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My company was recently retained by another company to source 30 sales engineers. The sales engineers had to be from the same suburban location in Virginia.
Of the 30 sales engineers that were utimately identified, 29 were not on LinkedIn.
Are most of your candidates on LinkedIn or not on LinkedIn?
Why?
17 replies
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"The truly passive candidate wouldn't be on LI or any other website. To be truly passive, they should be part of the Amish Community. No telephone, TV, or internet."
Now THAT is an excellent point.
Back when I first got started in this business in 1995, some very senior people said to me, with complete sincerity, "I don't give a **** about the Internet. All you need to do this business is a pad of paper and a telephone."
That same sentiment does seem to be reflected in such messages as "29 of 30 candidates for a recent sales engineer search weren't on LinkedIn" and direct employers, not just in the obscurity of their contract language but directly on their home pages posting, "We will not pay you penny one for any candidate who has ever posted a resume on Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs or anywhere on the web that has been indexed by Google."
But, it's an interesting question - could you do this business without even a telephone?
Are candidates that are not readily reachable even with a telephone call potentially even more valuable than those reachable via a professional "telephone names sourcing" endeavor?
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I agree. The truly passive candidate wouldn't be on LI or any other website. To be truly passive, they should be part of the Amish Community. No telephone, TV, or internet.
I think Osama is the epitome of the actual passive candidate. Hiding out in the caves of Afghanistan. Hey! He would also be a diversity, passive candidate. Way cool!!!
I still beleive this passive fad is just that. A fad. Great buzzwords and excellent marketing tools by TPRs. in reality this is a snipe hunt.
Everyone is an active candidate for the right opportunity. Whether they are on LI, MySpace, FaceBook, Monster, or any other of the billion websites out there.
As Lou would say "If the job opportunity I'm representing is clearly superior to what you're doing today, would you have some time later today to discuss it on a very exploratory basis?" Bam, active candidate.
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All - I just quickly read your posts, but it seems to me that the fact that 29 of 30 candidates weren't on LinkedIn is actually good, not bad. The real question is "does someone on LinkedIn know the 29 people?" It's better if they're not on LI.
Recruiters need to call people up who are on LinkedIn and get referrals of people who aren't. That's how you earn your keep. Networking and getting referrals is the game we're in. Using LI as a starting is all it needs to be. So in this context I think it's a great tool for a strong recruiter/sourcer. As far as I'm concerned, with LinkedIn and a phone, I'm able to get all of the candidates I need in a few days.
I apologize if someone already made this point.
Lou Adler
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Jeff Weidner, thanks for posting that table. That really adds some significant new information to the discussion.
I know most of you may not have similar information in that much detail, but anecdotally have you noticed strong geographic differences in technology comfort level?
For instance, when doing very generic LinkedIn searches to attempt to get an overall feel for the market, I've found myself somewhat overwhelmed when reviewing profiles from the San Francisco Bay area.
As much as I have a reputation in my own area for being an "Internet guru", I read through some of the San Francisco area profiles and often feel hoplelessly behind the curve.
Anyone else notice any geographic variance of technology acceptance?
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OK I tried posting message here but ERE's formatting is not really compatible with a 6 column table so I posted results to my web site: HTC Metrics report for Source of Names from Sampling of 11 projects
So based on the results what are your own assumptions/conclusions about Linkedin?
Jeff Weidner 925 313 9005 X 200 HTC Research Corp
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Sam, First let's make sure your analysis is actually correct and that the findings are accurate. Not that I dispute your findings at all but for those of you on the group that don't know Sam and his background let's not make any assumptions.
How did you go about trying to find out if the 29 candidates had Linkedin profiles? Did you do a straight Linkedin search from your personal network or did you do an advanced Google search of the Linkedin site? If you did a google search were the results accurate? As the results would depend on the mathods used.
But let's assume that you did both a Linkedin and Google search and you were extremely adept and thorough in your search methods and still 29 of the 30 were not on Linkedin.
