"Objective: Replace Retirees"

Replacing retirees and recruiting new talent will impact every business as well as every government agency. I wonder what these organizations are using to capture the deep smarts of retirees? Although they are probably not looking at social network software - they should be!

"Objective: Replace Retirees" By Stephen Barr - Wahington Post

"The government will soon need recruits to help it ride out a coming wave of retirements. At the same time, it wants to hang on to its experienced hands for as long as possible.

That was the message yesterday from Linda M. Springer , director of the Office of Personnel Management, as she announced the launch of a television advertising campaign to showcase important and interesting jobs in the civil service."

"We aren't as well known as we probably ought to be," Springer said. "We're not really good in the civilian workforce side of making known these great [employment] opportunities."

So, they're going to start running 30 second commercials, hehehehe. I wonder if they'll hit the right demographics, say, those of the Daily Show. They might want to take some lessons from the student's at Columbia Business School that put together the Glenn Hubbard video and learn how to make something that becomes viral.

With every public and private organization in the same boat, Ms.Springer might seriously consider where the action is.

The net!

They should be taking a serious look at social networks like facebooks and myspace to recruit the next generation of talented employees. What's more, they should be using all of the web 2.0 tools available to search through blogs, forums, and rss for talent. Many of these tools are free to use as well as available in open source.

Having their own external social network platform (a more corporate version of myspace or facebooks) they could easily present opportunities (blogs, rss, videos, forums, etc.) and interact with prospects. With an internal one, the only limitation is their imagination.