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Don’t get me wrong. I use LinkedIn a lot, and of course so do all the recruiters at Firebrand.

But there are issues with LinkedIn. Flaws.

One of the most obvious is that LinkedIn appears to have no system to monitor accuracy of data on their network. Indeed, they freely admit that many profiles are bogus, and that many people have several LinkedIn profiles.

Only last week I was at a the Recruiters HUB conference in Sydney where a speaker, Kalena Jefferson, HRD for Kelly Services, spoke amusingly, about their office fish ‘Moby’, who apparently has a LinkedIn profile. And get this. Moby once received a headhunt approach via LinkedIn for a sales job!

Increasingly, I have started to detect flagrant misrepresentations on LinkedIn. I have close to 3,000 contacts on LinkedIn. Many of these people are quite well known to me. Some have worked for, or with me (over a 30 year career, that is a lot of people!), or I have interviewed them for a job, or we have done business together.

And even though these people know they are linked to me, many of them create LinkedIn profiles that are as fictional as a Harry Potter novel!

A recruiter who held a bog standard recruiting role with my company, who now, miraculously, was apparently a ‘Divisional Manager’ while with us. A ‘LinkedIn Retrospective Promotion’.

Or a failed recruiter, who was managed out of the business for under-performance, now proudly boasts on her profile that she was the ‘Office Top Biller’ for three quarters out of four!

Or the receptionist – a temp when she was with us, what is more – who has morphed into the ‘Group Administration Manager’ on her LinkedIn profile, which on face value now looks very impressive indeed!

Or (and these are all real actual examples, I hasten to remind you) the ditsy, hopeless recruiter who eventually stole from the company, who just simply leaves the year she was employed here off her profile entirely! And then adds the inconvenient extra 12 months on to another job!

It happens all the time.

And it’s not just qualifications, work history, achievements and job titles that are inflated, exaggerated and quiet simply fabricated. The recommendations on LinkedIn are often as farcical as a John Cleese special.

Like the Senior Manager who worked for me, who eventually had to fire a woefully incompetent Manager… who now brazenly recommends her in glowing terms on LinkedIn! Are we surprised to find she recommends him back in a cozy, all too familiar, LinkedIn tit for tat recommendation love-in?

How can we possibly take LinkedIn recommendations seriously when they are mostly solicited, reciprocal, and worst of all – self-published! If you don’t like what they say, even in nuance, you don’t approve it.

Total nonsense. Useless. Farcical. John Cleese would approve.

LinkedIn has great application. But it is riddled with flaws too. For a start it is packed with fraudulent, exaggerated and inflated profiles.

And it begs the question. Does LinkedIn bear a duty of care to users of their service? In many cases we pay to secure access to these profiles. If they are fraudulent, and we make a hire, or recommend a hire, on the basis of LinkedIn provided data… does LinkedIn bear liability?

Should they?

But in the meantime, legal niceties aside, beware the LinkedIn liar.

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They call it ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’, and some might quibble at the word ‘social’ because a lot of it can be done alone, from the confines of a darkened room.

And most recruiters don’t have the faintest clue how to get the best out of the digital social explosion. A cursory glance will show you recruiters using Twitter as a job board, personal Facebook pages to connect with clients, and LinkedIn as a place to share banter and weekend war stories. All wrong.

So where to begin to understand how to interact on these various platforms? Are they different in terms of what you share and how you ‘speak’?

Well, ‘yes’, is the answer as far as I can see. And seeing that we call this stuff ‘social’ media, lets try (tongue firmly in cheek) to relate digital social to social IRL (In Real Life, of course!)

Facebook is like a pub: It’s an informal place where people get together with old friends, shoot the breeze, tell risqué jokes, and meet people they have never spoken to before. There are few rules and people certainly tend to misbehave there at times, often feeling embarrassed later about what they have said, shown or done! But real friendships can start there, and what’s more business can be done over a beer in the Facebook pub, so it’s not to be ignored.

Twitter is like a cocktail party: There is lots going on, and it’s very high energy. Many conversations are happening at once. Lots of people are talking and far fewer are listening. People drop in and out of conversations and if you like a conversation you might share it with another group. Sure you get the odd twitter cocktail party guest who behaves inappropriately, but mostly it’s pretty cordial, with more manners, and better language, than at the Facebook Pub.

LinkedIn is like a Tradeshow or a corporate conference: It’s business-like. People are there to work, learn and connect with like-minded business people. Mostly everyone is aware they are ‘on show’, and put their best foot forward. At the “Conference” you watch your language, dress up a little.

