Tag Archives: LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s Voltron Search: What’s New and What’s Missing

In case you haven’t heard, LinkedIn is rolling out a new search interface globally over the next few weeks.

If you’d like to read the official statements and press-friendly content about LinkedIn’s new search functionality, you can find read about the changes on LinkedIn’s blog, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Mashable, and PCMag.com. If you’re only going to read one – read TechCrunch’s – it’s the best of the bunch in my opinion.

However, if you’d like to know what a LinkedIn power user and sourcing/information retrieval geek thinks about LinkedIn’s new search functionality, you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve had access to LinkedIn’s new search interface and functionality for a week now, and I wanted to share with you my first impressions, discoveries, disappointments, concerns, and suggestions for LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Search: New, but Improved?

LinkedIn’s Smart Query Intent Algorithm

Before I had access to the new LinkedIn search, I was excited when I first read about the concept of a “smarter query intent algorithm.” LinkedIn claims that the more you search for content on LinkedIn, the more the query intent algorithm “learns and understands your intent over time to provide the most relevant results.”

Of course, I’ve only had access to LinkedIn’s new search for about a week now, so I can’t tell how “smart” is has become based on the queries I’ve been feeding it. However, the issue I have with any query intent algorithm that claims to be able to provide me with more relevant results is that only the user can determine if results are “relevant” or not.

According to Merriam Webster, relevance is defined as “the ability (as of an information retrieval system) to retrieve material that satisfies the needs of the user.”

As such, by definition, only the user can truly determine or judge relevance. A search engine cannot ever truly “know” the needs of the user.

While I appreciate and applaud the intent behind an “intelligent query algorithm,” which isn’t dissimilar to what many have been trying to do for years when it comes to search, the best way to implement such a system is to incorporate a feedback loop for the user to tell the algorithm which results the user truly finds relevant, rather than relying on supervised or unsupervised machine learning or some other method based on which profiles are clicked vs. which ones are not, and/or perhaps time spent reviewing specific profiles.

I’d love to know exactly how LinkedIn’s smarter query intent algorithm works (I’d love to make it smarter!), but something tells me that’s not something they would disclose.

I’m not a fan of black box search algorithms – I like to know exactly why I get the results I do.

LinkedIn’s Suggested Searches

I was also excited when I read about suggested searches, because my mind immediately raced to thoughts of LinkedIn being able to suggest better queries or perhaps searches other people had run for similar terms/people.

However, what LinkedIn is really referring to with regard to “suggested searches” is related to new unified search functionality in that if you type in a term or a title into the main search box on LinkedIn, you will see a list of options you can choose from, such as searching for related jobs, people, connections, groups, and skills.

I’m not saying this isn’t cool functionality, it’s just that I have high expectations when someone makes a claim of “suggested searches.”

Customized LinkedIn Results

According to LinkedIn Product Manager Johnathan Podemsky, “No two professionals are alike on LinkedIn. This means even if you search for the same thing as someone else, your results will be customized to you,” “LinkedIn’s search efforts are founded on the ability to take into account who you are, who you know, and what your network is doing to help you find what you’re looking for.”

This makes total sense based on the LinkedIn’s underlying fundamental concepts, but from a recruiting perspective – what if the best candidates aren’t within the network of the person conducting the search?

While Stephanie Mlot from PCMag claims LinkedIn’s changes put “…LinkedIn on a more level playing field with Facebook, which introduced Graph Search earlier this year as a way for users to sift through the network’s 1 trillion connections for more details about their friends,” I don’t agree. One major distinction is that a user can search for and find anyone using Graph Search – regardless of whether or not they are connected to them in any way.

Of course, LinkedIn does offer a solution for people who want the ability to search for anyone regardless of network connection – it’s called LinkedIn Recruiter.

However, if you’re searching LinkedIn for free, you’ll notice you no longer have the ability to sort all of the results of a search, which leads me to what’s missing from LinkedIn’s new search interface and functionality.

LinkedIn Signal

While LinkedIn Signal isn’t new – what IS new is that you no longer have to go to “News” on the top nav bar and click “Signal” – you can now simply click “Updates” on LinkedIn’s new search interface to instantly be taken to a Signal search for the keywords you’ve already entered.

Signal is one of LinkedIn’s most powerful and underutilized features. With the new and more prominent placement, I hope Signal will get the use and appreciation that it deserves.

What’s Missing from LinkedIn’s New Search

Curious to know what’s NOT included in LinkedIn’s new search interface and functionality?

A number of things.

Results Sorting

First and foremost, you can no longer sort your search results.

I always searched by keyword relevance when searching LinkedIn, because even with a large network, I am not so ignorant as to believe that the best people for any given position I may be sourcing and recruiting for are always going to be within my 1st or 2nd degree network, let alone my 3rd degree connections or within my LinkedIn network at all. If the best match to a search happens to be in my 3rd degree network, I’d like to see them come up on page 1 of the results.

