LinkedIn Network Connections: How Do You Measure Up?
You’re on LinkedIn – congratulations!
So, how big is your network?
Without going into a rant on quality vs. quantity (who says we can’t have BOTH?), let’s take a different angle on the size of your LinkedIn network…at your current company, where do you rank in terms of number of connections?
Do you know off the top of your head? Why not?
If you don’t know where you rank at your current company in terms of LinkedIn network connections, here’s how to find out:
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Curious About My SourceCon Keynote?
Are you attending or thinking about attending SourceCon 2010 in San Diego in March?
I am going to be the keynote speaker for the event, and I will be presenting on Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Cognition when it comes to sourcing and matching resumes.
If you’re curious to know what kinds of things I’ll be addressing during the session, here is a sneak peek:
- The intrinsic and often overlooked challenges associated with sourcing resumes
- What artificially intelligent semantic search and match applications claim to do and how they actually work
- The limits of artificial intelligence
- What people can do that semantic search applications cannot
- The 5 levels of semantic search
- The 5 levels of secondary/e-sourcing
- What I believe would be the ideal candidate sourcing/talent identification solution
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Twitter 101 for Recruiters
There is certainly no shortage of articles written on how to use Twitter, let alone leveraging it for recruiting.
If you want an ultra-mega-so-huge-you-may-get-lost-in-it Twitter guide check out Mashable’s. If you want something short and concise that will cut right to the heart of how to effectively leverage Twitter for recruiting, read on.
There are various elements of this post that will be of high value to Twitter recruiting n00bs, journeymen, and veterans alike.
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Data and Drive are Paramount in Sourcing and Recruiting
The other day I came across an insightful post on Fistful of Talent by Josh Letourneau in which he addresses the arms race that rages on in the talent acquisition universe – the never-ending attempt of people and companies to achieve some sort of technological advantage over the competition.
Josh would rather have a recruiter “with the “will to fight,” in other words – someone with a never-say-die-because-I-will-make-it-happen Recruiter/Sourcer. If I have that, then I can introduce technology and truly accelerate their success. But if it’s a lazy Recruiter who would rather let their Careers Site do the work, then all the technology in the world would prove wasteful in their hands.”
I could not agree more!
A driven, no-excuses sourcer/recruiter will always out-perform a lazy sourcer/recruiter – no matter how bleeding-edge their technology.
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Boolean Search Conquers Impossible Google Position
When I run recruiter training classes, I often ask for the trainees to bring me example positions they are having trouble working on to use for live sourcing training.
During one such class (a little over 2 years ago), I had a recruiter bring me an opening for a challenging position at Google that had been open for a while. He had been working this position for a couple of weeks and had failed to produce a single candidate that Google was interested in interviewing.
Many Had Already Tried and Failed…
As I asked him for a little background on the position, I found out it had been open for 4 months.
That’s almost always a bad sign to a recruiter, as it had no doubt been thoroughly beaten up by countless other recruiters/vendors to Google. However, he assured me this was not a “black hole” requirement and that Google would indeed interview and hire candidates.
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What Social Recruiting is NOT
After recently writing about moving beyond the hype of social media and recruiting, I took some time to reflect quite a bit on the topic, and focused a critical eye on exactly what “Social Recruiting” is.
While there is no shortage of what people think “Social Recruiting” is, quite frankly - I’m not satisfied with any of the definitions and explanations I’ve found – most are too surface level and one-dimensional, as well as inaccurate, in my opinion. It seems that a large portion of what many people seem to be happy to accept as “Social Recruiting” is really nothing more than traditional job posting and employer marketing and branding in a 2.0 environment.
However, I can definitely appreciate the challenge of trying to nail down an accurate and concise definition of “Social Recruiting” – it’s quite the slippery fish. So rather than trying to answer the question of “What is Social Recruiting?,” I’m going to tell you what I think Social Recruiting is NOT.
