Recruitalicious

I want to pose a question: how do you use  LinkedIn to source candidates? If you’re like me, you use the “Relevance” option to sort your search results. And while I thought this was a great way to help me find the best candidates, after reading a recent Boolean Black Belt blog post, I realized that I’ve ignored a large part of what LinkedIn has to offer.

My long-held assumption was that “Relevance” only returns results based on the words I enter. However, sorting by “Relevance” is the default value. Duh, why didn’t I know that?  I thought it was awesome that my computer knew me so well that it automatically went to “Relevance” to sort my search results (apparently, that’s not the case).

According to the post, when you sort by this value, you’re getting results based on what LinkedIn thinks is relevant, which differs greatly from how other source sites like Google, Twitter and Applicant Tracking Systems work. These sites sort according to what keywords are entered. LinkedIn sorts by a combination of factors– this includes what you searched for, but also your “social graph” (1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections).

About a year ago, LinkedIn launched a new search platform. It explained that the relevance of search results is affected by each person’s professional network on the site. Relationship is key. That means that LinkedIn tries to personalize the relevance, placing professionals that are most likely to be of interest to the one executing the search at the top of the first search results page. Read the rest of this entry »

It took me awhile to find something to write about for this week. I wanted an idea that was a little more specific than social networking sites in general. So, I decided to focus on Twitter, and Twitter alone. Twitter serves as a virtual conversation, a way to pass along ideas, see what everyone’s talking about, and learn some new information along the way. But, like physical conversations, Twitter can be overcrowded and noisy. And when you’re a recruiter, you’re on a social networking site for a specific purpose, and you want to be noticed among all the other talk happening at the same time. A CruiterTalk.com article discussed four ways for recruiters to creatively use Twitter. I found the article to be very interesting, and wanted to share some of the insight it contained:

1. Creating a Twitter account for one specific purpose helps to keep the conversation noise to a minimum, and therefore be able to hear what you want. For example, recruiters can refer to a database of people they’ve found elsewhere, either from résumés sent to you or e-mail addresses. Then, you can find these people on Twitter and follow them. That way, your account follows only those you want to see for a particular job. Read the rest of this entry »