Say goodbye to this if you’re using a free LinkedIn account:

LinkedIn’s sort by “relevance” option was a mix of network connection and keyword relevance. Based on my searches using LinkedIn’s new search interface, it seems that search results are sorted based on some combination of keyword relevance and relationship, as 1st and 2nd degree connections are returned early in search results and 3rd degree and group only search results come much later in ranking.

While you can still search specific layers of your LinkedIn network, there is no way to search for Group-only connections that are not also connected to you in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree.

With a free account, the only way you can try and achieve anything close to searching solely by keyword relevance is an X-Ray search. Thankfully, you can still sort your results by keyword relevance within LinkedIn Recruiter.

The Ability to Run SUPER LONG Boolean Search Strings

I am sad to report that LinkedIn’s once-epic ability to run Boolean search strings of over 3,000 characters has come to an end.

That means you can no longer perform some of the interesting diversity sourcing searches I’ve detailed in the past, such as searching for all of the HBCU’s in a single search, or searching for the 354 most common female names in the U.S. over the past 4 decades to find 65% of all of the women on LinkedIn in a single search.

From my preliminary testing, it seems that you can get away with searches up to around 1,300 characters with spaces before you start to encounter LinkedIn just spinning and never executing your search. With a first name search, this is what 1,281 characters with spaces looks like.

Top 10 Facets

Also missing from the LinkedIn’s new search interface is the ability to see the top 10 results in each facet.

I can’t be the only person who found the ability to see the top 10 companies employing certain types of people in a given market, the top 10 markets for specific skills, or the top universities by skill to be valuable, can I?

Now free users are limited to the top 5.

Thankfully, you can still view the top 10 results in each facet in LinkedIn Recruiter.

Advanced Search Operators

Alas, Voltron has laid LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators to rest.

What? You didn’t know LinkedIn had Advanced Search Operators?

They may have been LinkedIn’s best kept secret for years, and you could do a number of interesting things with them, such as creating search agents.

Are you wondering why I referenced Voltron?

Take a look at the URL when you run a search in the main search box when using LinkedIn’s new search functionality: Voltron Federated Search

I’m assuming Voltron is the code name for LinkedIn’s new search and that “vsearch” also stands for Voltron Search.

Anyone care to (neither) confirm (n)or deny?

Mobile

Ingrid Lunden from TechCrunch called out the fact that mobile is missing from this LinkedIn search upgrade.

LinkedIn has claimed that extending new search functionality to their mobile apps is something that they’re looking into, but for now, the mobile apps only allow users to search people but not within other categories.

Mobile search is a big deal for LinkedIn – did you now that 19 people searches are performed and 41 profiles are viewed every second via LinkedIn mobile apps?

http://youtu.be/eO8nmRDKv2I?t=1m50s

What About 3rd Degree Connections?

While there was a bit of early buzz that users searching LinkedIn with a free account would not be able to search 3rd degree connections, you can in fact still search for them.

While some early testing showed that it appears LinkedIn’s default was to only return results from your 1st and 2nd degree network, all of my recent searches appear to default to “All,” which includes Group Members and “3rd + Everyone Else.”

Search Anomalies

Thankfully, I haven’t run across too many search anomalies yet, but I did find a few I think you (and the LinkedIn dev team) will find interesting.

I ran a basic search and took notice of the top 5 companies represented:

I then set about to see if I could use the -/NOT functionality to eliminate results from the top 5 companies in order to find the next top 5 (thus completing the top 10).

I started entering 1 company at a time in the current company field: -Microsoft, -IBM, -Cisco, etc.

This seemed to work quite well in removing those companies from the top 5, allowing me to explore the next 5 or more. But then I noticed that when I was excluding the company names in the current company field, the company names were being returned as positive hits and highlighted as keywords in the profiles. The same thing happens if I change it to -(ibm OR microsoft OR cisco).

Hmm. That’s not good.

The same thing happens when I try to exclude a term from the title field. As you can see below, I am excluding the term “engineer” from the title field, and while the term is excluded properly in most cases, there are a few random results where “engineer” is in the current title – as with Kevin below, the word “engineer” also shows up as a positive & highlighted keyword hit in summaries, headline phrases, etc. It doesn’t matter if I use NOT, AND NOT either – I’ve tried all 3 ways and get the same results.

This one is pretty strange – I ran a first name search for “Abigail” and got results with “Gail” and “Abby” on the first page.

I don’t know how much of a fluke this is, because I’ve tried other names as well as searched for companies and various I.T. keywords to see if LinkedIn is performing some kind of fuzzy matching but have yet to run into another instance where LinkedIn gives me terms other than the one I specifically searched for. Please let me know if you find any.

Also, it seems that the ability to search within groups from the main search interface is still being listed as a premium filter with the yellow “in” icon, yet I can search within groups with my free account. Maybe it’s actually free functionality now?