YouTube is like Times Square on New Years Eve or the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Pretty much anything goes! People will let their hair down and willingly make a fool of themselves, but no one really cares… until they meet you at the LinkedIn Conference, maybe.

A blog is like Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London: You can stand on your soapbox and say pretty much whatever you like. But your audience is fickle and will drift in and out, and judge you very quickly to be an interesting expert on a niche subject or a quack to be jeered or ignored. But don’t ignore it because lucid orators on street corners spark ideas!

MySpace is like Woodstock: The young and the crazy populated it, but it’s a fading memory for most.

I guess the point is this. Buttoned-down corporate lawyers for example go to the pub and let it all hang out at the Mardi Gras. But they also attend corporate conferences and cocktail parties and they would never get confused about how to dress or behave at each event.

That’s social media. Content and context are everything.

This article was partially inspired by a presentation on Social Media by Rachel Gould, Social Media Manager, Lander Associates. Thanks Rachel!

This can sound like a cliché but it’s never going to be more important than in the next few years.

Recruiters must build relationships. Real ones.

So many of the people who lost their jobs in our industry over the past 2 years did so because their relationship with clients and talent were superficial or non-existent. They had become technology driven, resume shuffling drones who competed on speed and price alone.

Now, the core competence of every recruiter is the ability to find great people and build relationships with them. This is what all great recruiters must do.

Recruiters need to get out of their organisation and get to know people at all levels who might be useful to them and their firm. You might use technology to help create the initial relationship, or it might be via networking or sales effort.  Then you need to leverage that by using social media including Twitter, blogs, websites, and anything else that will create authentic interaction with a potential candidate pool.

But remember, the technology part is an enabler to the solution, it is not the solution. More than half of every recruiter’s time should be used to network, build relationships, communicate, and get involved with candidates. Start now to get a head start on your competition. You need to build a community of talent who you know and engage with. Just running an ad on a job board is the lowest level of candidate interaction I can think of. It’s not differentiated in any way, and of course it does not work and that will get even worse.

We have to fundamentally shift our mentality in relation to candidates. “Just in time” recruitment is history and job boards will increasingly become ineffective.

Recruiters who can provide real career advice, listen to candidates’ concerns, and truly consult on which positions might be the best fit will be recruiters who grow and prosper in this, and any economy.

So if you are going to thrive in the recovery you will need to find new and innovative ways to engage with the talent market because I guarantee you, talent shortages will be back with us soon.

In fact, top recruiters will build talent communities that they communicate with on an ongoing basis. “Post and pray” will not be enough.

Those recruiters who stick with outdated sourcing methods, who fail to innovate, who fail to really work at sourcing, will fall way behind. And won’t reap the full benefit from the recovery when it comes.

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I am no LinkedIn expert. But I do use it. I post status updates, I join groups, I comment in discussions, and I check backgrounds of just about every person I am about to interview or even meet.

I also get lots of requests to connect, and as a result have about 3,000 connections currently, so I suppose I could be described as an ‘active LinkedIn’er’.

Active enough to realise there are a few things LinkedIn users simply should never do!

Firstly, let’s get away from chasing numbers when it comes to connections. Target your niche for goodness sake. I seldom send connection requests, but when I do, I know the person. I will have met, or dealt with that individual. I will certainly be sure that person is in a related field, and that there is potential for our business objectives to overlap.

And I do not accept all requests to connect. It’s tempting, I know. We all love to feel loved. But when I get a request to connect from a Library Assistant at a University in South America, I mean seriously, why would I?  And by the way, no disrespect to that individual. He may be a great guy with great skills, but is there really any likelihood that we can add much value to each other from a professional point of view? And that’s what LinkedIn is for, after all.

Secondly, don’t spam your connections with marketing material, requests to read your blog or any other self-serving communication. I delete people who are using their LinkedIn list purely to sell aggressively. That’s not what its for.

Thirdly, please don’t ask me for a recommendation if you hardly know me and must realise I hardly remember you. In fact, frankly, don’t ask for recommendations at all. Don’t you think soliciting people to say nice things about you is just a little bit tarty?

In fact, on that topic, the whole concept of LinkedIn recommendations is flawed, open to flagrant abuse, and borders on self-love. Who is going to publish an unflattering recommendation? Indeed, who is going to write one? I have seen LinkedIn recommendations from managers, when I know that manager has fired the ‘recommendee’! What a load of old cobblers! I have written the odd recommendation myself – but only when I really know and value the person’s work, and even then I do it partly out of a desire to please. I increasingly do not answer recommendation requests, particularly where the person is not well known to me.

