How are hiring practices changing in light of the advances of social networking, blogging and online video?  How do the major banking institutions connect with today’s youth?  Increasingly blogging is the way that today’s businesses look to strike a relationship with their clients.  RBC have struck on an idea and my guess is that it will probably work.  They are going to hire post secondary student bloggers to blog on their new peer-to-peer (p2p) information exchange site (though the long version of the name is a bit bulky for today’s youth I think).  Here’s the interesting thing though – they are going to hire these students by poular vote via the website.

“Those applying for the RBC p2p blogging team will be asked to create and
forward their homemade audition videos, which will be uploaded onto the RBC
p2p web site. Once the videos are posted online, students visiting the site
will be able to view and vote for their favorite candidates. The six positions
as RBC bloggers will go to those with the most votes.”

This strikes me as an interesting combination of Canadian Idol style voting, meets Facebook, meets banking.

     “After speaking extensively with students about their circumstances, we
looked into creating a space that would connect them with the financial
information they need and expect, all in way that is familiar and convenient
for them. We believe we’re doing that with RBC p2p,” said Judy Murchison,
director, Marketing Strategy, Student Market, RBC Royal Bank. “Not only that,
RBC p2p is the icing on the cake for what is a truly comprehensive suite of
offerings for students – we’re on school campuses, we’re offering no fee
student banking, we’re podcasting money information to students, we keep
adding to our student scholarship support, and we’re on Facebook.”

    Information about the application process for RBC p2p will be posted
online atwww.rbcroyalbank.com/student/ at the end of August, and will also be
featured on RBC’s new sponsored Facebook group.

Interesting concept…I wonder how many applications they will get?  Even more importantly…how many students will they attract to bank with RBC?  The reality is that, despite today’s fast paced, technology oriented world, personal banking is still all about relationships.  RBC are working to keep pace with the types of relationships that today’s youth can identify with and also place value on.