SXSW Interactive 2012 was my first time at SXSW, and I found inspiration for making HR Tech better from a number of channels including film, gaming, media agencies, and consumer focused start-ups.
Treat applicants like a consumer and let them be social
- Let applicants be social about the jobs they are applying to, potentially letting them share the fact that they are applying with friends, ask for recommendations
- Help applicants sell themselves – they have a difficult time demonstrating their passion to an applicant tracking system
- Let applicants link to their rich online content, if applicable to the job application
The days of our personal and professional lives online being separate are over. There is much more overlap now. #sxopdrp #sxswi
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Will Staney (@willstaney) March 12, 2012APIs are a growing trend
- Companies are making millions off just API transactions
- APIs are now primarily written in REST, not SOAP
- Well-document your API and make the documentation public
- Create tools for programmers to build transactions with your API
Mobile is huge and is not being replaced by tablets
- It is now an appendage to people, and everyone was a “cyborg” during SXSW12, per Amber Case
- Mobile has become notebook, internet, phone, map, entertainer, camera, video cam and more, in one
- Video and photos are the new “text”
"Everytime you look at a screen, every time you use an interface, you are in a symbiotic relationship. You become a cyborg." #Ambercase
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Latoya Peterson (@LatoyaPeterson) March 11, 2012From the gaming world we learn the importance of incentivizing users = goals & metrics
- With gaming, people are incentivized to complete tasks
- People like to see visually that they are making goals
- Users by nature have a hard time figuring out metrics and are embarrassed by it
- Requirements for a user to get into a good flow with software:
- Goals, then challenges, then skills, then feedback, then control
Relevance more important that simplicity
- In user’s mind, relevance = usability
- No matter how simple you make something, it isn’t usable to the user unless it does what they wanted to do
- In the case of job applications, less clicks does not = user satisfaction. Rather, the right questions and truthful feedback = user satisfaction.
Users define simplicity through relevance. Page clutter also adds difficulty to the equation #sxsw
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FireStarter (@dfcbfirestarter) March 10, 2012