And lets round off this little rant with one more pet peeve. Don’t be a tart with your updates. We all know there is software that allows you to multi-list your updates, using TweetDeck for example. So, you tweet some banal observation about what someone in the office is wearing, but you copy that tweet to your LinkedIn status too? I mean seriously, do you think we want to see your LinkedIn status updated every 10 minutes with your inane tweets?  Do you think that’s what LinkedIn is designed for? That kind of update is bad enough on Twitter, but on LinkedIn it’s just so much dross.

Finally, specifically for those using LinkedIn for recruitment. It’s a great resource. Please do not abuse it, or the people on LinkedIn, by blanket ‘headhunting’ approaches. Don’t be the LinkedIn equivalent of the guy in the pub desperately trying to hook up with everyone….. anyone! Be a little subtle. Do some research on your target. Find a plausible reason to engage, interact, and then ease into job opportunities.

LinkedIn will work best for you if you:

• target the right audience
• use a professional tone at all times
• share great content and
• display your expertise in your field

Only after you have done all that, can you afford to “sell” yourself, and even then, just a little.

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It’s easy to think social media is a trivial diversion, ideal for 20-something’s with an addiction to technology and too much time on their hands.

But I don’t think so. In fact, properly used, it is a highly sophisticated business development and relationship management tool, which has the ability to increase recruiter productivity exponentially.

Twelve months ago I wrote my first blog for ‘The Savage Truth’. At about the same time I posted my first tentative tweet. I already had a LinkedIn page, but my excursion into social media was mostly an attempt to understand it from the inside.

And while I won’t claim to be any kind of expert, I can now point to thousands of blog readers a week, and close to 5000 followers on Twitter, all of whom are in my target audience of Recruiters, Marketers and Designers.

These social media platforms can grow your personal and corporate brand in a way that 1000 client visits cannot. Through my social media exposure I have hired staff, selected vendors, won clients, sourced many candidates, been invited to speak at conferences, filled up seats at those conferences, and generated tens of thousands of dollars of media exposure.

I have also learned a great deal that assists me in my business, made offline friendships and found another way to engage with my own staff, currently working in 13 counties across the world.

Generally speaking, the more senior the person, in years and status, the less they feel social media is relevant to them. That’s a fallacy that needs to be overcome.

Recently, I was interviewed by Jeff Bullas, a highly influential blogger and thought leader on social media, marketing and the web. The short video interview can be viewed here.

If you have even a suspicion that social media might be important for you and your business, please watch it. It might just steer you in the right direction.

View video and blog post: The CEO and Social Media written by Jeff Bullas
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/07/04/the-ceo-and-social-media/

Last week I blogged on why so many recruiters have a shallow understanding of what ‘competitive’ in our business actually means.

And so how do we thrive in a competitive world? What is the way to differentiate in 2010 and beyond?

Well it’s not cool to say it out loud, but as far as I am concerned it’s what technology cannot do that our clients will continue to pay for.

It’s a source of constant amazement to me how many of us in this industry have been completely seduced by the technology spin doctors. We are terrified that the Internet will wipe out our business. We agonise over social networking and how it will change the talent-sourcing model. We quake at the power of LinkedIn, and we are hypnotised by the thought our competitors will develop a piece of technology that somehow will make our service redundant.
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Don’t get me wrong. Technology is reshaping our business and having leading-edge technology is crucial, in as much as it allows your consultants to compete on an even playing field, and gives them the tools to give clients and talent what they really want.

But technology will not destroy our industry. At least not all of it – and definitely not the part we want!

And here is why.  Finding a job or recruiting a new staff member is not a commodity purchase. We are not dealing with the same psychology which drives i-Tunes, e-trade or amazon.com.

This is important because it means that the real value provided by quality recruiters will still have a market.  That is, screening, evaluating, persuading, assessing, negotiating, advising, consulting and acting, as an advocate for employers will still have tremendous value.

It is on these competencies that we need to compete.

But it’s also more than interpersonal recruiting skills (which by the way were largely lost during the decade-long hiring boom that preceded the GFC). Talent management is where the real battle for recruitment dominance will be fought. Building talent communities and managing effective communications channels with those communities is where the holy grail lies.

And we will need to compete in other ways too. Customers will increasingly call the tune. And by customers I mean talent as well as clients. The customer experience will build or tarnish your brand like never before. This is where social media will be able to destroy your business. Get it wrong and your brand will be brought down at viral speed. That’s where we have to compete. How we deal with customers and manage their expectations and experience with us.