What I Would Like to See from LinkedIn Search

For quite some time I’ve been thinking about writing a post specifically about what I’d like to see from LinkedIn with regard to new search functionality, but I’ve never gotten around to it.

I’ll take this opportunity to at least highlight a few things I would suggest to the LinkedIn team:

The ability to specifically search within the most recent work experience listed. One word: Massive. Can I get an “amen?”
Stemming/root word/wildcard search. It would certainly be nice to not always have to construct massive OR statements, e.g., (develop OR developing OR develops OR development OR developed OR developer).
Not only bring back the top 10 in each facet – but enable them to be expanded to the top 25. Expanded facets yield incredible market and competitive intel/insight with the click of a mouse.
Ability to sort by keyword relevance not tied to relationship. If you can’t/won’t bring this back to LinkedIn for free accounts, at the very least, never get rid of the ability to sort by keyword only relevance in premium versions.
Keyword boosting – enabling users with the ability to determine which keywords are the most relevant to them.
Proximity search – enabling users to search for terms within a specific distance of each other, to achieve semantic search.

If you weren’t already aware, LinkedIn used Lucene for text retrieval, and Lucene is capable of wildcard search, variable term boosting, and variable proximity matching.

I wrote a post nearly 4 years ago titled LinkedIn Search: What it COULD and SHOULD Be – I suggest you take a look and also read the comments, because one of LinkedIn’s principle software engineers working on LinkedIn’s search engine at the time weighed in with some very insightful comments here and here.

What would YOU like to see added to LinkedIn’s search functionality?

LinkedIn Catfish: Fake Profiles, Real People or Fake Photos?

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There have been numerous articles written about fake LinkedIn profiles, and some are really easy to spot because their names aren’t even names.

Then there are LinkedIn profiles with names that appear real but the profiles are obviously fake.

This ~~person~~ profile actually has some endorsements. I’m pretty sure this is a picture is of Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones (I’m really looking forward to season 3!)

Next we have LinkedIn profiles that look like real people, at least when it comes to the profile details, but the profiles are likely created by recruiters and perhaps even hiring managers (yes – this happens…stay tuned for a future post on this subject), and the photo is obviously not the photo of the person who created the profile.

And finally, there are LinkedIn profiles that are likely to be real people – where the details of the profile accurately reflect the person behind the profile – but the profile picture isn’t real.

I refer to these profiles as LinkedIn Catfish.

Catfish on LinkedIn

Have you seen the film Catfish or the MTV series based on the film?

The movie is a documentary about the evolution of Nev Schulman’s online relationship with a girl on Facebook who ultimately ends up not being who she was pretending to be online. The television show follows the same format, finding people who are in online relationships with people they’ve never met, performing research on the people, and arranging an in-person meeting to determine if the people are really who they are portraying themselves to be on Facebook.

One of the techniques that Nev Schulman consistently uses on the television show to determine whether or not the people are lying about who they are is Google Image Search in conjunction with Facebook photos.

I’ve posted a few “real or fake” challenges on Twitter from time to time, and while some LinkedIn profiles are obviously fake, others can be quite difficult to determine. I believe some LinkedIn profiles are really examples of “Catfish,” where the people are real but they are using other people’s photos.

How do I know?

From time to time I use Google Images to check LinkedIn profile photos of the people that are sending me invitations to connect as well as some of the profiles that LinkedIn claims are “people I may know.”

I thought I would share some of my findings with you, starting with some obviously fake LinkedIn profiles and progressing to some that I believe are in fact real people who just happen to be using someone else’s image for their LinkedIn profile image.

Let’s start with something I found the other day when I glanced down to the “People you may know” section on LinkedIn.

When I clicked on Lola’s profile, I found it devoid of any content, which of course immediately makes it suspect.

Where it gets interesting is when you perform a Google Image Search for that photo – multiple Facebook hits:

Now let’s take a look at a few LinkedIn profiles of “developers” that I think are really fake profiles created by recruiters.

First is “Alison Cork.”

If you try searching for Alison Cork using the first name and last name fields in LinkedIn, this profile doesn’t appear to exist anymore.

Taking a look at the “People also viewed” list on the right side of “Alison Cork’s” no-longer-existing profile, I spotted Elizabeth Rose, a “developer at Chevron,” and Danielle Baker, a “web developer at Pfizer.”

If you click the link to “Elizabeth’s” profile, you’ll see that at least the details all seem to align (date of graduation, data of first work experience, location of school and current location, etc.) – someone took at least a little effort to make this profile seem like a real developer. However, I believe this profile is really the creation of a recruiter looking to use the profile to connect with other developers.

Checking Google Images for the profile photo shows the possible origin:

“Danielle” below is a similar example.

If you click the link for this profile, it’s similar to “Elizabeth’s” in terms of being relatively well filled out/detailed.

