruiters were given at least three training sessions on how to interact with candidates and how to move the avatars. Most recruiters picked avatars that approximated their actual appearance. Amy, however, picked something totally out of the box. The one important but unwritten rule is that all avatars needed to look like people – after all, this is a career fair.
If you build it, they won't come. Second Life is not quite ready to be the primary driver of traffic to an online career fair. Ten million residents sounds like a large number, but it hasn't quite hit critical mass yet. As Anthony puts it, advertising a career fair exclusively in Second Life for potential recruits is like putting a "billboard in the middle of a wheat field." Sodexho's event was by invitation only. Three weeks prior to the event, Sodexho tasked one recruiter exclusively to generate traffic for the event. Sodexho created an e-card invitation to send to potential participants. Only those people who were invited could actually attend. They also ran some ads on some selected job sites. In the end, they filled all the available seats.
Second Life's technology is still a little bit fragile. Anthony used the word "fragile," and I think that's accurate. While the technology performed well during my live tour with Anthony, it crashed at least three times the night before while I was using their online tutorial. Most of the crashes were related to display driver problems. Second Life has received a great deal of positive and not so position press lately. There are big rumors that they are going to be bought by Google, and that IBM and Microsoft are preparing to offer competing products.

So far Sodexho has extended four offers to people who came to them through the online career events – a solid result, but not overwhelming. Sodexho's biggest benefit was really in the branding. "Sodexho is looking for creative and innovative people. This medium allows us to differentiate ourselves from other companies, and allows us to brand our company as innovative, technology-savvy, and forward-thinking." My hat's off to Anthony and his team for being leaders and innovators. I think we've barely scratched the surface of what's possible with this environment. It provides a much better candidate experience and really sends a message to potential candidates that Sodexho is serious about hiring the best.

If you've experimented with a new and innovative sourcing idea, even if it's simple, I'd love to hear about it. We're always looking for practical and effective ways to find new candidates.

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