Tag Archives: Talent Connect

LinkedIn Certification, Talent Connect and Boolean NOT Update

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LinkedIn Recruiter Certification

In case you missed it, LinkedIn has launched a recruiter certification program!

LinkedIn Certification-Badge

If you think you’re ready to get certified, between now and December 31, 2013, LinkedIn will waive the exam fee for the first 500 customers that register for the LinkedIn Certified Professional—Recruiter certification exam. Click/see the coupon code below:

LinkedIn recruiter certification free

Before you attempt to take the certification assessment, you will definitely want to see what I only recently discovered about LinkedIn’s support of Boolean search exclusion operator (NOT vs. Minus sign) – skip to the bottom of the post to learn more.

LinkedIn Talent Connect

Talent Connect 2013 Logo

I’m honored to be presenting again at both Talent Connect events this month in Vegas as well as Talent Connect London, which happens to be the largest corporate recruiting event in Europe.

The event in Vegas is sold out, but you can view the live stream – click here to to register.

I will be presenting two sessions on LinkedIn talent sourcing on Wednesday the 16th in Vegas and one session on Thursday the 24th in London,  covering core principles and advanced strategies.

Now that LinkedIn has grown to over 238M profiles, finding people has become easier, but finding the right people has actually become more challenging. As such, knowing how to effectively source talent on LinkedIn is now more important than ever. In the foundation session, I’ll be reviewing information retrieval best practices, the importance of understanding the behavior of the people you’re looking for and that of your competitors, and how to develop the ability to ask better questions with Boolean logic. In the advanced session, I will cover Dark Matter concepts, Maximum Inclusion, Adaptive Search, Strategic Exclusion, and Moneyball Sourcing.

LinkedIn Boolean Search Exclusion: NOT vs. the Minus Sign

You may recall that I broke the story on LinkedIn’s undocumented Boolean search operator over two years ago.

In preparation for the LinkedIn Recruiter Certification, I inquired with the team at LinkedIn about any differences between the Boolean NOT operator and the minus sign (-).

They responded, and you should know that LinkedIn officially only supports the NOT operator for exclusion, as there are some “corner cases” in which the minus sign will not work for exclusion – this is true for searching LinkedIn for free as well as for LinkedIn Recruiter.

Now, if you’re a fan of words like I am, you may especially appreciate their specific use of the term “corner case,” which clearly came from their engineers. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia offers an excellent explanation:

A corner case (or pathological case) is a problem or situation that occurs only outside of normal operating parameters—specifically one that manifests itself when multiple environmental variables or conditions are simultaneously at extreme levels, even though each parameter is within the specified range for that parameter.

For example, a loudspeaker might distort audio, but only when played at maximum volume, maximum bass, and in a high-humidity environment. Or a computer server may be unreliable, but only with the maximum complement of 64processors, 512 GB of memory, and 10,000 signed-on users.

Contrast a corner case with an edge case, an issue that occurs only at a (single) maximum or minimum parameter. For example, a speaker that distorts audio at maximum volume, even in the absence of other extreme settings or conditions.

Corner cases are part of an engineer‘s lexicon—especially an engineer involved in testing or debugging a complex system. Corner cases are often harder and more expensive to reproduce, test, and optimize because they require maximal configurations in multiple dimensions. They are frequently less-tested, given the belief that few product users will, in practice, exercise the product at multiple simultaneous maximum settings. Expert users of systems therefore routinely find corner case anomalies, and in many of these, errors.

Mind you, you can still use the minus sign in lieu of the Boolean NOT operator to exclude terms and OR statements, but be advised that there are some rare scenarios where the minus sign won’t work.

Now, I’ve personally never encountered a situation in which the minus sign did not work exactly as the NOT operator, so what are the corner cases in which the minus sign won’t work?

Ah, you know I have already asked the LinkedIn team…I am eagerly awaiting their response.

 

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!

 

 

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 Would You Search for these Positions on LinkedIn?

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. It simply never occurs to some people to share their searches with others – unless someone specifically asks, why would someone?
  3. 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.
  4. 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 →

LinkedIn’s Talent Connect, Talent Pipeline, and Certification

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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 →