18 February 2012

Stripping a LinkedIn Profile

The excellent Boolean Blackbelt by Glen Cathy is a must read for any modern sourcer; and one topic in particular that changed the way I looked at sourcing was the post on LinkedIn's Dark Matter. Dark Matter, as Glen described it, are the thousands upon thousands of profiles which a standard LinkedIn search will not bring up; the same theory can be applied to other social networks, candidate databases or web searches. It is the ability to find these profiles that is where we add value, and it is within this Dark Matter that we can find the kind of superstar candidates that others will not.

These candidates are tough to find because their profiles are missed by our basic searches. They don't contain key words from your search; they have skeleton profiles, not completed, and often on purpose. One way to circumnavigate this is to start finding candidates without searching; easier said than done, right? Well, no; we just have to go back to the real basics we should always be doing - maximising the information we squeeze from each profile, and really putting some of that detective work to good use rather than relying on the same old searches.

So, how would we do this on LinkedIn? None of this is rocket science, but I do think some (or most) of these simple tips are often overlooked, purely because of the ease of regular searches. Try this out this week; get the profile of a candidate you know to be a superstar; somebody who you have recently hired is a good start; and check out the following...

1. Profiles of Interest



Other people will have done the work for you. Check out the most viewed profiles; they're usually going to be relevant, and is a nice starting point.

2. Similar Profiles


Still in beta, but this is a really cool and often overlooked feature. A unpredictable at times, but it's a great way to draw out a few extra profiles which could be of interest.

3. Tangent Search


The best thing you can ever learn to do and make a habit of on LinkedIn. Go through those past companies; if your guy is a rockstar, he isn't going to have been working in any mediocre engineering teams for long. Copy his job title and past company into a search, and run through all those doing that job. The real gems here are the ones with no information filled in on their profile; the kind you would never have found with your standard search, because by doing any kind of search other than the name of the company you are excluding them entirely.


Profiles like this are why we tangent source. No technical skills listed that you would typically search for, but I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar that he is a C++ developer of a similar nature to our first chap. No degree listed on his Education that you could search for, but you know he's gone to an elite university, and the chances are it is Computer Science or related.

4. Groups & Associations

Have a look at the bottom of the above profile. See the 'Groups and Associations' section? He has one listed, CVMP. A quick search shows us that the CVMP 'aims to bring together the worlds of academic algorithmic research [...] to discuss new advancements and innovative applications' - also worth searching through, if you ask me. You can find some really great localised groups, particularly for events and conferences, which unlike some of the larger generalist groups contain a great group of relevant candidates.

5. Recommendations


Another often unlooked source of candidates; check out the recommendations section. See who is recommending this person; it will more often than not be their peers or superiors at work, and again if they are working at the same place as your original superstar candidate, then you can bet their skills are going to be relevant, and they have already done the work for you by putting their names right there.





Hopefully this provides some food for thought, and maybe serves as a reminder to some of the basics we should be doing every day. I would  be really interested to hear any thoughts, or if anybody has any other useful advice when it comes to making the most of the information on a candidate's LinkedIn account; I'll share my thoughts on doing similar on blogs, Twitter, Google+ profiles and more over the coming weeks.


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