I should really start this post with a disclaimer, because I’m a bit of a fan of Paul Jacobs work, and his klout score on my influence ranking index would be much higher than Justin Bieber, and this might make me a bit biased towards his work. When I say his latest venture, Jobgram is brilliant. Make up your own mind.

Since I first connected with Paul via twitter, he has influenced both my thinking and my work, and although he has only attended one event at #truAustralia, has had a big impact on #tru. It was Paul who really helped me to appreciate live video on Facebook, and what could be achieved by brand advocates through his work at Deloitte in New Zealand. This is how Paul describes himself on his Facebook page:

“Olympian, male model, rock star, movie star, the messiah. Presently on anti-psychotic drugs for delusions of grandeur.”

Paul coined the phrase “Community DJ” to describe how he saw his role within the Recruitment Asia-Pacific Community that Paul set up a few years ago, and it is more than just a fancy community. Paul’s view is that you can’t manage a community in a traditional sense. The role of the DJ is to build the community space and promote it, encourage and support the members and let them determine what happens in the space and what the community becomes. Paul uses the DJ analogy because they create the ambiance, react to the crowd and spin the vinyl. The visitors do the dancing and decide what happens. I use this approach in all I do, and it makes a big difference to trying to manage things, with people able to make their own decisions with responsibility for their own experience. It seems to be working. if you “manage” a community, I recommend that you ditch the title, change your business card, treat people as grown ups and see what happens. It makes a massive difference!

When I was last in Australia at #truAus, I spent some time with Paul when he was starting to sow the seeds of a new idea, to use interactive infographics to promote jobs in social environments. i loved the concept, which has some real possibilities when used in combination with other tools. After a few exchanges on Facebook,Paul sent me his first project prior to launch. Now what type of business would go with this funky new way of promoting jobs? Perhaps a digital marketing agency, a silicon start up or some other gen Y business, you would be excused for thinking. It was in fact none other than the New Zealand Inland Revenue! (Well you didn’t think the UK revenue would take the funky route did you?)

When Paul first started putting the social recruiting plan together for Deloitte, one of the driving forces behind this was to move their image from being stuffy accountants hidden behind grey suits. To show the real face of what it was really like to work at Deloitte, for the young people in their first job. By taking a social approach and encouraging a community of bloggers, who told the story of work to the next years intake, and introducing the first live broadcast on to a Facebook fan page, Jacobs achieved this aim. The campaign was award-winning and massively successful, and has become the benchmark for other projects of this type. It should be no surprise then that an organisation like the Inland Revenue would turn to Jacobs to use his creative wizardry to do something similar for them.

Jacobs infographic is called Jobgram, which is a play on the words job and telegram, because it’s designed to maximise on social sharing. The infographic is hosted on a central website, and can be embedded on to blogs, websites and social places, and is tailor-made for social sharing. Social sharing is encouraged with the simple message: “Pass it on.” Much like asking for a retweet, (which works by the way), with the simple addition of sharing buttons I’m sure the Jobgrams will get shared. People like to share creative content, and the design fits this bill.

The infographics are divided in to the following sections:

> Job titles and what they are looking for.

> What you’ll be doing. (In pictures/illustrations.)

> Attributes you need.

> A typical week on the job. (As a pie chart.)

> A word cloud of what is on offer.

> A short statement of the purpose of the business.

> What their people say about them.

> How to apply (including a QR code.)

Each of the sections are built to be interactive. Each contains only the key points and a graphic. This makes the spec easy to read and pick out the key-points, without having to wade through plenty of small print detail. I’ve always seen job specs as being one of the worst ways to promote a job. The real selling points of the job get lost. One document reads much like another, and at the end of the day an auditor already knows what an auditor does. This is different, and the reader can choose if they want to click on any of the sections that they want to investigate. It puts them in control of the content they want to see. To look behind the job and investigate what they want to.

I’d like to see the addition of a “talk to” button to connect direct to recruiters, and a button that works in a simmilar way to the LinkedIn jobs insider toolbar to see how the potential candidate is connected with the hiring company, both social features that would add to the user experience.

As well as embedding Jobgrams on blogs and other social places, I’m planning on using them as landing pages from the Work4 tab on Facebook fan pages, a twitter landing page from a job link and as e-cards in a referral program linked to the Bullhorn Reach and Work4Labs referral products. Will keep you updated how they work when used in anger, and well done to Paul for another great initiative.

Bill

LINKS

Jobgram

Paul Jacobs

Deloitte