Lack of personal interaction is doing our industry no favours. In fact I consider it one of our deepest flaws. Many recruiters use technology to avoid connecting personally with talent, when in fact the real advantage of technology is to get much closer to many more quality candidates.

So social media and technology generally is a threat to you only if you fail to recognise this fact…

… there will continue to be a market for tailored, personalised, high quality business solutions based on an advisory, consultative model, where access to talent is the differentiator.

Don’t be sucked in to competing on the basis of who can commoditise what we do the best. Don’t play the low margin, process game.

As your competitors claim, “we are bigger, have cooler technology and therefore we can do it faster and cheaper” or technology-driven platforms push to cut out recruiters altogether, your premise for doing business is…

“I can solve your problem because I understand your need and I know where the talent live”

During my recent RCSA speaking tour around Australasia I spoke to over 500 Australian and 150 New Zealander recruiters, on the upbeat topic of ‘Riding the Recovery’.

I have to admit it was refreshing to talk about positive ideas and strategies to ensure we take advantage of the opportunities presented by an economic revival.

One of the key areas I covered was the use of Social Media as a sourcing and influencing tool for our industry going forward. I have already blogged on my finding that Australian recruiters use Twitter in tiny numbers and followed that up with a similar story on New Zealand. However, I also used this opportunity to survey (by show of hands, so not very scientific), the use of LinkedIn by New Zealand recruiters.

It turns out that in Auckland and Christchurch, only about 70% of recruiters have a LinkedIn Account (I have to say I am wondering what the other 30% are waiting for). However when asked whether their LinkedIn accounts were worked ‘actively’ with status updates, participation in groups and all the other available applications, only between 10% and 20% kept hands raised.

I am no LinkedIn expert, but it seems self-evident that it’s a great branding tool, a fantastic sourcing tool and an exceptional way to connect with otherwise inaccessible people-not to mention its research capabilities.

I have spoken to clients who acknowledge freely that the first thing they do when assessing a new recruitment service provider, is to review their LinkedIn profile, including an evaluation of history, stability and quality of the recruiters network.

Personally, I could do far more with my LinkedIn account. However I do review it every day, participate in groups, answer questions, update my status and add connections every week. I have also connected my blog and Twitter account to my Linked In page, making an attempt to integrate my Social Media messaging and content. And it works. Even though I am only using the free functionality of Linked In, so far I have hired new Firebrand employees from LinkedIn, won clients, secured speaking engagements and generated publicity in many countries and many media.

So Kiwi recruiters, let’s get with the programme. Slow to buy into Twitter I can half understand.

But if you are not LinkedIn… you surely will be left out.

Over the past week I have conducted RCSA seminars for over 150 New Zealand Recruiters in Auckland and Christchurch. The topic was “Riding the Recovery” and part of my session was on Social Media and how we need to build that technology into our talent sourcing strategies.

Well, I grabbed this opportunity to conduct a little mini-survey on the Twitter habits of attendees. It was totally unscientific and very impromptu, so take from this what you will, but I was somewhat surprised to find that only 5% of the attendees (by show of hands) in Auckland, and probably even less in Christchurch, actually have a Twitter account at all.

I am not sure what I expected. Having done a similar survey in three large Australian cities late last year, I should have been prepared because the Australian average was only between 5% and 10% as well. But on the other hand, Australians and New Zealanders are massive early-adopters of technology, and at the general level have swarmed into Social Media use. Why not recruiters?

I think this is going to have to change – and fast. New Zealand recruiters won’t be able to rely on job boards for candidates going forward. The cream of candidates, especially passive ones, will need to be sourced through an increasingly fragmented variety of channels. In my view Social Media will be one of those channels.

But for recruiters, Twitter will be far more than a simple source of candidates to fill todays’ job order. More important than that is that smart use of Social Media is an opportunity to be perceived as an expert in your industry niche. Recruiters are going to need to use Twitter to foster relationships (and not to spam people by the way), build credibility, and actually interact with communities of people they might want to place in the future, or who are influencers in their area of interest. That will be increasingly powerful for those who get it right.

In my view it’s like this. Social media remains a TOOL – not a strategy – to reach people. There are still tons of people who will not be found on social networking sites. Recruiters don’t want to be seduced by Social Media and the hype surrounding it — but equally recruiters must acknowledge its’ role, and figure out how to work it into the talent acquisition mix

So Kiwis (and Aussies, by the way) get to it! Build social media into your communications armory. When that talent shortage comes roaring back, you are going to need it!

