David Manaster pioneered the notion of collaborative online communities for HR Professionals. The Founder and CEO of EREMedia (the other preeminent community for Recruiting professionals). Widely known for his ability to adjust to changing times, Manaster navigates the changing face of our industry with grace and finesse.
As new ideas emerge, Manaster and his team catch and redistribute them. In this interview from mid-2008, Mnaster is on top of the then nascent social recruiting trend. A year later, the first ever gathering of social media practitioners is being held under his guidance.
Manaster rolled straight out of Bighmpoton University and into the HR-Recruiting industry. After a couple of years in the trenches at Monster.com and its parent company, David launched the Electronic Recruiting Exchange. For nearly 11 years, the operation has delivered conversation, content and conferences, establishing a model for lots of operations that followed.
In our marketplace, which has precious little in the way of standards, ideas flow into the hands of practioners through a variety of means. There are a few trade magazines and newsletters. Advertising heavy and vendor oriented, they offer a view of the working world that is dominated by the search for the new. After all, that’s what keeps revisions to prodcuts and tools moving into the hands of the users. With precious few institutions offering critical insigh, the flow of innovation has a one-way feel to it sometimes. Shiny new things, whether they are useful of not, tend to flow from the trade magazines to the end user without much reflection.
ERE changed that. Manaster created a forum for discussion, critical review and independent professional thought. Although there was certainly an element of advertiser influence in the ERE operation, it was vastly overshadowed by the strength of its contributors and community members. Over the years, lots of practitioners have learned about the ins and outs of their suppliers through critical conversation in the ERE forums.
Manaster is no boardroom executive. He writes regularly for his operation, offering a fantastic view from the ringside seat. The company, nearly completely virtual, hosts a team of astonishing professionals who collaborate online as a matter of course.
He’s surprisingly prohetic:
“The recruiting profession is at a unique moment in time, and it?s not just because of the economy. We are at an inflection point where the tools and tactics that the vast majority of recruiters spend their budgets on is completely different from those being discussed and debated throughout the profession.
The last time I saw this was a decade ago. Even as early experimenters began using the Internet to bring talent into their organizations, the lion?s-share of corporate recruiting budgets still went to the newspapers, and it took the better part of the last 10 years for that to change.
That shift was driven by lower costs of publishing online, freedom from the space restrictions of a print ad, searchability, and the ease of access of online classifieds relative to their print predecessors. As a result, recruitment advertising shifted from one-way communication via print ?broadcasting? to doing the same thing online ? the same model, but using the new medium.”
Manaster, like few of his contemporaries in the events and community business, sees that we are approaching a huge disruptive moment in HR-Recruiting. What’s about to change is not just technology, it’s the whole waty that the profession is valued and understood.
That’s what Manaster’s regional projects are meeting with success while the other players whither. David Manaster and ERE are going to be with us for a long time to come.