Performing a Google Images search for “Danielle,” this is what you’ll find:

Now I’d like to move on to the category of people who *could” be the people with the experience listed on the profile, but they are using someone else’s picture for their LinkedIn profile photo.

For example – this person came up on LinkedIn as someone I might know.

I blurred the details because this *could* in fact be a real person, and on top of that – they seem to work in sourcing/recruiting. The profile mentions they have worked in recruiting leadership roles at some very prestigious companies, and they have given one (definitely real) person at one of those companies a recommendation (but haven’t received any). If you’re extremely curious and a tad bit technically savvy, you can probably find this profile – it is public.

When I performed a Google Image search for the profile picture, here’s what is returned:

So what do you think – is this profile of a real person?

Why the term “Catfish?”

Apparently (at least according to Internet and other lore), the use of the term “catfish” comes from the story about the early days of shipping live cod, where the fish’s inactivity in their tanks during shipment resulted in fish with a mushy texture and bland taste. Someone had the idea to ship the cod with some catfish in the tank, because catfish often conflict with cod in the wild, so during shipment, the catfish would harass the cod and keep them active, resulting in cod with the proper texture and taste, as if they were caught fresh. In the movie, one of the characters theorizes that the person Nev thought he was having a relationship with was like a “catfish” – serving to keep him active, always on his toes, and always thinking.

When you’re on the Internet – even on professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, you always have to be on your toes. Some of the people you’re finding and connecting with may not be who they appear to be, and they might not be real people.

Even so, you may want to connect with some of these folks anyway (as I do in some cases).

Why?

If you fully appreciate and understand the X-degrees of separation concept, there is value in connecting with the “wrong” people because they can actually be conduits to the “right” people. In fact, it could be argued that in many cases, the *only* way to add some of the “right” people you’d like to have in your network is to connect with the people who are connected with them – even the ones that don’t seem to make sense on the surface.

If you connect directly with a “catfish” profile has been created by a recruiter or hiring manager specifically to connect with software engineers, and they have been successful in connecting to many of them at the 1st degree, then those software engineers would be in your 2nd degree network on LinkedIn. With a free account, you’d be able to see their full names in any people search.

Also, as a 1st degree connection, you have the option to search their connections if they haven’t shut that down (the 2 “developers” above haven’t), and you also have access to their contact details – so if you’re really curious, you could ask them directly about the reality of their profile.

First Look at LinkedIn’s New User Interface

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I just stumbled across this YouTube video created by Viveka von Rosen that walks through LinkedIn’s new user interface and functionality.

I don’t have LinkedIn’s new UI, and apparently neither does Viveka – she only caught the new look and feel when she was working with one of her client’s profiles. I thought I would share this video with you because I found some of the changes that Viveka demonstrates quite interesting, and you likely will as well.

If you watch all the way to the end, you will notice that there doesn’t appear to be any way to access LinkedIn Signal from any menu option, which is quite odd in my opinion, given how powerful and useful Signal is. However, I realize that most people don’t use it, so I can understand why LinkedIn might bury it into obscurity, however unfortunate.

For those of you with the new LinkedIn UI, you can still get to Signal here: http://www.linkedin.com/signal/

Thank you for sharing your discovery Viveka!

Why Facebook Graph Search is No Threat to LinkedIn…For Now

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As with all new and bright shiny objects, people are quick and eager to make blind and wild predictions, and Facebook’s Graph Search is an excellent example.

Facebook announced Graph Search on January 15th, and there are already 100’s of articles published on the possibilities, including how Graph Search will challenge Google in advertising, Match.com & eHarmony in online dating, Yelp and others in services, travel and entertainment, and yes, even LinkedIn and Monster in recruiting.

When Mark Zuckerberg himself says “One of my favorite [Graph Search] queries is recruiting. Let’s say we’re trying to find engineers at Google who are friends of engineers at Facebook,” it’s hard to not get excited about the possibilities of tapping into the data Facebook has on over 1,000,000,000 users globally, and over 167,000,000 users in the U.S. alone.

Don’t worry – this isn’t another Facebook-Graph-Search-is-an-awesome-disruptor article.

Rather than throwing fuel on the Graph Search fire, I am happy to throw a wet blanket instead.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m excited to use Graph Search, and I know sourcers and recruiters will be able to make use of it. However, there are some major limitations to Facebook and Graph Search specifically that I want to recognize and bring to light that will clearly explain why it isn’t a threat to LinkedIn. Continue reading →

One of the Most Effective Ways of Growing Your LinkedIn Network

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While there are many ways of growing your LinkedIn network, I’d like to share one with you that is remarkably easy and effective, strategic, and likely one that you haven’t seen before.

Here’s the short version:

Convert highly connected group-only connections to 1st degree connections.

Why is this so effective?

