It’s two months since we announced our Twitter only recruitment so I thought it was time for an update. We’ve been pretty much overwhelmed by the number of people who registered an interest in the Lab.

We had over 14,000 views of the material and are still getting enquiries. The follow up conversations took a lot longer than we thought!

People have questioned me on whether this is actually a more complex way of recruiting than the conventional model.

The answer , undoubtably, is yes.

Just like comms and marketing , recruitment used to be pretty simple. You broadcast your message and waited for the bite. Then you reeled it in.

Social media – and social recruitment – are not about broadcast. They are about the conversation , the slow burn of relationship building. People challenge you. People suggest ideas.

You question whether what you are building is right.

In a conventional recruitment no-one would dare challenge your ideas. They know that expressing dissent is the first sign of a troublemaker.

But in a social recruitment, where chats are conducted away from the shackles of forms and questions and personality tests , the relationship gets democratised.

Welcome to recruiting through the network.

I want to publicly thank everyone who took time to speak to us. Your input has been invaluable in shaping the pipeline of the Lab and the way we go about making the network operate. Thanks to everyone who has shared the material about the recruitment too – your support is incredible.

So what have we learned?

• A lot of people want to work with us in some capacity but not in a full time role based in the Midlands. Only a few people expressed an interest in full time work for one employer and this has led us to reshape the idea of three roles.
• There was a lot of interest in doing some work at mutually agreed times and the development of a retainer based – or time limited – relationship.
• Peoples skills and experience are a lot wider than the rather narrow confines I put around Data, Design and Digital

So the challenge for me over the past few weeks has been to redesign something that makes use of the great talent that is out there in the network.

So what are we doing?

Firstly – we’ve decided we really need a full-time design role – and it’s the one that lends itself least to remote working. So we’re going to advertise this role for two weeks only with interested applicants going through the existing Bromford recruitment approach. You can find details of this role here. People who previously expressed an interest were given an exclusive preview but new applicants are welcomed. Give me a shout if you want to chat about it.

Secondly – we are developing opportunities for people that have a specific expertise that we need coaching in.  These are likely to be commitments of a few days of  time spread over a period between 3 months and a year. These will be available to people regardless of geography. The bulk of the people who expressed an interest first time around fall into this category and will work with me to shape it.

Finally we are developing a way that we can commission the services of people on a one-off basis. So for instance – a problem enters the Lab that we don’t have the skills to host and we need to bring in the network to do it for us. Many people suggested this might be done on a more creative basis than simply employing someone . For instance , we could develop an incentivised challenge to solve a specific problem.

This is an incredibly exciting time for everyone involved in the Lab.

Thanks for your support!