I cannot speak for anyone else but these days I watch a lot less TV

An awful lot less.

Now I can get all the news, entertainment and information that I need on my laptop, and increasingly on my phone. I use blogs, websites, newspapers, video-blogs(vlogs), daily emails; in fact a whole variety of tools that were not available to me only a few years ago.

I use iTunes to subscribe to Podcasts with the content that I like and iTunes downloads it for me automatically. All I have to do is subscribe. My knowledge of science, politics, religion, technology etc. has developed by leaps and bounds since the shift occured a few years ago. I can get a sense of what is interesting to the whole world at any moment in time by checking the top searches or posts on Technorati.

In the hiring process I have not seen a single fax for about 4 years and, with the exception of the actual interview, there is no necessity anymore to use a single piece of paper to bring someone on board. Recorded Phone Screens and Video Interviews are becoming normal and not the big chore that they used to be. It’s even practical to use MSN as a video or audio interviewing tool.

This is all collectively known as Web 2.0. I cannot remember what it was like before these tools arrived.

The next step seems to be automated referrals systems like Jobster, newer blogging tools like Squidoo, candidates recording their own interviews at home, and visual representations replacing Resumes. Social software has put me back in contact with people that I had thought were gone for good and has proved to be a strong tool for recruiters (though not in China yet). Even training has gone the Podcast route.

It’s a brave new world ..... Always wanted to say that.

Frank Mulligan is the Managing Director of Talent Software, which is based in Shanghai, China. The company is a producer and operator of Talent Management Systems (TMS) for a broad variety of industries. The flagship product is simply called Talent and is a fully featured, bi-lingual English/Chinese Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

Talent offers support for Skills Testing, Phone Screening, Job Interviewing, Psychometric Profiling, Reference Checking, Exit Interviewing, Job Offers, Background Checks and Recruitment Metrics & Analytics.

This article first appeared in Talent China