Master LinkedIn Search for Faster Access to People and Jobs

LinkedIn still holds the title of the largest professional networking site, with more than 330 million user profiles. So in order to support the demand for its platform, LinkedIn has been working to improve the functionality of its search.

In June of 2014, LinkedIn deployed Galene, its new search architecture. This helped lay the groundwork for the improvements it hopes will make searching within the platform better, faster, and more easily accessible.

What do the newest updates have in store for LinkedIn users?

With LinkedIn’s new search functionality you will be able to uncover results based on common connections, companies, or groups that you share with the individual that you’re searching for.

Find New Friends

In the past, LinkedIn required a Premium membership in order to find and connect with individuals outside of your direct network.

Now, users can connect with individuals that are in their first-, second-, or third-degree networks. As shown below in a screenshot provided by LinkedIn, you can search based on name or specific keywords.

 

Discover Jobs Just for You

This feature may be the most impressive upgrade to LinkedIn's search. It is meant to help users find jobs that are a match for them. The system will take into consideration your previous roles and bring open positions that are the most relevant for you to the surface of your search results.

 

Get the Content That Counts

It’s now even easier to catch up on the content that your LinkedIn network has been sharing with a helpful dropdown in the search menu called "posts." Posts will allow you to search for the latest posts based on the subject you type in the search bar.

 

LinkedIn is clearly upping its search engine capabilities to better meet the needs of the more than 300 million users on its platform. Have you used any of the new features? If so, which did you find to be the most helpful?

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Effective Tips for Social Recruiting

You have already heard this many times before: social media websites are great tools for recruiting and sourcing potential job candidates. Identified, which is a well-known social scoring analytics firm, adds fuel to the fire by estimating that companies that have put social media into use for recruiting have 25% lower hiring costs per year. This estimation sounds too good for you to neglect it.

What happens if your company still hasn’t established its presence in the social media? How can you start recruiting and sourcing effectively? These simple tips will get you started in no time:

1. You already have existing contacts. Import them!

Launching social tools and getting connected to the contacts you already have is the easiest thing. Twitter and Facebook enable you to import your list of contacts, which will help you find people you know on these social tools. These imported contacts will be your foundation that will help you build your recruiting campaign – they will guide you towards people you would like to know and hire.

2. Use the employees that are well-connected on social media

Among your current employees, there are social media “stars” whose contacts you can use to manage and build your network. Make them advocates for your company and you will notice how they attract potential job candidates easily. However, you need to be careful with your approach; you cannot just ask your employees to connect you with every single contact they have. Instead of imposing that demand, you should learn from the way they use social networks. If they managed to create a successful social media presence, you can use their techniques for your own approach.

3. Promote your company through your employees

Most of your employees are already active members of social media communities, so they can help you enhance your recruiting efforts. If the company culture you have established is great, it won’t be a problem for them to promote you. Although the participation of all your employees is welcomed, you should first focus on the “best” ones (the ones who are well-accepted on social media websites and use them actively).

4. Pay attention to the public profile 

Your company’s public profile will represent its values and success. Make sure to provide contact information and create a well-written profile with usage of keywords relevant to your business. If you make it easy for potential candidates to reach you, social recruiting will become much easier.

5. Don’t focus your social media presence on sales

If the main purpose of your social media presence is recruiting, you should promote your company as a great place to work. Your presence should be focused on building that brand perception instead of sales.

6. Add a personal approach to your profile

The profile of your company should definitely look professional, but you still need to add a touch of human presence in it without compromising the image of professionalism. Your profile is the first thing potential candidates will look at, so it has to create a strong impression if you want to get their interest.

7. Listen and learn!

Even if creating a social media presence seems easy and you think you know everything, you should still pay attention to the social media monitoring applications and learn from them. This information will give you knowledge about where you can find potential candidates, what topics interest them, and who else is trying to attract them.

8. Stay connected and contribute to the community 

If you managed to connect with people from your industry, well done! Now you need to work on building and maintaining your reputation. The key to that is staying connected and hanging out where these people can be found. In order to find the niche network where people from your industry hang out online, you should ask and listen to the social media stars in your company.

9. Focus on one social media website at a time

If you want this campaign to be successful, you should choose one social media site and stick to it until you achieve strong presence. If you try to be successful on all of these websites at once, you will find them overwhelming and you won’t be able to devote your time to all profiles.

10. Share content that will be helpful to others

The right approach towards social recruiting is all about helping people. If you have a genuine wish to help more people with the content you share, your visibility will be improved and you will build your network more easily. You don’t have to develop unique content, although that’s advisable from time to time. Take your time to find and share useful videos and articles that are relevant to your industry and helpful for your followers, and you will soon attract many people that are worth recruiting.

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1 in 10 Young People Rejected For a Job Because of Their Social Profile

What’s considered “young?” Anyone who falls in the age range of 16 to 34. <wipes brow> New research from ondevice  showed that one in 10 people surveyed have been rejected for a job because of their social media presence. And, the majority (two-thirds) are not concerned that their use may harm future career prospects.

The Young People’s Consumer Confidence (YPCC) Indexsurveyed 6,000 16 to 34 year olds across six countries and major findings showed that:

• Young people are more likely to have altered their social media profile to look good to their friends, as opposed to prospective employers.
• Around the world, almost 300 million young adults, aged 15 to 24, are not working or studying (one quarter of the world’s population).
• Young people in developed markets have a very positive outlook for future economic growth in their country.
• 88% of young people in developing countries believe they will get a higher education qualification than their parents.
• 65% of young adults in America and 91% in China 

Here’s a breakdown of what social networks young adults are using around the world:

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Am I Too Old For Social Media?

Just a few days ago I was looking in the mirror and I noticed a few grey hairs starting to stream through.  It got me to thinking, am I getting too old to efficiently engage and connect in Social Media?

If you believe the media stories, Social Media - especially networks like Facebook and Twitter - are targeted for the younger generation, dominated by the younger generation and if you want a great “social media guy” then you should look young.

Now by no means would I consider myself to be old, I’m just past 30 and I feel as if my best years are to come.  In fact I think my skill set, my life experience and my business knowledge perfectly position me for social media success.

The problem is, though, business owners are making decisions on whom to use as their “social media expert” based on age.  I couldn’t think of a more ridiculous way of making a hiring decision. 

My mum and dad grew up in a time where they witnessed the first person to walk on the moon. This doesn’t mean they should automatically qualify as the next Astronaut.

In fact my mom is terrified of heights so I doubt that she’d make a very good Astronaut at all.  But the business logic being used by businesses these days when making decisions on their social media hires would suggest this is the trend.

Let’s get real - when hiring someone for a position or engaging a company to provide you with services, age really shouldn’t be an influencing factor.  You should be making decisions based on experience, skills, training, results - all the factors that indicate you’re more likely to succeed in your decision.

Don’t get me wrong - there are some great young entrepreneurs (you’ve just got to look at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to realize that) but that doesn’t automatically mean that ALL young people are great.

You see, there’s been a stereotype created around the kind of people who are great on social media.  Personally, being a great user of social media doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great marketer on social media.

These are two completely different concepts, which come from two completely different ball parks.  Smarten up business owners, make decisions based on sound knowledge, skills and results, not on age.

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