Alright, I'll admit it. I just started using linked-in. I had read about this networking software through the ERE and just starting using it recently. In a word: Wow. This is the perfect recruiting tool and it's taken me 3.5 years in professional recruiting start putting it to use.
For those of you who are not familiar with it, LinkedIn is an online social networking tool. Basically, you put your profile out there and network with other people whom you have similar interests with. The cool part is that they have a google-esque search engine feature which lets you search on specific parameters. However, in order to actually get in touch with people outside of your direct network, you need to have some sort of connection with them. It's kind of like that Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon movie game where you can link any actor to any other actor through Kevin Bacon because he's been in 50000 movies. Same deal here, the bigger the network the easier it is to connect with the people you're looking for.
I've seen tremendous results in less than a week. Here's how I made it work for me:
First step was putting out a profile showing that I'm an IT recruiter who does permanent placements in the Wall Street community. From there, I just sent an invitation out to the best clients and candidates I know asking them to join my network. It snowballed from there. By emailing my hotlist, I now have 43 people in my direct network (and rapidly expanding). I can now also contact everyone in their direct network which adds up to 4,100 people. Go one degree further and I have 485,000 in my network. Just keed in mind you can only access people within 2 degrees of you without having to pay a small fee to contact them. But, if you make your network big enough you should have enough connections to get to the people you want.
To put this in more practical terms, I have had a number of junior level java development roles come up with two of my investment bank clients in NYC. Utilizing linked-in's search on java developers in the 10014 area code, it will bring up the profiles of all java developers in the NYC area within my network. That's well over 1,000 java developers. I have to imagine there are some good ones in there.
In a sense, I've basically combined my hotlist of the best people I know with their network of the best people they know. I now have access to an absurd amount of people in my industry, a good number of whom are probably top-shelf talent. You
know what they say, good people know good people.
Wanna join my network? Just send me a note.
Glad to see yet another recruiter start using LinkedIn and that you're bringing new people into the network. To really jumpstart the size of your network, however, you should also invite the people who are already members and heavily-connected to join your network. Not everyone agrees with this philosophy, but one trick to doing that (there are literally whole books and discussion lists on how to optimize LinkedIn) is to do a search without any keywords, but in the "sort by" menu, select Number of Connections. This will show you the top users, many of whom display their email address. Just use that to invite them to connect when you click to their profile page.
Posted by: Glenn Gutmacher | November 09, 2005 at 10:35 PM
Patrick,
Enjoyed the blog. I'd like to hear more about your exciting childhood in Cranford. (yawn) And how you wished you lived in Westfield instead. Just kidding - this is an excellent resource and wonderfully written. Keep up the great work! I'm motivated now to start my own blog!!
Posted by: James Wilton | November 15, 2005 at 06:08 AM
And thus starts the downfall of LinkedIn as a useful tool for what it was intended: professionals networking directly with other professionals.
One of the nice benefits of L.I. was that it was one of the few remaining places where you could network and job hunt that wasn't infested with recruiters.
Looks like that nice advantage is now rapidly slipping away ...
Posted by: | January 03, 2006 at 06:53 AM