And I'm going to temper this next statement with a disclaimer that it is not meant to be directed towards anyone in particular nor is it meant to be inflammatory in anyway...I'm amazed at how many researchers don't know this already. Especially, if you are doing Phone Name Generation. Linkedin is a fantastic tool but it has it's limitations and as researchers/recruiters you should know what those limitations are by now.
Since I'm a metrics freak I'll run through HTC's last 10 or so projects and draw up some specifics as to how many candidates came from Linkedin versus phone sourced versus our other sources. It won't be client specific obviously but I think it'll give a good smattering of what you can expect on Linkedin. You won't really be able to extropolate across all projects with such a small sampling but it's a start and I'll try to get a good representation so as not to skew the numbers too much. I'll include Job title: Geo location: # Sourced from LI: # Sourced by phone: # Sourced by other.
But I can guarantee that you will have better sucess in certain geographic regions over others, LI is better for high tech candidates that say retail, and certain industries and positions have little to no representation at all.
Last I heard there's about 30 million on Linkein. That's World Wide not USA based. So if 60% are from USA that's only 18 Million. and if your not doing Google searches on Linkedin and relying upon your 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels only well then it'll obviously be a much smaller number depending on how many first levels you have.
Linkedin tag line for recruiters should be "It's a good place to start but you'll still have to pick up the phone."
Jeff Weidner HTC Research Corp 925 313 9005 X 200
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Ah, John, that's ANOTHER set of fascinating metrics! ****** Do something today you don't think you can do.
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Well, yes, but which one of the 30 ultimately got hired??
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...a real KillJoy! ****** Do something today you don't think you can do.
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David - sorry 'bout that! I can be humorless sometimes. ;) ****** Do something today you don't think you can do.
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I would say most are not on LI. And its because they don't know that it exists. But the people I speak to (and I mean have a good meaningful detailed conversation) I will send an invitation to join my network.
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I agree. I have asked people about linked in and they haven't a clue what I am talking about. Sometimes as recruiters we assume others know about all the resources out there that we know about, when in fact they do not.
I think it varies by industry and function as to whether you will find what you are looking for on LI. Sometimes engineers (depending on the type) are not interested so much in social networks as they are in research and design of the current project.
I have recruited tons of engineers over the years and never used linked in. Of course linked in didn't exist for most of those years. I used the good ole telephone and used phone sourcing techniques to find the individual contributing engineers there were hidden deep within the corporate structure. Not easy, but it produces results if you have the determination and patience.
Diane
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I was barely half serious.
The recent changes at LI seem a bit like bait and switch to me. How ironic that their attempt to make it a better recruiting tool might actually hurt what makes it so good for recruiters.
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I echo Pam's remarks and think there will be some backlash over the recruitment direction LinkedIn is going.
By the way, I think this is FABULOUS real-time information that helps create metrics in our Sourcing industry - thanks Sam! I'd like to see more contributions from Industry members like this. It is very generous. ****** Do something today you don't think you can do.
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Sam,
That is really interesting! I think that LinkedIn is definitely more popular with some profiles and not even on the radar at all for others. I suspect there are a growing number of people who don't want to be on LinkedIn at all for fear of being perceived as an 'active' candidate by people they work with.
Pam
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David, I don't think this is the case. I find differing levels of LI participation industry to industry. It is still the norm that, when you ask someone if they're "on LinkedIn", the answer is a puzzled "What's that?"
Now, once I explain it to them, they're more than likely to join. But not all of them. I have often thought that this "service" may, in some form, be an excellent sourcing tool.
Many of my jobs face the kind of percentages Sam talks about. There's still no other way to find them than to call and dig them out of someone's psyche.
;)
****** Do something today you don't think you can do.
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Interesting post Sam.
Devils Advocate that I am, I can't help but wonder why all but 1 of your sales engineers were too disconnected from their customers to try to use a common tool to network with people in their industry.
Perhaps your team needs to aim for the people that go outside once in a while?
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