Help Wanted in Second Life

April 3, 2007

Sweden is setting up an embassy in Second Life and Sears and Best Buy have opened stores there, it should come as no surprise that recruiting companies are establishing employment offices there too.

Second Life is a social network where "residents" create likenesses (known as avatars), interact with one another, buy land, build homes, get jobs and shop in an ever-expanding virtual world. It's a make-believe world that does a very real $1 million a day in business among the 15,000 to 40,000 users who are online at any one time.

With a help-wanted classifieds section and hundreds of jobs on its job board, SLJobFinder.com, Second Life presents an enticing lure for recruiters who are willing to test the waters, just the way some have by communicating with gamers in such role-playing games as EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

This month, Semper International became the first real-world staffing company to open a Second Life employment office. A leading staffing agency for the graphic arts and printing industry, the Boston-based company is advertising for designers, animators, virtual-world builders and the like. For now, the jobs are in the real world; eventually the work might be for real companies that want a Second Life presence.

"You have to be creative," Semper COO Brian Regan says. That's why the company bought space, built an office in Second Life and accepts applications from Second Life residents. Another reason is that Regan is an avid online game player and thought opening an office in the virtual world would be a way to attract young talent to the print world, a "not sexy" industry in the digital age, he says.

Better known by its former name, PrintStaff, and before that, PressTemps, Semper provides temporary staff in creative, design, pre-press and printing services to job shops and large printing businesses that have short-term staffing needs. But, Regan says, as the baby boomers who occupy many of the administrative and craft positions retire, "that industry will be under duress."

"Getting young people interested [in print] is a challenge," he says. "Second Life is a place where a lot of these talented people are, so I thought it would be a good place for us to be."

Now, just a few weeks after Semper opened its virtual doors, Regan says he has received several applications, with one already a finalist for a real-world job.

Another entrant to Second Life recruiting is Jeff Worth, a contract recruiter for Advanced Micro Devices. He built Recruiter Zone, and while he and a colleague are the only two recruiters there right now, he has high hopes to turn the site into a sort of 24/7 job fair. "I am definitely looking for a community of recruiters—people who want to experiment and have fun," he adds. "This is not something that is going to generate a lot of results right now."

Still, he's had a few applicants for his AMD openings and gets a rush of job seekers whenever he advertises in Second Life classifieds with such pitches as "Looking for Mafia dons and cowboys."

"That's what appeals to the role-playing types," he adds.

IBM has a different approach. It has an extensive presence in Second Life, but much of it is off-limits to all but those the company invites. One of the public areas, however, is a flashy recruitment office that links out to IBM Canada's Internet recruitment site.

Last month, TMP Worldwide, a recruitment advertising agency that was once part of Monster Worldwide, said it would offer virtual job fairs on its invitation-only island for clients of the recruitment advertising agency.

—John Zappe