If you haven't heard of LinkedIn, now's the time to check it out.
What is it? It's a networking site--similar but not identical to many others you've probably seen, such as MySpace.
Why should you care? A number of reasons.
First, unlike sites like MySpace or Facebook, it's devoted to business connections. This isn't about posting pictures of your dog, it's about finding talented people to develop business relationships with.
Second, it's the most popular of these types of websites, which includes sites like Spoke and Ryze. Take a look at its traffic trend.
Third, it has more than 8 million members, 4 million of whom are outside the U.S. That's a large pool to draw from--for job applicants, for connecting with colleagues, for whatever.
Fourth, because a lot of recruiters already have found it. The company estimates it has 60,000 recruiters combing its database. A recent article in Business 2.0 profiled Glenn Gutmacher, a recruiter who spends up to an hour a day on LinkedIn combing through his 3,500 contacts to reach approximately 3.5 million potential hires for Microsoft.
Anyone can join for free, but you have to invite someone to be part of their network. There are a number of tutorial-type videos on YouTube, like this one.
This is another place to source (at a cost), but beyond that I think this is a great opportunity for recruitment and assessment professionals to find each other. If you sign in, look me up. I promise I'll accept the invite.
1 comment:
If you liked that LinkedIn how-to video on YouTube, then you'll go absolutely ga-ga over this 30-minute long one (free and no commercials embedded -- it's simply meant to be useful) by Otis Collier, a former colleague of mine at Microsoft recruiting. It assumes it's your first time using the #1 business social network, but quickly gets you to full optimization level. Particularly well-suited for recruiters, but worthwhile for others: www.otiscollier.com/linkedin/linkedin.html
-- Glenn Gutmacher
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