Top 25 Most Connected Recruiters on LinkedIn
I’ve complied a list of the top 25 most connected recruiters on LinkedIn.
To generate this list, I searched LinkedIn for anyone in the world who had one of the following terms in their current title: recruiter OR recruiting OR recruitment OR sourcer OR sourcing OR talent, and I sorted the results by connections. It looks as if you will need at least 20,000 1st degree/direct connections to even crack the top 10!
If you click on each result, you will be taken to their public profile. You might want to connect with them if you haven’t already. 
Click here for the full search results on LinkedIn – there are at least 301,384 of them.
If you happen to add “human resources” OR HR to the current title search string, the top 25 results don’t change much, with the exception of the top 4 (2 new results show up there). Also, the total results climb to over 820,000.
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Hi Glen,
Thanks for the list, I’ve emailed all the ones I wasn’t already connected to. Have a great day!
Patrick
Just thinking that those of us with organically grown networks have relatively low 1st level numbers but huge connectivity. I recently compared number with Mike O’Neill from Integrated Alliances The LinkedIn Rockstar they call him. He has over 30K direct connections and I have less than 4K but he only connected to 19M people and I connected to 18M. So I am just saying that this method of evaluating connectivity might be misleading.
@ Patrick – you’re welcome!
@ Patti – you are 100% correct…having a very large number of direct connections isn’t really that big of a deal aside from the ability to directly message your first degree connections. However, in terms of turning the “floodlight” on when it comes to searching inside LinkedIn and it seems difficult to find someone who isn’t in your network (and therefore you cannot view their name), it’s all about the total network connections.
I don’t believe that this list (sorted by connections) is misleading in any way – based on how LinkedIn measures “connections,” this list is 100% accurate. It certainly would be interesting to see the results if we could sort by TOTAL network size, and not just direct connections, wouldn’t it?
It would be interesting to see if their fill rates are higher than other recruiters.
Congratulations to all !!!!!!
Regds
Nitin Kohli
tracking that is so 2005
come on glen c
u can do better
shoot – i got 55 million in my 1st degree via LIR
what’s the big deal
there’s way bigger social networks then peoples free li accts
lol
<3
jer
It’s an interesting list to be sure. Lots of people I admire are here and they truly deserve to be because they are leaders and innovators. I guess I always think in terms of the true “market reach” than direct connections. More a matter of symantecs than difference of opinion.
@jer – somehow I knew you would respond in that vein
I’m simply reporting facts here – nothing more or less. I promise it will be the last ranking-type post for a LONG time. 
Don’t forget the little people who don’t have LIR – there are many of us. Also – if you ever leave, your next employer/engagement may not afford you access to LIR…
Larger social networks (Facebook, Twitter) suffer from a HUGE lack employment-related data (most people don’t mention employer, titles, skills, experience), and Facebook continues to be unsearchable for practical intents and purposes. So many people, so little ability to find them based on expertise and experience…
That search string misses some of the most connected recruiters on Linkedin:
Ron Bates, Stan Relihan,
Joe Compton – http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=202065
Mukta Kanoja – http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=8693174
Dan McLaughlin – http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=487144
Great survey Brad! The question I propose is quality vs. quantity — furthermore how much revenue has actually generated in the past 2-3 years from said recruitment professionals…
Glen,
Thanks for the post – I brought this post and list into the middle of my series “Exposing LinkedIn Connection Myths”.
I cannot refute that connecting widely may make sense for a recruiter – but you may enjoy the other parts of the series;-)
Best regards,
steve
–
Steven Tylock
The LinkedIn Personal Trainer
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
@John – Ron and Stan were not returned in the search because their current titles are Managing Principal and Director, Technolgy & Consulting respectively.
Joe is actually on the list at #6.
Nice catch with Mukta – she didn’t appear in the search results because her current title is “Sr. Associate – Hiring at Sapient.” Dan was also similarly missed because his current title is “President at Renascent Solutions.”
It would be impossible to craft a precise and relevant search string to include all of the various titles people who perform the recruiting function can possibly have without scooping up copious quantities of false positives.
I will, however, be posting a new article with some tweaks to the search parameters to catch folks like these. Thanks for bringing these people to my attention, and to my readers!
20,000 connections on LinkedIn – thats like really humongous!
@Boolean Black Belt
“Larger social networks (Facebook, Twitter) suffer from a HUGE lack employment-related data (most people don’t mention employer, titles, skills, experience), and Facebook continues to be unsearchable for practical intents and purposes. So many people, so little ability to find them based on expertise and experience…”
Please explain to me what oversight happens with LinkedIn profiles. What stops “resume” inflating or worthless employees recommending each other? LinkedIn is worthless as anything other than a social networking site. Sure there are lots of good and honest people in the world who would not think of using these methods to inflate their marketability but it does not take long to find the “losers” that you have worked with in the past and in my experience 100% of them have some aspect of false information in their profile.
@Bob,
Don’t hold back now, tell us what you really think of LinkedIn…
Now if you only connect to people you know and trust, what are the chances that they will be inflating their profiles, or putting up improper recommendations?
And your opinion of the people your direct contacts connect to?
Hmmm – could that possibly be another reason to end the practice of indiscriminate connections?-)
You can’t stop others, but you can certainly influence the people you care about.
But if you really don’t like the system, just stay away.
steve