There are a few reasons:

Converting people who are beyond your 3 degree network on LinkedIn directly to 1st degree connections is pretty much one of the biggest jumps you can make. Converting 2nd degree connections to 1st degree connections doesn’t provide as big of an infusion of new people into your LinkedIn network as would converting a 3rd degree connection directly to a 1st degree connection, and going totally beyond your 3 degrees of separation to group-only connections and moving them directly to 1st degree connections brings the largest infusion of new people into your LinkedIn network, because the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections of your group-only connections are ALL beyond your network before you connect with them. Follow me? :)
Specifically converting highly connected people people who are beyond your 3 degree network on LinkedIn to 1st degree connections yields you the largest net gain to your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree networks.
Sending invitations to connect to people you share a group with is one of the easiest and most effective methods of connecting with people you don’t know directly. If you’re one of those folks who thinks you shouldn’t connect to people you don’t know on LinkedIn, I’ve got an article coming on that subject shortly – so stay tuned.
Super connectors (people who are highly connected on LinkedIn) are more likely to accept invitations to connect from people they don’t know personally.

Here’s how find and convert highly connected group-only connections to 1st level connections: Continue reading →

How to Find Almost Anyone’s Email Address with Rapportive

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Sourcers and recruiters are always looking for different, easier and more effective ways of divining the email addresses of people they are looking to engage.

While there are many ways of researching, guessing, and verifying valid email addresses, did you know you can find almost anyone’s email address using Gmail?

I didn’t, until I stumbled across a very interesting post in the blog section of Distilled.net, the website of a PPC/SEO consultancy, and they demonstrate quite clearly how to find almost anyone’s email address using Gmail and Rapportive.

The technique is so simple and effective that I wanted to share it with the global sourcing and recruiting community.

Here is the original post, and below you can view the YouTube video that demonstrates how to use Gmail, Rapportive, and a Google Doc email permutator to reveal and confirm email addresses.

I highly recommend that you view the video in full screen mode and change the quality to 720p.

Of course, in order for you to leverage this method of email divination, you will need a Gmail account and the Rapportive plugin for Gmail. It would also certainly help to use an email permutator to quickly generate all of the most common email address formats, and the Google Doc spreadsheet created by Rob Ousbey from Distilled.net is the best I’ve seen so far.

If you’re not already using Rapportive, you should be. In addition to rewarding you with verifying correctly guessed email addresses, Rapportive imbues Gmail with some social CRM functionality, allowing you to see recent social activity, follow people on popular social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and even leave notes about specific people to use in future interactions.

As an added bonus, here is yet another blog post written by a non-sourcer/recruiter on how to find anyone’s email address, which details the Gmail/Rapportive technique, as well as MailTester.com, Jigsaw/Data.com, and a few other methods, including calling and asking.

Imagine that!

What’s the most effective way to X-Ray search LinkedIn?

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I’ve recently come across some blog posts and some Boolean Strings discussions on LinkedIn that inspired me to go back and tinker with searching LinkedIn via Google and Bing.

For example, I continue to see people talk about:

Whether or not you should use “pub” and/or “in” (e.g. site:linkedin.com/in | site:linkedin.com/pub)
Whether or not you should use -dir
Using country codes in site: searches
Using different phrases to target public LinkedIn profiles – e.g., “people you know”

My first reaction when people are curious about the most effective ways of retrieving public LinkedIn profiles is to encourage them to experiment on their own first instead of looking for answers to copy and paste. Quite literally 99% of everything I know about sourcing (and recruiting!) I learned through being curious and experimenting.

People learn by doing, and more specifically by failing/struggling, and not by copying and pasting somebody else’s work. Continue reading →

Do you suffer from Obsessive Exotic Sourcing Syndrome?

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Okay, that might have been a bit dramatic, but I do expect a strong negative reaction from some folks because I am going to address an issue that might be a tad sensitive to the sourcing community.

The issue I would like to address is the apparent obsession of many with exotic sourcing.

What is Exotic Sourcing?

If you check out the definition of “exotic,” you will find “strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual.”

Exotic sourcing consists of sourcing methods and technologies that are, yes – you guessed it – “strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual.”

If you’re looking for some examples, here are a few:

Alternate search engines (e.g., Blekko, DuckDuckGo, PeekYou, etc.)
Custom Search Engines
Esoteric Internet searches
The next “big thing” site (Pinterest, Instagram, etc.)

What’s the Problem?

I like experimenting with new search engines, deep web searches, and seeing if I can extract sourcing and recruiting value from new, non-recruiting websites sites just like many people do in the global sourcing community. Yes, I’ll admit I’ve poked around Pinterest and Instagram.

So what’s the problem? Continue reading →

I Return to London For LinkedIn Talent Connect and TruLondon

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I’m writing this from the International terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport – the busiest airport in the world.

I thought I would let you know where in the world Glen Cathey is, and this week – I’ll be in London to speak at my 5th LinkedIn event, LinkedIn Talent Connect Europe.