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Social Media and Recruiting – Beyond the Hype
I’m very much an anti-hype, anti-bandwagon person.
I neither like to nor want to get caught in the undertow of the emotional rush associated with being excited about something that nearly everyone else seems to be excited about, where everyone celebrates the new and “cool factor” with little-to-no critical thought.
When that next bright and shiny object comes along, it’s all too easy to be blinded by it.
Rest assured I have not been blinded by #socialrecruiting. I’ve been using social media for a little while now (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blogging), purposefully remaining calm and collected on the subject - choosing to explore the true potential rather than get caught up in the hype.
So whether you’re a social recruiting evangelist, hater or n00b (I’ve been all 3, not necessarily in that order), you’ll find some value in this post because I am going to strip away all of the hype surrounding social recruiting, demystify it, and cut straight to the heart of the real opportunities associated with using social media for sourcing and recruiting.
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The Future of Recruiting: The More Things Change…
Now that we are on our way into exploring the new year, I’ve seen some articles on what’s coming next for the recruiting industry this year, and even as far out as 10 years from now.
When I read one such article written by Kevin Wheeler, I was struck by his comment that although sourcing remains a topic he is interested in, he feels that “the need to conduct in-depth Internet searches and apply Boolean logic to searches is no longer relevant in the majority of cases.”
I was prepared to write an article just in response to that thought, but as I sat down to review his post again on Sunday in preparation for my post, I noticed that Kelly Dingee had commented in defense of electronic talent identification.
In response, Kevin wrote “I think that intensive Internet searching, for most internal recruiters, is a sign of their failure to develop a community of potential candidates. If the position is a unique or one-of-a-kind search, they should probably use a third party recruiter. For volume and routine hiring there should be no need to use anything beyond a network of potential candidates whether proprietary or not. Building that community is what a recruiter’s job is all about – not running searches or becoming a computer nerd.”
Wow. Where do I begin?
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LinkedIn Sourcing Tip: Searching by Company? Beware!
Recently, I wrote about the intrinsic issues associated with searching LinkedIn for potential candidates with specific industry experience, and how using the “Industry” field can actually prevent you from finding the people you’re looking for.
A number of readers responded by suggesting a logical solution to the issue – searching by specific company name(s) instead of using LinkedIn’s ”Industry” field.
It is a logical solution, but a potentially flawed one nonetheless.
I’m going to show you some reasons why, and if you read this post within the next 5 minutes, I’ll even throw in a LinkedIn company search anomaly as an added bonus.
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Thank You, and Happy Holidays from Boolean Black Belt!
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to you, whether you’ve visited www.booleanblackbelt.com just a few times or if you are a regular reader. If you’ve told someone else about my site or recommended it to others – thank you very much!
With all of the sourcing, recruiting, and social media blogs out there, I know it’s virtually impossible to keep up with them all, so I appreciate the fact that you’re making a conscious decision to spend time on my site, most likely at the expense of another site (or two).
I started this blog back in October 2008, and you’re reading the 115th post I’ve published 14 months. This time last year, I had a total of 2200 unique visitors.
As of today (12/22), I’ve had over 50,000 unique visitors from 154 countries, averaging 1400 unique visitors per week, and I have about 1800 readers who’ve signed up for my feed/emails. I have you to thank for that!
I spend an average of about 3 to 4 hours on each post I publish (some take as many as 7 hours!), so the work you see on this site represents at least 400 hours of my personal time that I have dedicated to sharing my thoughts and experience.
I created this site specifically to share knowledge and information with others – so if you know anyone who is interested in learning how to more effectively leverage information systems and social media for sourcing and recruiting, please pay it forward, and don’t keep me a secret.
2010 should be a good year for www.booleanblackbelt.com – I have over 200 drafts of various post ideas built up! However, you won’t see another post from me until the week of January 4th – I’m going to spend quality time with my family and friends – I hope you have the opportunity to do the same.
Thank you, and Happy Holidays!
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