Social Recruiting - The Facts & The Hype

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Tweet your jobs! Flickr your office photos! Youtube your epic ping pong battles for everyone to see! The question is; what are my immediate and long term goals and how does that align with my Social Recruiting strategy? Most importantly ask yourself “how can I make sure we stay on the cutting edge of social technology without falling off into an unproductive recruiting oblivion?”

Social Recruiting Basics

Before you can fully evaluate and commit to a social recruiting strategy, you have to ask yourself what your goals are. Are you trying to develop a steady stream of applicants over the course of time to support slow and steady growth or are you knee deep in a project where you need 5 people yesterday? 

For some long term brand recognition, it’s always a good idea to have a presence on the major social players like LinkedIN and even Facebook. Putting up a Facebook page or a LinkedIN group takes a matter of minutes, but it’s the cultivation and constant care that requires the long-term effort. This approach is not going to net you candidates on day one, but over time qualified people will flock your way if you are engaging them and have interesting content.

For a quick and dirty recruiting project where urgency is the name of the game, Twitter provides a great outlet. Tweetmyjobs is a service that allows Twitter users to Tweet their jobs across a variety of different Twitter accounts with a link to the description. Often times, this can reach hundreds maybe thousands of people in the course of a few hours. If you write a good ad and engage them after they click the link, you should net a few qualified resumes quickly.

Staying Focused

I read a great article the other day about the benefits of social media in recruitment entitled ‘social media: the most powerful recruiting tool since the telephone’.  While the title of that article may be a bit of an exageration, it brings up a few interesting points. The one thing we have to remember: having a social presence and utilizing online recruiting tools does not change the fact that you still have to communicate with your potential candidates in real life!

The post goes on to mention a few ways to specifically focus your social recruiting efforts, most specifically by setting a goal for yourself. How many candidates do you want to reach? Do you want to brand yourself to passive seekers for the future or attack the active candidates with your message right now? How are you going to track and effectively measure these metrics so you can evaluate the ROI of time spent? These are all critical questions you should ask yourself BEFORE you jump on the social recruiting bandwagon.

Tim and I blog about the value of social recruiting all the time. Entire websites are dedicated to the social media sphere of influence. You should absolutely take advantage of the tools available to you, and social media is and WILL remain an integral part of every serious players candidate sourcing strategy.

What type of successes have you seen in your social recruiting efforts? Have you bought into the hype and spread yourself too thin or has that big social push paid off? Let us know in the comments section!

Technical Recruiters Are Clueless?

Anyone who knows me knows that I am very passionate about the social media community and how it's changing the landscape of business and recruiting right before our eyes. One post quickly caught my eye, which read "Why are technical recruiters so clueless?" tweeted by the grand daddy (creator) of Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson. Being a technical recruiter myself, I obviously saw the tweet and immediately dove in to comment and defend my profession.

Are Technical Recruiters really this bad? It's a disturbing reputation that haunts even the talented ones.During the course of the comments, which is now well over 100 (nice job DHH on posting controversial subjects to get responses!), it became apparent that many developers out there had some horror stories about recruiters but very little shared positive stories. David asked me to share a positive story so I wanted to share one in particular. Whether or not this changes the viewpoints of those who wish to make an entire industry seem like they perform war crimes, who knows, but hopefully some will see the damage that generalizing an entire industry will bring to your business and who you are as a person. No one likes to be stereotyped.

I don't normally plug myself on this blog or what I do, but when requested for a plug I will always jump through that window, so here goes the success story:

While in San Francisco, there was a hiring manager (whom will remain nameless for their sake and you'll see why) that worked at a very "hot" up and coming start up in the city. San Francisco is competitive for a lot of verticals but in technical recruiting it's an absolute war zone. You'll have a candidate go on the market for a day and have three offers after you blink your eye… even in the depths of the recession last year.

I see the client is hiring for a Ruby on Rails developer but he's looking for strong object orientated programming experience prior to RoR and a passion for games… a tough find anywhere – especially in SF. I message him on LinkedIn before calling him saying that I have a candidate that fit the description perfectly and wanted to see if there was interest in speaking. No response.

Ruby on Rails is one of more desirable technologies a developer can have on their tool belt... and they know it.The candidate comes in the next morning to meet with me and I ask him what he's looking for; he rattles off four criteria immediately: start up, in San Francisco, RoR, and in the gaming industry. I ask him if he's heard of the company I LinkedIn messaged the night before and he said he hadn't but it sounded perfect.

