10/16

1. Discussed Article: 10/16After reading this article about the success the company had in Secondlife doing job fairs I decided to look into other organizations to seeif they've had any success in attracting businesses into second lifeto recruit potential employees. It appears many of the companiesthat hosted career fairs have not hosted a career more then acouple of times in Second life and little is mention on how theyconsidered it a success besides sheer numbers. I would think thesuccess of a career fair isn't just the amount of people who showedup, but also the amount of people who were hired. The goal is to getboth the employees a chance to see qualified individuals and theindividuals to acquire a job that meets their skill set. If this isnot accomplished is it truly successful?In relation the our most recent article, looks like the careerfair listed how many attendees obtained an interview, given this amountlisted, I think it's one of the best hosted . This should help demonstrate thepotential success career fairs have in the virtual world. This shouldgive a way for other companies to make an entry in recruiting employeesin SL. Now companies like Accenture utilize SL to inform potential employeesof the work environment and help them give insight inside it's companyand operations. Even recruiters are hitting the streets of second life tofind potential qualified applicants, the article listed below mentionsa 365 a day career fair that has hundreds of jobs listed. Its good to see these innovators who hosted past career fairsdemonstrated the potential of utilizing SL to recruit potentialemployees. http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/it-employers-are-now-hiring-t...http://careers3.accenture.com/Careers/Global/SecondLife ~Christian 10/16 Okay, so after reading this article it really made me take back my discussion where I said the career fair was a good idea for our class creation and now agree with the students who thought we weren’t going to be able to pull it off in the amount of time that we had. So how does Gax Technologies make a career fair so successful?  Gax Technologies is located in Luxemburg and started second life back in June 28, 2007.  They have a website in three different languages (English, French, and German), have helpful videos about second life, and also information on what can SL do for businesses, which can get a business interested in becoming part of the career fair.  Gax Technologies has a great reputation of their previous successful events.  Their first career fair was on November 27, 2007, started from 8 a.m – 9 p.m., and it was a huge success since it resulted in filling 50 job openings. Wow! That was just their first one and as you read their next one resulted in even greater success. http://www.working-worlds.com/web/en/html/index.htm ~Elizabeth 10/16 I think you're right about implementing the career fair idea for our class project. The only way I could see it working is if we lower the scope of the project, and keep it really simple. GAX technologies definitely put forth a lot of effort in creating a really interactive job fair environment. They utilized many resources in Second Life that allowed the pool of candidates and interviewers to successfully interact, such as various media and voice chat. Additionally, it must have taken a lot of their resources to advertise for the event and ensure that the users would taken advantage of the career fair. Realistically, with the time we have left in the class, I think it would be too much of a struggle to go out and actively seek employers to buy into the business fair idea that we were originally planning on doing. ~Danny 10/16 Someone in another discussion brought up what I think is a good idea: Keep the idea of a career fair, but remove ourselves from the sense of "immediate future."  Instead, use the portfolio and University Center ideas as stepping stones towards the greater project.  This is a great idea because it provides an opportunity for other seniors to experience what we have as well as allowing us to create that major project without the issues of time and resources.  I feel comfortable in saying that if other classes after us continue this particular project goal, UTSA could easily create something as successful and meaningful as GAX.  It might even be safe to say that UTSA could move their entire career fairs online if done correctly and if enough employers were willing to show up. ~Matt 10/16 Matt, that is an excellent idea, IF this project can continue. But we should take into consideration that if it does not continue that we have a working project not just a foundation of what we wanted to do. If we go ahead with the career fair we could focus on getting USAA on board. They hire all different majors, are a local business, and are a sought after company by UTSA graduates. I think if we can get them, it'll give our project some credit. ~Homer 10/16 I believe, well aside of using this as a class project or not, one of the reasons why this career fair was succesful is that their timing, it was from 8 am to 9 pm, that is great amount of time, during that time, companies can send different recruiters, or people from different departments of the company, like from HR of course but from Information technology or marketing or accounting, I think, and one person doesn't have to stay all day. In last career fair in UTSA I was working with them and we had to entertain the employers for the whole day, and give them food, and bathroom breaks, we had volunteers helping out, but if you think about it the school had to pay the advisors, us work studies and part timers to greet this people even though the career fair started like at 9 I was there at 7 am! so yes, a career fair is a lot of work :) ~Carlota 10/16 A career fair in SL is a neutral idea.  There are many things needed to be considered.  GAX has a larger audience and experience in conducting SL job fairs.  "The May 2008 fair brought 2,900 visitors; 2,767 of those were candidates filing CVs, with 600 official interviews taking place. The previous fair brought 2,000 visitors; 1,500 candidates who registered their CVs, culminating in 300 interviews."  Realistically, we won't be able to compete with those numbers.  How much time did it take for them to plan for this project?  I wonder if they advertised in RL as well as SL because to reach out to that many people just in SL is tough. ~Douglas