This is the general view from the e-recruitment experts that took part in our vox pop on what the killer apps and must-do practices will be for 2010. We can also expect more third-party applications written for social media sites and more apps in general, but our experts warn that good old-fashioned recruiting values and standards shouldn’t be lost among the new tools and technologies emerging.

“The killer apps for 2010 will, for me, centre around LinkedIn. With the recently released application programming interface (API), you will see all the job boards falling over themselves to produce excellent LinkedIn apps. There will also be some really clever third-party apps built, allowing us all to maximise the real potential of LinkedIn. It will become a professional Facebook-style network with loads of new widgets and plug-ins. Is that a good thing? I guess we will know by 2011.”
Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting, who consults with both recruiters and companies on social recruiting strategies

“The must-do’s for 2010 relate to the online recruitment market maturing. A simplistic strategy will not work as effectively this year and we will see employers extending their search for talent into search engines and the social media. We’ll also see employers getting smarter and focusing on improving their internal skills. Rather than spend large sums of money on technology to filter out irrelevant applications at the end of the process, we’ll see an increase in training in areas such as copywriting and how the internet works. Employers will try to stop irrelevant applications at the start of the process rather than at the end.”
Giles Guest, director of Enhance Media, which publishes the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS)

“This year, focus on the candidate. Review your existing candidate database, get in touch with those who have already expressed an interest in your clients and communicate regularly with them. Most of all, respond to every candidate who contacts you via your website or via other direct means, in a timely and professional manner. Focus on your customer. Really learn your customer’s industry, get under the covers of what makes the client tick and spend time communicating with the client on a regular basis, even if there are no open job requirements. Everyone’s killer app will be social media. But remember, social media apps, be it Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, are all just one very small tool in the communications kit bag. For me, the most important killer app is still the telephone.”
Alan Whitford, founder of the European recruitment community website RCEURO.com

“2010 will be a year where great talent will have an array of opportunities. For employers the challenge is to provide a truly engaging brand experience that will reassure the candidate they are the right employer choice. This means great creative in the right digital channel and a website that bonds with the applicant.”
Andrew Wilkinson, chief executive of recruitment advertising and communications company TMP Worldwide

“For job boards, the integration of Trovix into Monster UK will see matching and semantic search become a topic of a debate and a must-have app for job boards and applicant tracking systems ATSs). We’ll also see a new generation of multi-posting apps that integrate into social media and more use of the LinkedIn API will see a flourish of easier-to-use apps that ATSs, job boards and others will make use of. All recruiters have to improve the quality of the posting - what I mean is, copy. Poor ad equals poor response equals time being wasted. [There needs to be a] better understanding of the range of uses of social media. It is not the solution to all recruiting issues and more understanding about what it is ‘good for’ is needed. The art of sourcing also needs to be better understood and used in UK. Listening is a must; my Number 1 issue: what is being said about you?”
Keith Robinson, co-founder of the directory and comparison sites JobSiteAdvisor.com and CareerSiteAdvisor.com

“It won’t be so much about new apps but how we use them and how we use social recruiting channels that will be changing. People are going to be getting busy and there will be less time available so we need to take advantage of targeted hashtags [words or phrases prefixed with a hash symbol (#)] and groups in tools like Tweetdeck. We’ll start to see more event conversations on GoogleWave to which you can invite as many people as you like. I can’t predict exactly how it will be used but people will get cleverer at using it. We’re also going to see more corporate [social] networks for internal [job] listings and more organisations setting up corporate Facebook pages and communities for recruiting and setting up conversations. Finally, I think we’ll see sourcers become more prevalent in this country, who can find 100 people able to do a particular job from their online footprint.”
Bill Boorman, managing director of Bill Boorman Consultancy