June 21, 2007

Can Companies Cut Emissions With Virtual Job Fairs?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on big name companies, including HP, Microsoft, and Verizon, that used Second Life to take part in a virtual job fair.

It takes some getting used to at a Second Life recruiting event this spring hosted by Bain & Co., the global management consultancy, a partner’s avatar slumped over by accident and looked as if it were asleep, the Journal writes.

But the payoff can be big, according to the article. It’s cheaper than holding an actual job fair, where companies have to pay travel costs for recruiters. Hewlett-Packard, for example, says the cost of participating in the job fair - which includes buying “land” in Second Life - was less than the price of paying a third-party recruiter to hire one experienced candidate.

It also seems that interviewing in Second Life could reduce emissions, using the same arguments video conferencing companies have started using to tout their greenness.

British Telecom claims to have reduced its carbon footprint by 97,000 tons of CO2 per year, that’s 15 percent of its CO2 use, by using phone conferences and videoconferencing to cut back on staff travel for meetings.

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