The increased use of social networking sites such as Facebook as a recruitment tool has again been called into question in a new report published by the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office).

'The ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) has warned that millions of young people could be jeopardising their future careers by revealing too
much about themselves on social networking sites.'

As an increasing number of employers are turning to the Internet as a recruitment tool, should people be more vigilant about the information they reveal? Why do young people use social networking sites in the first place? The majority of them, at least to start with, join these sites as a means of extending their network of friends, chatting to people with similar
interests. But just how much information should they reveal about themselves? The personal details that attract friends aren't necessarily the same as those that attract potential employers.

Should we as employers even be using these tools to recruit potential employees? True they're a great way to canvas for possible candidates. But do we have the right to be intrusive? Surely if people post personal
information on social networking sites, and make that information public, they're doing so because they WANT others to read it.

The Facebook website states 'At Facebook, we believe you should have control over your information and who sees it. So in addition to the basic visibility rules - only your friends and people in your networks can see your profile - we also give you granular control over the information you post to the site.' Should we in fact simply be educating social network users to utilise their privacy settings.

There are two inescapable facts concerning information that everyone is going to have to come to terms with. Published information belongs to the
public and private information belongs to private individuals.

The Information Commissioner is currently in the process of drafting guidance for individuals who are using or thinking of using social networking sites. This guidance will be published in the coming months, once comments have been received from the social networking sites involved.

It will be interesting to read the commissioner's guidance and see what effect, if any, that guidance has on the growing use of social networking sites in the recruitment industry.

Societe Generale posts 4th-quarter loss of $4.91 billion after trading fraud
was the headline in the Star Tribune in the wake of the $7 billion trading
scandal. The French bank took a 4.9 billion euro ($7.18 billion) hit closing
the unauthorized positions of futures trader Jerome Kerviel, who is being
held in a Paris prison and has been questioned by investigators for a third
time.

An internal report said bank officials failed to follow up on dozens of
warnings about questionable trades. The report commissioned by a committee
of three independent board members detailed 75 warnings signs in Kerviel's
exchanges, such as a trade with a maturity date on a Saturday or a missing
broker name. The signals weren't always flagged to superiors and "when the
hierarchy was warned, they didn't react," the report said.

Kerviel told investigators that he believes his bosses were well aware of
his risk taking but turned a blind eye as long as he earned money. "I can't
believe that my superiors were not aware of the amounts I was committing, it
is impossible to generate such profits with small positions," according to
excerpts of his police testimony published in Le Monde newspaper. Kerviel
also insisted that his top concern was "earning money for my bank. As long
as I was earning cash, the signs were not that worrisome," he said. "As long
as you earn money and it isn't too obvious, and it's convenient, nobody says
anything."

Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank told the BBC
that he was not shocked that the latest fraud had taken place - only its
scale. "Rogue trading is probably a daily occurrence within the financial
markets," he said.

This case obviously raises certain questions from a recruitment consultant's perspective:

If he had gone through the executive search and selection route would a consultant have spotted this dangerous aspect of his character during the interview?

We've read that this guy is smart and because he had worked in the back office he knew how to cover his tracks, but he was also a Walter Mitty character and was provided with counsellors by the bank.

"Sometimes people don't know the size of what they are getting into," Jean-Pierre Mustier, the head of the investment banking arm, said. The bank said it was baffled as to his "irrational" motives. But there is a suggestion that he did it to prove the system could be broken.

Should we be making more use of personality profiling during the recruitment process?

As a recruiter, I am not keen on this approach as it creates obstacles to recruiting talented people. How many of us do not have certain personality/behaviour defaults that differentiate us from the norm? Often
the most talented people are on the extreme side of thinking. Somehow we need a way to separate these from the seriously deluded.

How could he have been managed/controlled better?

I personally think some products are so new and complex that the risk management teams are always lagging behind. Just like drug testing in sports, some get caught out but many are always 1 step ahead.

What are the answers? How can we avoid situations like this happening again?

As ever we'd welcome your comments and thoughts.

Because it is a ‘soft skill’ the value that Internal Communications adds is difficult to measure in financial/profit and loss terms. You can’t say at the end of each quarter ‘here is the amount of profit attributed to Internal Communications’ – or can you? More intelligent business leaders are beginning to see a wider variety of influences that can impact on the bottom line.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that business is run by people – without people there would be no business. Small and large businesses rely on their people to make the venture successful. In a small business everyone pretty well knows what is going on and events and changes are discussed regularly. It is up to the business leader to enthuse and engage everyone and this is what makes each member of the team more productive.

In a large business, or one where people are scattered across number of different sites, the need for communication is greater. Just as in the small business, the CEO/leader of a large business needs to enthuse and engage. This not so easily done with a large or dispersed workforce and this is where Internal Communications comes in. They must interpret the words, vision, message of the leader and enthuse and engage the people within the company to feel and act in a positive and energised way to achieve the business goals – it must matter to them. Good Internal Communications can make this happen.

Where there is no communication throughout a company many people feel cut off and unimportant, they don’t understand where the business is going, and worse, they don’t care. They become lethargic, content to pick up a salary and while the days and months away focusing on holidays and weekends. The more ambitious will become restless and start looking for a greater challenge.

On the positive side, with good communications everyone knows what is expected of them, what the business is trying to do and what’s in it for them. There is a greater understanding of the big picture and because they are constantly informed on progress and changes and they feel part of it. Internal Communications allows a business to tap into the very valuable knowledge and ideas of those on the ground who see the problems and frequently come up with ideas to solve them. This can save a business a lot of time and money in consultancy fees.