I told the candidate to wait in the lobby while I called this guy to see if I could get him an interview. Keep in mind the candidate had been on the market for two days, wasn't on the job boards (what great developer is these days?) and had two companies making him an offer that day. I picked up the phone, called the hiring manager and introduced myself – yes, the dreaded cold call! The manager heard me out, but then proceeded to berate me and my profession vowing that he has not, nor will he ever use a recruiter to find people… he continued to say that if they were a good Rails guy that they should know of them and apply themselves. Kudos to this guy for hearing me out, because as I told him more and more about the candidate he become more and more interested.

Insert stellar sales lines here and an excellent phone demeanor there (shameless plug, wha-wha?!) and the manager said that he's willing to give me a shot and to send the candidate over right away. He also warned me that this was his first and only time that he ever allowed a recruiter to send him someone and made me feel a little guilty that I "sold" the slot of time to interview this stud. I have to admit, I was a little nervous, the pressure I was holding for myself and the entire technical recruiting community was on my shoulders. Now I have an eye for talent, but I was hoping I didn't over sell this guy… I'm not technical myself and this manager sounded like he knew his stuff, but then again, so did the candidate. Doubt still crept in.

Fast forward three hours later and the candidate called saying he received an offer from these guys and thanked me and my team for bringing him in but that he didn't have enough information and it was just a little too low for him in comparing the other offers he had currently. I told him I'd follow up with the manager but told him not to make a decision until I do if possible – he agreed.

The manager called and said he appreciated me pushing the interview with this candidate. But, I had to tell him that the candidate wasn't going to accept his offer as is… the manager was shocked, and asked what he should do. The truth was that the manager didn't spend any time SELLING the opportunity but just was making sure the candidate was qualified for the position… (he admitted later that he drilled the candidate because he was skeptical of where he came from).

The manager and I partnered up on what I knew about the candidate and what the manager had to offer other than pure compensation. There was a lot of things that we missed and after we worked together the candidate ended up accepting the offer and started work the next day. The manager hired an additional four more developers through me in the six months following and still thanks me to this day for pushing him to see that first candidate (who still works there and is so happy).

The overall point is, if you're a technical manager you're also a businessperson. You have a responsibility to run the best team out there so keep an open ear to the calls out there and outside help that could better your team. Collaborate with your technical recruiter if you're using one, we're not just used to identify candidates but deliver them to you. Using 50% of someone's capabilities will result in diluted success rate, if you're paying for it - use it!

Does anyone else have any experiences to share? I'll take positive or negative... and either way, is there anything you would suggest if you're not a recruiter on what we could be doing a better job of as an industry entirely?

Company Values

While on a plane ride to Chicago over the weekend I saw a commercial on the half functional TV screen that fanned out in front of me. It was an Old Spice commercial, the one with Ray Lewis covered in suds telling the audience how much of a man he was. I laughed of course, next to the Dos Equis commercials, Old Spice commercials are my favorite. I also realized that my deodorant is Old Spice, my shower gel is Old Spice and my after shave is Old Spice. It didn't used to be - I thought I didn't really care about that stuff... but subconsciously I did, apparently.

Then I remembered when I was younger, Old Spice seemed just how it sounded: Old. Like it's something that my dad and grandpa would use. It wasn't hip; it was just an old man scent. Old spice made a turn around and changed the image to appeal to a younger crowd pretty drastically, but didn't change who they were as a company, their people or their product. 

This got me thinking about how organizations, mostly big organizations, are adapting to change.

It's your values, not your product or service... 

It's nothing new; the 20th century was peppered with many game changing eras that will put our current era into better perspective. The only difference in today's landscape is that everything is changing at such a ferocious pace that just keeping up makes you look like a pioneer in your industry. 

Yet one of the key metrics of managing through change successfully in an organization of any size really stems from the company's values. I define company's values as the standards by which employees set priorities that enable them to prioritize things differently in order to assess how to act in a given situation. A key metric of good management, in fact, is whether such clear, consistent values have permeated the organization so that everyone holds those values. 

Whether you're growing, shrinking or just changing directions, having an internal identity is almost more important as what you do for business. An organization filled with individuals that stand for something collectively has an identity and it starts with the values that you put out there as a leader - and when you change, you change together.

What are your values as a manager? What do you think your team or company's identity is? How do you maintain that?

