Today, Monday, Live Messenger in cooperation with Vacature (a Belgian-based job recruiting network) we will have the first Virtual Application Fair. More than 100 HR managers have gathered in the Belgacom Surfhouse, where they will have a PC, webcam and headset available to them, and a USB stick to take home CVs if they are being wired by the jobseeker. They will have a schedule of candidates who have registered prior to the event and those candidates will have the opportunity to go for a virtual application chat with these HR managers. It’s a world’s first, it’s never been done before. 1500 people will apply for a job at the same time, to all these employers who’re sitting in rows, one team next to another. And all of this, live over Live Messenger.

A pretty interesting concept, I think, that actually makes a few future scenarios a bit more realistic. A lot of people do have a hard time already taking some time off from work to apply for a job elsewhere. Remote job applying would make things a lot more easy. If you’re working from home, temporarily abroad or a digital homeless guy roaming from hotspot to hotspot… there’s no more excuses to avoid the conversation.

I’m here together with Pieter from Mess.be, the most popular Messenger site of the world. We’re covering the event together and they’re going to hook us up to the big screens on stage so the employers and job agencies can see how live blogging works. To us, it’s just one letter after the other being added in a form field, hitting the occasional backspace button to correct typos, but apparently to a lot of other people there’s still some magic in seeing phrases form paragraphs and hitting a ‘publish’ button at the end. Ahh, where has the time gone to?