I agree and disagree, of course with a bias, which you will see…when it comes to trying to recruit from social networks, we talk a lot about “intent to join”..I agree that a lot of people join LI for professional networking reasons and FB for social and picture sharing, and it still takes a cold call mentality to “connect” with quality passive candidates on these sites. Furthermore, as a good recuiter you still have to activate that passive candidate, and if you are going against their original intent to join, you are not off to a good start.

Where I disagree, is if you invite people to join your own private and secure social referral recruitment network, and offer rewards to be introduced to qualified candidates (you decide not matching), which will then provide you “permission based access” to your first degree connections for the purposes of referral recruitment. Now you have matching intent.

More importantly, because the person being referred has to see the job opportunity and agree to being referred, recruiters will be receiving passive candidates that have activated themselves, cutting sourcing time considerably.