I am no social media expert. I am not even that familiar with the ‘ins and outs’ of Twitter, although I have built up 11,000 plus followers to date. Truthfully, I only plunged into the social media world, including this blog, because I am a recruiter, and I run a business that works in the digital and marketing arena. I felt I needed to know what the medium offered, how it worked, what I could contribute to the conversation, and how our clients and talent could benefit it from it.What better way to do that than diving right in!

And even though I am learning, I am in no position to offer advice on how to use the social networks.

But I can tell you why I won’t follow you back on Twitter.

I suppose I get 10-15 new followers a day on average. And when I get time – it might be a few days later – I will click on each of their Twitter profiles and see who they are and what they talk about. And, often, I will follow them back if I feel they will add to the conversation and help me build my knowledge and reach. I imagine most people do the same.

But often I won’t follow back. And just recently I was pondering why I choose not to press ‘follow’. My first thought was that the decision was simply intuitive. But when I went deeper, I realised that I do have a sort of mental check-list I flick through when deciding to follow, or not.

Firstly I look at the picture or avatar of the new follower. No avatar is a big #fail, and personally I prefer a real picture of a real person, or maybe a clever icon or cartoon representing that person in a real way. Twitter is about engagement and conversation, and it’s so much easier for that to happen if you have an image of the person you are tweeting with.

Then I read their most recent tweets. That is key. Lots of one-word Tweets or meaningless phrases and it’s a ‘no follow’. Loads of trivial stuff about how much beer was drunk last Friday, or what they like on toast in the morning, also means ‘no follow’. Self-promoting ads for products or services, or endless streams of automatically generated tweets and it’s a no-go too. I also tend not to follow people who tweet bad language, or who have a penchant for being routinely argumentative and mean-spirited in their comments. That is not what Twitter is about for me and certainly not what I want to see in my Twitter stream each day.

Of course I read the bio. I am looking for some connection. In my case a recruiter, or a marketer, or someone in design. But any field can still get a follow from me, if the bio is interesting and well-written. No bio means almost certainly no follow.

My next criteria is location. Not that I will eliminate anyone because of where they live! No, in fact the worldwide reach of Twitter is a major appeal. But if there is no location on the profile, it leaves a gap in my mental picture of who this is and so they are less interesting and less trusted.

I am always disappointed if the new follower does not list their web address. A link to a blog or a company website obviously adds huge insight to who the person is. It adds credibility too, and it will certainly weigh heavily in my decision to follow you back or not.

But it doesn’t end there. I usually have a quick look at your following/follower ratio. This is not a deal breaker, but in conjunction with other measures, such as Tweet content, can be a knock-out factor. For example, you are following 9697 people and three are following you back. That is a problem.

Twitter, like a lot of technology, can waste lots of time. But I want to extract value out of my involvement on Twitter. So I am rigorous in screening who I follow, and I expect others will be with me too. It’s worth the effort because you end up with a Tweetdeck full of interesting relevant comment at best – and humorous, harmless chit-chat at worst.

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This year, in my capacity of International CEO of Aquent, (the only global staffing company dedicated to marketing and design) I was very excited to help launch our new website, which specifically promotes the ability of our talent and clients to connect with our Agents, via social networks, if preferred.

You might think then, that I am a social networking evangalist, a true believer that is convinced “old recruiting” is dead and a new world of connecting via web-enabled networks awaits. A world where recruiters will manage armies of “friends and contacts” and slot them neatly into web-generated clients, themselves sourced via a gigantic pool of “Linked-In” connections.

Well, you would be wrong on both counts. No, I am not a social networking fanatic, and nor do I believe a new recruiting world will unfold, based on social networking per se.

Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware of the potential power of social media. I have my “Linked-In” page, and I find it fantastic for information and idea sharing and locating lost colleagues and also accessing talent. I am “Face-booked ” up to the max, although in truth its primarily a way to see what my daughter is up to, and share photos with my sisters overseas. And I fully “get” how Twitter, and the rest, are going to revolutionise how we communicate with people on a broad scale. We are in a dynamic, fast-changing world, and technology is impacting many aspects of human interaction — no doubt.

But remember this! Faxes were going to revolutionise recruitment. Remember? The Internet was going to wipe traditional recruiters from the landscape. Have we forgotten already? Email was going to mean the end of consultative recruiters. Web-testing and screening would mean selling skills and closing skills and candidate management skills were going to be redundant for poor old recruiters like me, living in yesteryear.

