Ask any manager, HR person or headhunter and they’ll all say that finding the right person for a position is darn difficult. Talent—the right talent—talent that can not only do the job, but is also a great fit with your culture, rarely shows up knocking on your door at just the right time.

I was a headhunter BI (Before Internet) and I found most of my candidates through referrals, i.e., calling people on the phone (I was very good at it) and asking, “Who do you know…?”

Then came the Net, and, supposedly, it all changed—but it didn’t. It did create giant searchable resume databases, some free and some paid, but beyond tons of resumes everything was the same—and tons of resumes, even when keyword searchable, don’t really cut it.

Next came the first social networking sites, like Friendster, which business people quickly turned into recruiting sites. Then, in May, 2003, came LinkedIn.

Any form of recruiting takes finesse and knowledge, and LinkedIn is not an exception. It’s not enough to send a blast to all your connections, in fact, doing it too often is a great way to alienate them. The trick is to see LinkedIn as a good business tool, not just a recruiting tool, and learn to use it wisely.

I better say right away that I am the last person to consider knowledgeable, let alone expert, when it comes to social networking sites, At present, LinkedIn is the only one of which I’m a member and, being part Luddite, I’m not running around exploring others. LinkedIn seems to offer more privacy, and I’m pretty sure that I qualify as a privacy nut.

It was my virtual business buddy/guru, Scott Allen, who dragged me (kicking and screaming) into the blogging world (aren’t you glad) and said that if I did nothing else I should join LinkedIn Bloggers, so, of course, I did. (If you know any real gurus and disregard their advice, you don’t deserve to know them!)

As I tell my clients, the tiny bit I do know about LinkedIn I learned from a virtual class I took from Scott—and what really stuck was not just with whom to connect (which is not everyone who invites you), but why.

The trouble is that although my clients know that I’m a quasi-Luddite, they still ask me stuff (I hate not having anything at least quasi-intellignet to say), so I was more than delighted when Scott announced that he had launched a new site called Linked Intelligence. Along with Scott’s own deep understanding of LinkedIn, he’s drawing from knowledgeable people all over, people who really use LinkedIn to full advantage.

Scott further said that he had found three other blogs focused exclusively on LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn Notes (including how/why to break connections)
• LinkedIn Business Discussion Index (a digest of the 100+ Yahoo eGroups discussing LinkedIn usage)
• LinkedIn User Manual (general guidance)

So, from Scott to me to you—four links that together comprise LinkedIn for [smart] dummies.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 8:48 am and is filed under Business info, Communication, Hiring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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