Here at Alexander Hughes we have a deep understanding of the Internal Communications sector - if you're looking to recruit Internal Communications talent, or are looking for your next move, please contact me (m.walsh@alexanderhughes.com) today.

Dialogue seems to be the word of the moment in marketing circles, embracing the emergence of ‘conversational’ media, social networking, the free exchange of ideas, and the questioning of traditional roles of audience and publisher.

Certainly deeper, richer dialogue with our stakeholders is something that we’re working toward at Alexander Hughes. But what does that mean? Well, we think it means more transparency. Better access to our consultants and our thinking (via the blog, published consultant email addresses, RSS, and so on.) And it means more accountability.

This brings a question to mind for us to answer as recruitment consultants: “who are our clients?”

Broadly-speaking ( and yes it IS a generalisation ) recruitment firms fall into one of two categories - those who are client-driven and those who are candidate-driven. The former being oriented towards providing recruitment solutions to known client needs, the latter towards finding slots for candidates with specific functional skill ( Finance, IT Sales etc ).

But, perhaps, this clear distinction is starting to change. Many enlightened employers are adopting more candidate-centric recruitment models and practices. These are typically underpinned by a web-based ‘talent pool’ of pre-registered individuals who have expressed their interest in an organisation, and who are just waiting to be contacted by the employer when a suitable role becomes available. The big picture behind this shift is a number of socio-economic factors – from declining birth rates, retiring baby boomers, sustained economic growth, increase in knowledge-based industries – that has led to what is often described as the “war for talent”.

It’s also important to understand that a big factor in this changing paradigm is candidates’ increasing realisation that the opportunity exists to ( almost ) pick and choose who they want to work for - self-identification as talent, if you like. And as employers understand that candidates are looking for more than just a career, so a greater emphasis is placed on the work/life balance of their employees, and on investing in their overall development needs and career aspirations, rather than focusing just on those which serve delivery of the Corporate goals.

Has it yet got the point then where employers are retaining recruiters to engage the interest of talent, on their behalf, in the broadest possible terms? Well, not exactly. But it’s moving in that direction. Certainly at Alexander Hughes we aim to provide the employers with whom we work with a range of hybrid recruitment solutions that allow them to access and attract talent in a number of flexible, innovative ways. And we positively encourage candidates to contact us for market-led advice and expertise – a similar value proposition to that offered to the companies for which we recruit.

Following on from my recent piece about what pinstripes need to do to save the planet, it’s worth looking at the current debate surrounding carbon offsetting and carbon trading and asking what businesses can do.

On the face of it, carbon trading seems a neat solution – creating a market for carbon emissions that allows them to be traded like any other commodity, penalising heavy producers and rewarding those that cut emissions.

Carbon offsetting – the idea that carbon emissions can be neutralised by paying for an initiative like planting trees and investing in renewable energy to soak up the resulting CO2 – has become big business with estimates that it is now worth £15bn per year. And whilst carbon trading markets in Europe are under massive scrutiny, offsetting has also come under sustained attack recently.

The New York Times recently ran a piece asking if, in fact, “the Carbon-Neutral Movement Just a Gimmick?’. The author felt that:

“Some believe it helps build support, but others argue that these purchases don’t accomplish anything meaningful — other than giving someone a slightly better feeling (or greener reputation) after buying a 6,000-square-foot house or passing the million-mile mark in a frequent-flier program. In fact, to many environmentalists, the carbon-neutral campaign is a sign of the times — easy on the sacrifice and big on the consumerism”.

The article continues quoting Denis Hayes, president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group:

“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation. Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins. This whole game is badly in need of a modern Martin Luther”

Michael R. Solomon, the author of “Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having and Being” is not surprised by the allure of the carbon-offsetting market:

“Consumers are always going to gravitate toward a more parsimonious solution that requires less behavioral change,” he said. “We know that new products or ideas are more likely to be adopted if they don’t require us to alter our routines very much.”

Marissa-Catherine Carrarini on www.newconsumer.com writes that

..in February this year environmental activists Rising Tide occupied the offices of The CarbonNeutral Company to protest against the culture of carbon offsetting. Rising Tide reckons carbon offsetting allows consumers, business and government to continue guilt-free with damaging, polluting habits.

Worse, it continues that..

..the Forests and European Union Resource Network (FERN) not only ridicules the science behind planting trees, it begs the question as to whether anyone can really calculate how much carbon any tree will soak up. Plus it highlights that carbon neutral monoculture plantations are damaging land that is key to the survival of many communities in places like Brazil and Tanzania. News published today by the National Academy of Scientists in the US also suggests tree-planting outside of the tropics might actually accelerate climate change.

Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper is also not convinced:

'Carbon offsetting schemes are being used as a smoke-screen to avoid real measures to tackle climate change. We urgently need to cut emissions, but offsetting schemes encourage individuals, businesses and governments to avoid action and carry on polluting,' he says. Furthermore, almost all carbon offsetting schemes will only become effective in years to come. But climate change needs to be stopped now. Tomorrow is close to being too late.

So, what are businesses who are serious about climate change to do?

Firstly, we can realise carbon trading and offsetting should really be a last resort, and that the first steps should be to try and reduce emissions.

But, if offsetting is necessary – and let’s be realistic, no organisation can eliminate emissions entirely – businesses should choose the most effective offsetters. As reported in New Consumer, the Swedish Gold Standard accreditation scheme promotes four UK organisations as the most effective: Pure, Carbon Offsets, Global Cool, and Equiclimate. These organizations sponsor renewable energy projects, or - in the case of Pure - buy up and cancel big businesses licenses to pollute. The UK government is also to set up its own voluntary offsetting standard in the summer.

If your organisation has any experience in this area, or you have any comment to make please join the debate by adding comments below.