I’ve cooked up a great presentation for the attendees who come to my session at 2:30 on Tuesday the 23rd.

While I understand Talent Connect Europe will have attendees from all across EMEA, I must say that there is a special place in my heart for Londoners.

Why? Because for the 4th year in a row, London has more unique visitors to my website than any other city in the world, with New York in 2nd and Bangalore in 3rd.

The sourcing and recruiting community is strong in London – check out my Google Analytics map of unique visitors below:

I also plan to sneak into TruLondon on Monday the 22nd – Bill Boorman has assembled an impressive list of some of the world’s top minds in sourcing, and I am keen not to catch up with those fine folks as well as throw my skills and experience into the mix.

This will be my second TruLondon experience, and Bill always puts together an amazing unconference, so I am very much looking forward to it, even if I can only attend for a few hours on Monday afternoon.

If you’ll be attending either event, please be sure to find me and introduce yourself if you have the chance.

Happy hunting!

My SourceCon Presentation – LinkedIn: Beyond the Basics

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I was honored to be asked to present at the Dallas 2012 SourceCon event – which turned out to be the largest SourceCon event ever!

When I was talking with Amybeth Hale back at the end of 2011 about what I’d like to present on, I asked if anyone had ever run a session solely dedicated to LinkedIn.

Now, I’ve been to every SourceCon save 2 (the first one and 2011/Santa Clara), I’ve spoken at 5 of them, and I couldn’t recall anyone delivering a LinkedIn presentation, and neither could Amybeth (for the ones I missed or sessions I did not attend).

That struck me as beyond odd, given how valuable a resource LinkedIn is for sourcing and recruiting.

What you see below is the deck from my “LinkedIn: Beyond the Basics” session, complete with YouTube videos.

LinkedIn Sourcing: Beyond the Basics – Glen Cathey’s 2012 Dallas SourceCon Presentation from Glen Cathey

8 Minute Video from my LinkedIn #InToronto Presentation

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I’ve had the distinct honor of speaking at every event that LinkedIn has put together in the U.S. and Canada, and I will also be speaking at the third Talent Connect event on October 10-12 in Las Vegas, where they expect well over 2,000 people to attend. I’ll be running 2 sessions on effectively searching LinkedIn (one basic and one advanced). I am also looking forward to speaking at the LinkedIn Talent Connect Europe event in London on October 23rd.

While the Talent Connect events in the U.S. are strictly restricted to corporate customers only, when I presented at the #InToronto event, there was a mix of corporate customers and agency users, and over 1,200 people showed up.

I ran two 30-minute sessions on searching LinkedIn to find talent, and the LinkedIn staff filmed one of them and compiled an 8 minute video that they recently uploaded to YouTube.

In case you hadn’t seen it, I wanted to share it with you here. Granted, my U.S. Talent connect sessions are usually 45 minutes to 1 hour, and they edited out quite a bit of the “good stuff” to get a 30 minute session down to 8 minutes, but I think you’ll find the content of interest if you happen to use LinkedIn in your sourcing and recruiting efforts.

How to View Full Profiles of Your 3rd Degree LinkedIn Network

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Just a short while ago I posted a piece on how some people are no longer able to view full profiles of their 3rd degree LinkedIn connections when logged in and searching withing LinkedIn.

At the time of the article, I had not been affected, and I kept checking daily to see if and when I would be.

Alas, the time has come – I can no longer view full profiles of 3rd degree LinkedIn connections with my free account when I am searching within LinkedIn.

Well, I take that back.

Although I no longer enjoy automatically being treated to full profiles of 3rd degree connections while searching LinkedIn with my free account, here are 4 ways in which I can view a full profile of my 3rd degree connections:

#1 Use Google or Bing to search for the profile while not logged in

I can take the headline phrase or a unique combination of keywords from the 3rd degree profile I am trying to view and use Bing or Google to search for that phrase/term combo in another browser in which I am not logged into LinkedIn (or use Chrome incognito).

Here you can see Chrome on the left in which I am logged into LinkedIn, and IE on the right in which I am not logged into LinkedIn.

#2 Search for them by name

Even while still logged into LinkedIn, I can quickly X-ray for the person’s public profile, snag their full name, then search for them by name.

Because LinkedIn allows you to see full profiles of people you search for by name (they assume you know the person, otherwise why would you know their name? <unless you’re a sourcer>), you can see their full profile while logged in.

#3 Export to PDF

I can also view full profiles of 3rd degree LinkedIn connections if I click on the blue arrow below “See Expanded View” and select “Export to PDF.”

Once I open the PDF, I can see the full profile contained within.

Additionally, when I scroll to the last page of the PDF, I find a link with “Contact <first name> on LinkedIn.”

When I click on the link, I am taken to their profile on LinkedIn, which I can view in its entirety (note the content from the web profile below is the same as the PDF content above).

