'Social network' recruiting: software and online services help recruiters mine their contacts for candidates and referrals

HR Magazine, April, 2005 by Jennifer C. Berkshire

For all of the technological gains of the past decade, relatively old-fashioned tools such as networking and referrals still drive the process of identifying and hiring qualified candidates.

But now some online services seek to take networking and personal connections from the HR toolbox and marry them to technology. "Social networking technology" refers to software and web-based services that enable users to leverage their personal relationships for networking, hiring, employee referrals and references.

HR professionals are trying products such as Visible Path, which measures the strength of relationships by analyzing company e-mail accounts, and LinkedIn Jobs, an online job board that allows users to visualize how many "degrees of separation" lie between them and potential job candidates.

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But social networking technology has attracted a few critics. Privacy advocates are alarmed by the prospect of software that churns through employees' e-mail. And skeptics remind HR professionals who have caught the social networking technology bug that while these services may make generating names of potential hires a snap, transforming those names into candidates remains the real challenge.

Making Contact

The Internet has opened up a whole new way of networking for job candidates. Online sites have sprung up to help connect people and jobs--putting technology behind the old concept of "it's not what you know but who you know."

LinkedIn.com is one of the more popular professional online networking sites currently in use. (For a list of other sites, see "Getting Connected" on page 96.) New users register on the site and supply their name and location, then identify the kind of work they do and disclose whether they're a full-time employee or a consultant. There is no cost to join, and LinkedIn offers privacy protection, including a pledge never to sell your information to a third party and never to share your contact information with another user, unless both of you choose to contact one another.

By joining the LinkedIn community, you've essentially added your name to an enormous electronic Rolodex. And once you're in, you can search the extended network of contacts to find out who your contacts know. LinkedIn allows users to search for contacts by ZIP code, job, even the company for which they work. LinkedIn also gives you the option of uploading your Microsoft Outlook contacts onto the network. A quick search will reveal which of your contacts already belongs to LinkedIn.

Remember the old canard about how there are no more than six degrees of separation between any two people? The idea is that any person can be linked to any other person through no more than six other people. LinkedIn relies on that principle. Search for contacts, and you will get an indicator of the strength of your connection to those candidates. A direct knowledge of the contact would be defined as one degree of separation; someone who is known by a colleague's contact would merit a third degree of separation, and so on.

It may sound complicated, but the premise is actually simple, says cofounder Konstantin Guericke. "When we say that the connection strength is based on degrees of separation, it's not a technology 'gee whiz' thing."

Linking to Jobs, Candidates

Based on the popularity of its online network (LinkedIn currently boasts more than 1.8 million users in 120 industries), the company recently branched out into the job search business. In January, LinkedIn unveiled a new service designed specifically to allow HR professionals, managers and recruiters to post job listings within the LinkedIn network.

Users post a job description (LinkedIn charges $75 to post a position; there's no charge for searching for candidates) just like they would on a traditional job board. But instead of getting applications from anyone who has stumbled across your job description, you receive resumes and applications via your LinkedIn contacts. Each time you receive an application, for example, you can immediately see which of your contacts knows people who have worked with the candidate. And in addition to seeing resumes, users can also view public endorsements provided by former co-workers, managers and business partners that are included on the candidate's profile page.

That approach, says Guericke, allows HR professionals to tap into a huge pool of passive candidates they might not otherwise have access to. But users get something else as well: the power of referrals to generate qualified candidates. Explains Guericke: "If you are connected to someone who has posted a job, the candidate has to go through you to make contact with the poster."

Resume inflation, the bane of many HR professionals, is also harder to pull off here than on most job boards. For one thing, users post only one profile--and everyone can see it. "When you post your profile, all your colleagues and former bosses are looking at it, too. It's harder to lie," Guericke explains. "We tend to get more accurate resumes as a result."