And none of it came true. None of it.

Sure we are in a recession now and recruitment as an industry is suffering, but that’s pure economic cycles. The truth is that for the five years up to 2008, the staffing industry was growing like it never had before. Record revenues, record profits, record take-up of our services by both clients and candidates, right across the world.

The Internet and email and job boards didn’t kill off recruiters! New technologies helped them to new heights and new riches! And the truth is that the recruiters who are doing the best now are those who are able to integrate the traditionally required skills with new technologies, and make one plus one equal three.

As I commented in our press release announcing our new website “’Job boards don’t find people jobs. People finds people jobs!”

(See the full release here )

Just before the market tanked about 18 months ago, an exiting employee of my firm, commented “Aquent is great place and Greg a good enough guy, just too old-fashioned”. Apparently most of that opinion was based on my refusal to pander to spoilt Generation Y’ers in our business who wanted everything, gave little in return, and had tantrums along the way to boot. The departing employee who made that remark was going to a new staffing world of in-house café lattes, flexible work hours, torn-jeans dress code — and a talent management strategy based entirely on scanning Facebook all day.

Sadly that business is gone, along with many of its ilk. And of course it’s the “old fashioned” recruiters, people who actually look to connect, personally, with talent and clients, recruiters who consult and add value, staffing professionals who can read between the lines, influence, persuade and truly match beyond a bland job description — who will survive this downturn and thrive in the inevitable upswing.

Social networking is a communications channel recruiters must embrace. No question. But lets be smart about this. It’s NOT the Holy Grail. It’s just a tool. An enabler, and it needs to be harnessed like all the other mechanisms we use to manage our relationships with clients and candidates.

Social networking devotees talk lovingly of “friends” and “contacts,” when in most cases, they are nothing of the sort. Who are we fooling when we call someone we have never met (quite possibly never heard of), “a friend”. Clicking “I accept” does not buy you love baby! How strong are your “friendships” when your “friend” can rid themselves of you by clicking a mouse (and hey, you don’t even get notified your “friendship” has bitten the dust). And your “contacts and connections” on Linked-In can be kept real if you are vigilant and disciplined, and there is huge value there. But accept everyone who wants to connect to you, and you build someone else’s mailing list, little more.

Every day web-advertising spruikers spout scare tactics suggesting recruitment companies who don’t pour money into social networking recruiting will be left behind, and be unable to attract talent. Total nonsense of course.

The real value of social media for the recruitment industry is building communities of like-minded people. Communities where you can showcase your credibility and build up networks that will allow you to source in the future. In fact I think the real value of social media is as an “influencer’,'more than a way to tap into talent . Those recruiters who use social media as a de facto job board, listing endless links to job descriptions juts don’t get the main game at play

Eventually a more structured and fruitful way to mine networking sites will be developed, and then it will behoove recruiters to get serious. But by then the social networking phenomena itself would have evolved into something different!

In the meantime, posting a job vacancy via a Tweet is even less targeted than the least targeted job board. You may get a valid response, you may not. But the fact remains, the real work of a skilled recruiter happens once the talent has applied, not before.

Social networking “gurus” and evangelists pontificate about how its web 2.0 that will make or break the next generation of recruiters, when in most cases these experts have never placed a person in a job and would have zero idea of the dynamic that has to occur for placements to be consistently made.

And that’s what we are talking about here, fellow recruiters. Don’t be seduced by the bright lights! Don’t be hooked into the promise of untold riches based on browsing your Facebook page. Sure, use Twitter, but don’t be a Twit. Play around with Facebook but face up to the reality that the hard work of building an offline reputation and real-world skills is still required. Link-In for all you are worth, but don’t allow the missing link of people interactions skills to be your downfall.

Of course, candidates and even clients, will originate from your social networking activities. I have had success that way myself. And that’s cool and its very welcome. But I also pick up candidates and clients from amongst the parents on the sidelines of my sons rugby matches! No one is really suggesting that as a targeted, sustainable way to re-invent recruiting are they?

Here is the nuts of it. The hard work of developing a sustainable relationship, building trust, proving you can add value, must be done in the “old fashioned” way. The way that has kept me in the staffing industry for thirty years, making money and having fun during every single one of them!

So as Aquent enters a brave new world of a totally transparent website which connects our customers to our people, note that social networking is intrinsic to our plan, but note too that the real theme behind our website is kinda “old fashioned”.

Connecting people and building real relationships.

Because its people who find people jobs.