LinkedIn for Business Development
Oct 202011
Oct 122008
Anecdotal evidence indicates that referrals are a great source of placed/place-able candidates. “Great” is obviously highly subjective, it could refer to a number of variables and scales.
I will forget for a moment that I have not seen systemic/comprehensive empirical of the ‘greatness’ of referrals. Assuming this is a channel worth nurturing and developing, I believe that what enables the message (job opportunity) to disseminate through the channel is a minimum of two Trust relationships:
- 1 between the referrer and referee (colleague, relative)
- 1 between the potential employer or agency (whomever offers the job) and referrer (current employer, family business)
I am not even saying that this trust is well placed, I am only stating it needs to exist so that the message (job opportunity) goes somewhere. Eventually, a third trust relationship – between employer/agency and referee – may develop, even though the candidate is not offered the job.
From this it follows that the core issue with online referral systems like 2vouch and others is the fact that there is no trust relationship between the job poster and the referrer, so there is no comfort in disseminating the message. I would argue that the info on the job posting is not comprehensive enough to compel a referrer to recommend it to a contact.
The accompanying risks are well known: spamming, low quality, lack of ‘greatness’. What follows then is that if I were to run one of these referrals sites, I would dedicate 90% of all my budget to develop at trust relationship between the job poster and the referrer, sneezer, etc.
Do you agree? What else would you do to make an online referral platform actually work, other than the usual (great service, fluid site, blah)?
Have a great week
Feb 012008
company name: notchup
based in the US, currently in beta mode. you can apply for registration or get referred (send me your email if you want to go straight in)
the idea: give candidates cash for taking interviews with employers and recruiters; members are also encouraged to spam, i mean refer the site to people that might be interested in joining by given the inviters a % of the money made by the invitees in one year.
the user experience: clean design (although someone commenting on the techcrunch article reckoned that the layout was a ripoff from google’s grandcentral. uploading your profile from linkedin is meant to be easy too, though I did not manage to connect. On the other side of the equation, employers get to see a blind profile which they can choose for interview and lay out the cash
The site offers 100% money guarantee, not sure about the terms of reimbursement though.
It will be obvious to you that the model can fall on its bum before it comes out of beta if there’s abuse, lack of talent or buyers. I am wondering tho if you as individual agency or corporate recruitment department would be prepared to materially reward candidates at interview, shortlisting or placement stage of the process. Or, are you already doing that?
Hope you have a safe weekend
Apr 122007
Most of you may have heard that referrals are meant to be a good source of quality candidates. If you delve further into the source of this perception, it usually comes from anecdotal evidence rather that measurable results over time; for that reason too there is no additional intelligence on which referral channel is the most effective (e.g. employees, placed candidates), for example.
A number of corporates and agencies furnish people with bonuses and rewards for referring others if the candidates get the job offer and stick around beyond the probation period, or some variant along those lines. To me, the payout was a windfall as opposed to the core motivation to link up someone from your network with a job. Am I off with the fairies for thinking this?
I mean, do we as social entities direct our efforts to complement our earnings with financial rewards that stem from dobbing in the people that we know and think can hold onto a job? Or is there a middle ground, whereby we both look to reap gains whilst supposedly doing someone a favor?
I got to think about this in light of 2 recent events: the launch of jobbountyhunter in Australia, and me being semi-spammed by someone from my LinkedIn network who was trying to get me to join “the myspace of recruitment”. I won’t go into the detail of their business models, which are totally different btw; the jist of both though is that their success relies on you wanting to make money off your friends.
I am very curious to see how well these businesses go. Personally, I don’t see it happening for them; I refer someone to create a reputation as a referrer of great people and to create a reputation as a finder of great jobs for people. These are social reasons underpinning social behaviors, right?