I tried using the same link format [http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=XXXXXXXX&authType=name&authToken=2Ol8&goback=] with different profile ID’s but that didn’t work for me.

Darn tokens.

#4 Share the profile

Some of you may be wondering why I’ve actually never written about the “Share” method in which you can send a profile to someone else and copy yourself to get a link to view the full profile.

While I know this is a popular method for many, it has never really been a viable method for me because my network is so large that when I try to type in a name or use the LinkedIn address book, the system either times out or I get tired of waiting for names to show up/load.

For the sake of this post I tried to be very patient and after a few attempts I was able to share a 3rd degree profile with someone, copy myself, and then view the full profile from the link in the message in my inbox.

However, it’s much faster and easier for me to simply use methods 1-3 above.

Of course, the LinkedIn team is likely already looking into closing these holes, but some of these methods have been published and in use for years, so you may be able to enjoy them for quite some time.

Sharing is Caring

If you found this post helpful, please share it with someone you think would benefit.

They’ll thank you.

Full Profiles of 3rd Degree LinkedIn Network No Longer Free?

22 Replies

Do you use LinkedIn for free?

Can you still view full profiles of your 3rd degree network?

You may have read about some recent changes that have affected some LinkedIn users here and here with regard to 3rd degree profile visibility.

Prior to both of those articles, I had a recruiter who I used to work with at a past company reach out to me the other week asking me if I had seen that LinkedIn is no longer allowing free users to view full profiles of 3rd degree connections.

Now, like many people, I’ve been wondering for quite some time when LinkedIn would start making changes to limit the data available to free users, so I immediately went to LinkedIn to see what he was talking about and I was able to view full profiles of 3rd degree connections, so I asked him to send me some screenshots to see what he was seeing. Continue reading →

How Would You Search for these Positions on LinkedIn?

19 Replies

One of the things that has always struck me as extremely odd with regard to sourcing is the fact that there appears to be so little sharing of Boolean search strings.

While one can find basic search string examples in training materials and in various sourcing groups online, I know plenty of sourcers and recruiters that have never seen another person’s production search strings – those used to actually fill positions.

Why do you think that is? I have my ideas, and I’d like to know yours.

I believe there may be several contributing factors:

Some people just don’t save their searches. If I were a betting man, from what I’ve seen over the past 15+ years, I’d wager that the majority of people don’t save their search strings. If they’re not saved anywhere – you severely limit any sharing opportunities to live, in-the-moment situations that may or may not ever present themselves.
It simply never occurs to some people to share their searches with others – unless someone specifically asks, why would someone?
Plain old insecurity. Some folks might not want to share their search strings with others because they are afraid theirs are somehow “wrong,” inferior or inadequate.
The belief that their Boolean search strings are somehow their “secret sauce” and that in sharing their searches might somehow expose their competitive advantage.

What do you think?

How Would You Search for these Positions on LinkedIn?

Are you up to the challenge of sharing some of your searches with a global audience of talent acquisition professionals? Continue reading →

Do Recruiters Ruin LinkedIn?

39 Replies

What do I mean by “ruin?”

I’d rather let you run with the concept, but if you need a little more direction, this may help:

In general – do you think that the activities undertaken by recruiters on LinkedIn have any negative repercussions on the LinkedIn experience for non-recruiters?

If so, why, and how?

If not, why?

This is the first in a 3 part series examining the opportunities recruiters have to raise the level of their game and give recruiters a better name in the hearts and minds of the people who matter most in recruiting – the talent they are looking to recruit.

I’m going to give you some of my observations and thoughts on the matter of whether or not recruiters “ruin” LinkedIn, but the main motivator behind me writing this post is to get you thinking, hear from you and get your perspective, and ask for your help in making LinkedIn a better place for everyone. Continue reading →

Why Boolean Search is Such a Big Deal in Recruiting

103 Replies

In the past, I’ve explained the Boolean Black Belt concept and exposed what I feel is the real “secret” behind learning how to master the art and science of leveraging information systems for talent identification and acquisition.

Now I would like to show you precisely WHY Boolean search is such a big deal in recruiting.

There are 2 main factors:

Candidate variable control
Speed of qualified candidate identification.

The goal of this article is to shed significant light on the science behind talent mining, how it can lead to higher productivity levels (more and better results with less effort), why I am so passionate sourcing, and why everyone in the HR, recruiting, and staffing industry should be as well.

Control is Power

Talent identification is arguably the most critical step in recruiting life cycle – you can’t engage, recruit, acquire, hire and develop someone you haven’t found and identified in the first place.

My experience has shown me that properly leveraging deep sources of talent/candidate data (ATS/CRM’s, resume databases, LinkedIn, etc.) can enable recruiters to more quickly identify a high volume of well matched and qualified candidates than any other method of candidate identification and acquisition (e.g., cold calling, referral recruiting, job posting).