How to use Twitter to find candidates

With the emergence of social media in today's business world, there are so many questions about how to get the most out of micro-blogging, namely Twitter. For the most part people "get" the value of LinkedIn a lot more than they "get" the value of using Twitter to find candidates. After all, LinkedIn has profiles and they are essentially online resumes for people. But how in the world are you supposed to use Twitter to find candidates when it primarily seems like the status updates LinkedIn allows you to do?

Tweet early, Tweet often

Not sure what to tweet? Hint: be yourself! First you have to understand yourself as a new Twitterer / Tweeter. When you're new at Twitter, it's common to get frustrated early because you don't get instant results. In fact the average Twitter user fizzles out within a few weeks and never logs on again. Having a Twitter account is just like getting a puppy, you have to continually feed it for it to grow and live.

Referencing a guest post Robert J Moore in TechCrunch last year, CEO and Co-Founder of RJMetrics (@rjmetrics) said that:

"About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times and over 75% of users have 10 or fewer followers."

Hardly inspiring numbers that make you jump on Twitter today and start tweeting to find candidates. Yet if you read further on you find that the people who contribute to the Twitter universe (twitterverse?) are more likely to stay and be engaged. Robert J Moore goes on to say that:

"Once a user has tweeted once, there is a 65% chance that they will tweet again. After that second tweet, however, the chance of a third tweet goes up to 81%." 

A little more inspiring, huh? The simplicity of Twitter, oddly enough, takes a little time to get used to. The Web 2.0 world we're all a part of these days is shoving more and more data at you that pleases the ADD generation enough that something as simple as Twitter seems pointless and people lose focus very quickly. It's similar to any skill, like guitar - you might want to be a rockstar but when you first start playing - it's really boring! Why? Because you're really bad at it!

The funny part about Twitter is that once you get it rolling it's exactly what your ADD senses crave: TONS OF INFO!

Engage with people 

Photo of Workbridge Boston after we won a national contest - look fun?One of the advantages of Twitter as a sourcing tool for talent is the speed in which you can communicate with someone. It's a casual, virtual water cooler type, conversation that you can really utilize a good strategy for engaging people about you and your company. If you're only sending out a tweet a week or less, you're really making it very challenging for yourself to be found by someone. Get yourself into conversations by reading other's tweets and offering your two cents or retweeting a good idea to your followers. The more you engage with people the more people engage with you. This sets up a very natural conversation about their career or your corporate culture and current needs, etc. 

Talking about your corporate culture on Twitter is free marketing to an already engaged follower base.

Follow your competitors 

Following people in your industry will only attract the same followers back to you. The open source community is incredibly rich with developers and technologist trying to share their ideas with one another to help the open source community grow and become more relevant. Even in the Microsoft world, there are developers abound sharing ideas on how to do things more efficiently. Not only will this make you better as a technical manager, it will also be a beehive for developers seeking new ways to do things and they stumble on to your contributions to the community in the meantime. 

Be aware of hashtags and their relevancy 

Hashtags are ways to easily follow trends in your field and can grow your following very quickly to become more relevant than just subscribing to random lists (like the Top 10 Techies to follow lists that are everywhere). For example, if you commonly use Sharepoint and hire for Sharepoint Developers then do a search on posts that index #sharepoint. It's a very easy way to start becoming relevant in your community once you start - here's the magic word - engaging with your new captive audience that is talking about Sharepoint. 

Control your online image 

There are countless articles and blogs out there about companies researching their candidates online "image" using social networks, well the shoe also fits on the other foot here. Candidates are resourceful and will use everything they can to find out more information about you, about the company, about former employees that worked for you - all very easily accessible using simple online tools. The more bad press out there, the harder it is for you to attract people to work for you, let alone interview with you.

The simple truth is that people will write about you and your company whether you like it or not. So put yourself out there! Control your online image by making it a point to talk about how it is and will be for people to work for you.

Believe me, if you google my company, the third link is "Workbridge Scam" which is posted by people who have worked for Workbridge long ago or who didn't have a successful encounter with us. It's real work to control your image and the more you don't pay attention to your online image the more it seems like you're running away from it.

Anyone who's ever worked at a restaurant will tell you that one person that has a negative experience will tell 20 others, but positive experiences don't spread as easily. Bad news spreads much faster than good news - just turn on the TV if you don't believe me. So work on spreading good news and insightful information about who you really are.

What have we done to help spread positive vibes about Workbridge? We're spreading good news through our videos (see below) and by spending time to inform rather just post jobs on twitter.

