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May 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Freeriding LinkedIn (Updated)
UPDATE: After Konstantin's comment below, I decided to investigate the referencing features. Plus I felt even guiltier than I had before. So I paid $200 to use the advanced LinkedIn features for a year. So far, so good - given the tens of thousands I'd normally spend on a recruiter, this is a great investment.
......
Given all my pejorative blather about open source freeriders, I figured I'd fess up to one of my many sins.
I freeride on LinkedIn.
Through LinkedIn I found my director of solutions engineering - one of the best people I've ever worked with. I'm hiring a sales engineer, technical support, and 1-2 other positions now, and I'm doing it through personal, offline connections and through LinkedIn. I tend to use LinkedIn as a talent database, and rarely use it to actually link with someone. If I know a person's company, I can figure out their email address. No need for LinkedIn to help me connect.
As an attempt at penance for freeriding, however, I thought I'd offer LinkedIn a suggestion:
Charge for honest references.
The one thing that I can't get offline, but probably could get through LinkedIn, is candid commentary on people that I'd like to hire. I've thought about this before, but LinkedIn is perfectly suited for this.
It already allows me to leave endorsements for others, but what I'd really like to do is privately leave an honest appraisal of people I know. I don't want to flame them (though I'm sure this would happen within the system), but rather be able to speak openly about my experience with someone. More to the point, I'd like to see anonymous (or public, if the person leaving the comments prefers) commentary on someone I'm thinking of hiring. As mentioned, this could be abused, and I'd hate to see someone abused through the system. But I suspect that such a "rating" or commentary system would work over time, just as eBay and other systems get more accurate as more people vote on sellers, buyers, etc.
Again, I'm not interested in paying for the ability to email someone. I can do that for free. But I would dearly like to get an honest appraisal of the people I'm thinking of hiring through the LinkedIn network. Offline, you get references from someone and they're usually so incapable of saying anything negative about the prospect that it's nearly useless to talk with them. I'd rather hear the good and the bad, and make a decision accordingly.
Posted by Matt Asay on May 30, 2006 09:31 AM
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Matt,
As a co-founder of LinkedIn, I appreciate hearing about your success. It looks like we know six people in common :-)
Please note that one of the key benefits of upgrading is the ability to find former bosses, co-workers and reports of candidates you are thinking about hiring.
You can somewhat test drive this ability here:
www.linkedin.com/rs
When you upgrade to a Business or Pro account, every profile gives you a link for a "one-click reference" search. I think you should give it a try.
Also, you should really contact people through LinkedIn--it's against our terms of use to contact people you don't know outside of LinkedIn, and if there are any complaints by recipients for out-of-band contact, we will close your account.
Finally, did you know that we now also let you see candidates who match your searches who are not in your network (within three degrees)?
You find the top 20 under the second tab of search results called "LinkedIn Network." If you aren't drawing from that pool, you are missing out on a lot of great talent since most (probably 70-90%) LinkedIn members are not in your network.
-Konstantin
www.linkedin.com/in/konstantin
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