The true power of Boolean search lies in the intrinsically high degree of control over critical candidate variables that using Boolean strings to search deep data sources such as resume databases, the Internet, and social media affords sourcers and recruiters.

Applying that that high degree of control to large populations of candidates – tens of thousands (small internal ATS, niche resume database) to tens of millions (large ATS/CRM, Monster resume database, LinkedIn, etc.) enables adept sourcers to perform feats of talent identification and acquisition most would think impossible.

Continue reading →

How to See Full Names of 3rd Degree Connections on LinkedIn

37 Replies

For a while, there was an interesting little method for revealing the full name of 3rd degree and group connections on LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn has changed the “get introduced” functionality and UI for most people and effectively eliminated that method (albeit unintentionally, IMO).

Oh well – it was easy and fun while it lasted.

Fortunately, I’ve recently become aware of another way of revealing the full names of 3rd degree connections on LinkedIn with a less-than-premium account that I would like to share with you.

But before we get to that, I’d like to cover some basics as well as some things I have been noticing about LinkedIn – I believe they may be tinkering with free access profile visibility.

Oh, and if you’re on the fence about attending SourceCon in Atlanta next week, it’s shaping up to be the largest in SourceCon history, and you still have time to register and get a 10% discount using my SC12GC code.

LinkedIn Public Profile Search to View Full Names

Now that the nifty “get introduced” full name visibility trick is seemingly dead, people without LinkedIn Recruiter access can of course still grab one or more unique phrases from 3rd degree and group-only LinkedIn connections and throw them into Bing or Google to find their public profile and thus their full names.

For example, I can take the headline phrase and couple it with the location phrase from a LinkedIn search result…

…and enter this into Bing: “Senior Software Development Manager, IBM” “Ottawa, Canada Area”, and here’s what I get: Continue reading →

LinkedIn’s Talent Connect, Talent Pipeline, and Certification

5 Replies

Talent Connect 2011 in Las Vegas was just as good as, if not better than, Talent Connect 2010 in San Francisco.

Nearly 2,000 people showed up, which is around 3 times as many attendees as last year’s conference, and they represented over 700 companies from 17 countries.

One thing’s for sure – LinkedIn knows how to put on a conference. The Talent Connect events have been the most well coordinated, polished and produced conferences I have ever attended.

I won’t bore you with all of the details – but I will highlight LinkedIn’s new Talent Pipeline offering, Web 3.0 (the shift from social to data), touch upon how to automatically build Boolean search strings (yes, that came up at the conference), and inform you about LinkedIn’s Recruiter Expert certification. Continue reading →

LinkedIn User Demographics and Visitor Statistics 2011

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Would you like to know more about LinkedIn’s user demographics, as well as LinkedIn’s visitor statistics broken down by country, city, and state?

If so, you’ve come to the right place!

After patiently waiting for a whole year since my last post on LinkedIn statistics, I’m excited to bring you LinkedIn’s latest user demographics and visitor statistics for 2011.

In this post, I will compare the data I presented in September 2010 to the data I just pulled from Quantcast.

Quantcast is used by 9 of the top 10 media agencies because they quite accurately quantify Internet audiences.

While some sites are not directly measured and only have estimated data at this time (such as Facebook and Twitter), LinkedIn is fully “quantified.”

In other words, Quantcast directly measures LinkedIn’s visitors – which gives us great information and some very interesting insights!

Read on to see the following LinkedIn data:

Global monthly visitors
Global monthly visits
Visits per person
Pageviews per person
Visit frequency
Business activity
User demographics (gender, age, ethnicity, income, education level)
Monthly visitors by country
Monthly visitors by city (global)
Monthly visitors by state (U.S.) Continue reading →

All Recruiting Sources Are NOT Created Equal

9 Replies

While there is much written on the subject of how to search the various talent sources available to recruiters and sourcers today, such as the Internet, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, ATS/CRM systems, etc., there does not seem to be much written about their ROI as sources of talent/human capital information.

I believe that the value of any source of information is 50% based upon the actual information contained within (data depth), and 50% in the ability to extract out precisely and completely what the user needs (searchability). Information has no value if you are unable to easily access, effectively search for and find what you need and take action on it.

When it comes to leveraging information systems for talent identification and acquisition, it is critical to assess the depth of the talent/human capital data offered by the source as well as how “searchable” the source is.

Why is Data Depth and Searchability Important?

Quite simply, the deeper the data offered by and the more searchable the the source is, the higher the ROI for your sourcing efforts.

All electronic sources of talent are NOT created equal, and some offer sourcers and recruiters instrinsic advantages with regard to the ability to more quickly and precisely find more of the right people, yielding higher productivity.

I’ve created a graphic representation of a comparison of the data depth and searchability of the most common information systems used by sourcers and recruiters to find candidates. Continue reading →