Comments on: Feeling LeftOut on LinkedIn?

By: William Uranga

William Uranga — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:15:13 +0000

Frank.

No one said LI was a short cut. The article questions LI as a source. If you’re short cut in finding candidates is predominately LI, then your results will be so. Lazy recruiting will always gravitate to the “easy” or convenient”.

However, at a macro level, you still need to establish a relationship with a candidate (if they applied to a posting on LI) or rapport with a contact (if you’re cold contacting them). Try to short cut either of those and you get the results you deserve. There will always be folks looking for a magical, silver bullet. Let them. They will come and go.

This pro-LI or anti-LI rhetoric is silly. LI is a tool and like your $20 bill, it can be used in good ways or bad ways.

By: Recruiting Blog: BuzzLinks 08-13-08 LinkedIn, Bernard Hodes, & Attracting Talent | thetalentbuzz.com

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:28:39 +0000

[...] Feeling LeftOut on LinkedIn? [...]

By: Gerald Marshall

Gerald Marshall — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:16:55 +0000

These are the top 10 employment sites according to About.com (alphabetical order)

http://www.careerbuilder.com
http://www.coolworks.com
http://www.craigslist.com
http://www.hotjobs.com
http://www.jobfox.com
http://www.indeed.com
http://www.linkedin.com
http://www.monster.com
http://www.realmatch.com
http://www.simplyhired.com

Here’s the link to the about.com list:
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/joblistings/tp/jobbanks.htm

By: Liza Flores-Sapaugh

Liza Flores-Sapaugh — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:54:12 +0000

I Totally disagree with Frank on this. I love LinkedIn, and like any other “sourcing” website, is as good as you use it. If you create a profile and “link in” to people, but don’t use it to source you will not get anywhere. I myself have found and hired qualified people on LinkedIn but have gotten sources on locating more names as well as the “thanks but no thanks” on others.. which is what he should do rather than get annoyed.

By: Leslie Mason

Leslie Mason — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:26:58 +0000

I absoultely love LinkedIn! It is a great tool but should be viewed as such and shouldn’t replace effective recruiting, networking, referrals, etc. The most benefit for me is to research companies and find people who either are working there or have worked there in the past. This year over 50% of my placements have come from direct contacts through LinkedIn or referrals from someone on LinkedIn.

By: Jim Sullivan

Jim Sullivan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:44:23 +0000

Everyone has their own way of doing business, but as a 3rd party recruiter Nancy’s comment “The program I bought can not be sold to 3rd party recrutiers and has given me the edge. I have saved over $200K in fees just in the past 4 months” has me feeling that it’s not the way to go.

I classify it with “all internet recruiting tools” in that if I have access so does ever other recruiter on the planet (in-house or external). That doesn’t mean I won’t ever use them, but that is not where I focus my efforts. It’s in my toolbox, but like a spark plug wrench for a car mechanic, you only pull it out when you need it.

As an “old school” 3rd party recruiter I have found, that for me, the best way to recruit is still being on the phone and getting referrals from other good people.

By: John Kennedy

John Kennedy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:55:57 +0000

Although it is a rather rare occurrence to get a hire from a direct communition through LinkedIn, it has been rather valuable in obtaining general information about where activity is going on and where people are growing “restless”.

It is not any sort of “magic bullet”, however, and, as much as I hate to admit it at times, I still think the senior people I spoke to when I started this business were correct – if you are comfortable pounding the phone and can operate a pencil and a pad of paper you will do well in this business.

By: LinkedIn not working for you? | dcheadhunter.com

LinkedIn not working for you? | dcheadhunter.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:51:01 +0000

[...] Frank apparently has found no use for it. I have an idea Frank – If it’s not working out for you, go ahead and disable your account so you stop getting calls and unwanted emails. It’s that easy. Or is it that he has yet to learn how to harness the power of LinkedIn? You spent money on attending workshops on how to use LinkedIn!! Come on buddy, the site is about as user friendly as it gets but you had to pay someone to show you how to use it? [...]

By: Nancy Anton

Nancy Anton — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:39:25 +0000

I find LinkedIn Amazing! I just started using it in March, as a Talent Acquisitions Manager. The program I bought can not be sold to 3rd party recrutiers and has given me the edge. I have saved over $200K in fees just in the past 4 months, and have found excellent passive candidates that are now new hires. If I could only have one tool, it would be LinkedIn.

By: Ted Moore

Ted Moore — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:38:18 +0000

About 80% of my team’s placements over the last year or so have been the direct or indirect product of cold recruiting from fresh search research. About 15% of the remainder were sourced from referrals from my network. the last 5% were produced by LinkedIn and other Internet sources. That’s up from 0% the year before.

Now, 5% of the last 12 month’s production is an OK number (hope I didn’t kinda lose anyone there). But I doubt it will climb much higher, only because I’m lazy (”Where else are you interviewing? Nowhere? Excellent.”) and want to protect my brand (”We never would have found this candidate on our own.”)

Happy hunting.

By: Andy Newport

Andy Newport — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:48:05 +0000

Guys
In my humble opinion it’s another Job Board (and so I guess people get easy down/up on Monster?Career Builder etc. We have measured recruiter success across our organization by comparing Linkedin and non-LinkedIn users searching to fill the same position. If anything the LinkedIn route was less successful – there is a lot of misleading information put out there about individuals and spending a lot ot time talking to truly passive candidates is a waste of time. Many did not put their career history up there as a ‘to hire’ sign anyway.In the end we have banned use – simply because of corporate risk – recruiters building their own personal database of candidates off our own database. We want that central database kept up to date on a daily basis by our recruiters for the benefit of themselves and our shareholders and LinkedIn cannot give that to us with the security protection we need for this invaluable intellectual property in our database.

By: Dustin Low

Dustin Low — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:53:57 +0000

Definitely have to agree with Neil. If you are making “so much money” why do you care that you haven’t been able to leverage LinkedIn as a resource. More candidates for us!

By: Neil Vaughn

Neil Vaughn — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:22:35 +0000

You kinda lost me when you started bragging about all the money you have made this year.

By: Bryan Baldwin

Bryan Baldwin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:57:16 +0000

LinkedIn is useful, but not a panacea. Like all recruiting tools, it’s more useful for filling certain types of jobs. It’s a step in the development of a universal passive candidate database.

By: William Uranga

William Uranga — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:02:22 +0000

Why care if it works for others? If it doesn’t work for you/your environment don’t turn yourself into a pretzel or think like a lemming.

Besides, one less recruiter on LinkedIn makes it that more valuable for those of us who do well using it (among other resources).

By: Alice Carter

Alice Carter — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:01:38 +0000

LinkedIn provides me with fertile ground for talent when I am conducting a retained or exclusive search for my consulting clients. Vast numbers of executive-level consulting professionals use that site and belong to some of the Big 4 and Big 4 alumni groups. I have also noticed large numbers of FS professionals as well, but it might not work as well for corporate searches.

By: Robert Dromgoole

Robert Dromgoole — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:45:40 +0000

I’ve had some high level placements from Linked In. It’s a tool in your tool box. I love it personally, but you can certainly recruit without it.

By: Alex Cantu

Alex Cantu — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:33:06 +0000

I still think referrals systems are going to be the best means of good qualified candidates. LinkedIn, myspace, facebook, and other ning networks have completely saturated HR’s awareness of candidates, but how many are good candidates?