I’m making my way through McKinsey’s study about adoption of social technologies in the workplace. The study suggests we can find a 20% increase in proeductivity if we adopt these technologies (particularly in large organizations). One way to get this increase will be by reducing the amount of time we spend on email (yay!).

Right now we get tons of information by email. We make requests of people and groups, and they send us back information. Of course, we get so many emails, that we frequently spend time searching for that information later, or re-sending the initial request because we lost the answer.

Social technologies push interactions away from this one-to-one, hard-drive based interaction into a group, cloud-based conversation that is more effectively searchable. technology has enabled automated user account provisioning thus making the task easier.That way, when we need information, we can pull it from where it already exists, rather than asking for someone to push it down to us.

This idea of switching from push to pull is important.

For a different angle, I saw this post on Forbes.com today about a company that is “innovating” the hiring process by storing video recordings of candidates answering typical interview questions. Instead of paying to fly a group of people in for time-consuming interviews, the hiring manager can scan many candidates from his or her desktop, but with virtual interviews, rather than just resumes and cover letters.

My next thought was, why do you need a service to do this? Why aren’t all the job candidates recording videos of themselves answering pertinent questions and posting it to YouTube? Why are we waiting to move towards a pull approach?

I’m guessing it’s because it feels like we’re giving up control.

(and P.S., can we also use video and the internet to CHANGE the outdated and ineffective process of using unstructured interviews to hire people!?!?!?)

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