Creepy Cool Sitepal Avatars

Interactivity and a sense of user ownership, or at least user control seems to be where alot of web-gadgetry is headed. Not exactly breaking news to anyone not living under a rock, but its interesting to think about how that might apply to recruiting/sourcing.

Let's take the typical job posting say. The look of it hasn't changed all that much from the old classified ad bit, right? Sure, its electronic, and cheaper by and large, and you link to the application and what not, but the content is communicated the same way, a few paragraphs of a job description, then qualifications, (yawn). Rather boring look and feel usually. what if there were a way to make these darn things a bit more exciting, and up the connection factor and employment branding factor as well? Enter the folks at Oddcast with their product Sitepal. Sitepal is an avatar that can speak, either from pre-recorded material, or from text. It also will follow your mouse pointer as it moves around the avatar. This is slightly creepy but kind of cool at the same time. Think if you could have this avatar be a part of a posting. You could have IM features with it, ala Ikea's ASK ANNA (from the link, click ASK ANNA) so that you could pose questions to the avatar about the job which it could respond to with text in the IM window, or via pre-recorded stuff from someone actually working in that job. There are a number of different iterations here, ranging from complex to simple, but you get the gist of it.

Its an interesting opportunity to craft your employment brand, and interact with potential candidates in new ways. Plus, if you do it right, think of the word of mouth on something like that! 'DING' and very likely word of mouth via other people in each person's network that may share a similar background! 'DING-DING'

Personally, I think this has potential to be an interesting topic, and as I write this I really haven't done my research on who else might be thinking, talking, or doing something about this, but I will.

Cheers,

Josh

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Oddcast, Sitepal, Avatar, interactive, creepy, sourcing, recruiting, employment brand, job posting
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