You can take it with you 

The best news about having a solid following on Twitter is that you can take it with you! One of the more inspiring stories I've heard this year is when I saw John Caplan, CEO of the OpenSkyProject (@openskyproject) talk at an MIT event centered around innovation. He talked about how San Diego Chargers Linebacker Shaun Phillips started using his popularity to gain an audience on Twitter. Once Phillips had a proper audience he started thinking like a businessman and life after football, so he's been spinning off projects like his own online store. However long Phillips' career in football lasts he has an audience of people that he will take with him and engage with long after football. It's really a very clever way to retain a fan base, in this instance we'll call them followers.

While you may not be sacking quarterbacks as your full time job, but you can easily attract relevant people to follow you in your community that will be your "followers" where ever you go. And just like the leader you are - where ever you go, you won't be alone, people will be following you.  

Have you used Twitter to find talent? I'd like to know if you're using similar or completely different techniques to attract candidates. And what about your online image? What are you doing about it to influence a positive vibe? 

Attracting Strong Software Developers: Three Ways To Think About Your Work Environment

I speak to hundreds of software developers a month, and while they are all very talented and good at what they do, they are certainly motivated by different things. In Tim Yandel’s last post, he talked about motivation and incentives, and specifically asked what motivates you. When I interview candidates in my office, we usually spend a good chunk of our interview time going over the type of environment that they want to work in. While all of these answers are different, a few of the same themes apply. In this post, I will discuss 3 easy, and often inexpensive ways, to create a work environment conducive to attracting and maintaining high quality engineers.

1. Invest in Tools and Technology

This should be a no-brainer for high tech companies looking to sell a software product or launch a new web application. However, you would be surprised how many gripes I hear about software developers not having access to quality hardware and/or simple and sometimes free tools to help them be more productive. This isn’t to say that every company who wants to hire great engineers needs to be on the latest framework that is still in beta, or spend thousands of dollars on pre-built engines, but there are plenty of inexpensive tools that help developers be more productive. These are not only software applications, but books and online training/webinars that can give your team a chance to learn from an outside perspective and bring new insight to the project. Joel Spolsky says it best on his blog for Fog Creek Software. He talks about how something as simple as dual monitors and a few more MB of ram can make all the difference in the world when it comes to making developers happy.

2. Create a Space to Collaborate

In my experience, the actual layout of the space that developers are working in is totally subjective, but I did ping a few candidates and clients on what works for them. The general consensus is that an open workspace with a good balance of privacy and communication is critical. Somewhere that is quiet, but not dead silent, and most importantly a space that is free from the distraction of salespeople and marketing folks yammering away on the phone. Here is a sample of some of the responses I received when I asked if a developer would prefer a Cube Farm, a Bullpen, or a Private Office.

Developers Perspective: Cube Farm

No thanks, turns my stomach. Promotes napping, web surfing and other distractions.

Developers Perspective: Bullpen (basically an big open room with no walls and lots of communication)

Yes. I think this is ideal. We call it a lab environment. There are a few rules that need to be followed to have a successful lab:

1. Any lengthy or elevated conversations need to be taken to a meeting room.
2. There needs to be easy phone access (one phone for every four people, cordless preferably)
3. Assigned seating is favorable
4. Persons working together should sit together. As projects change the lab should reorganize accordingly.
5. Make sure the lab has windows, otherwise it is just a dungeon.
6. Only leads, developers and QA should sit in the lab. All other management should be in their own offices.
7. There needs to be a private place to go work or take care of personal business. If a company can afford a lab plus individual offices for each person I think that is the best. If not, make sure there are a few private places with a computer and phone that people can use.

Developers Perspective: Private offices (quiet, ability to close your door, etc)

For managers, and upper management this is necessary. For everyone else, it is only beneficial when there is also a lab to collaborate in.

This is the perspective I received from on of my clients, a VP of Software for a large healthcare company:

As for your question regarding workspaces, I do agree with Joel in that private offices work well. There is an isolation that can be found for aggressive coding. However, in todays market, requirements are thin and the developers have to be more in touch with the customer. This requires collaboration and interaction. So I prefer the best of both worlds... 3-4 people teams in a conference room together. Each of those team members have to interface with the customers.

And nobody likes cubicles... man those things collect dust!

I think the verdict is that the cube farms of “Office Space” are not a productive or attractive physical environment for todays developer. I suppose that my developer friend is right, if you have the money and ability, it is worthwhile to invest in quiet, private spaces for the developers to breakaway to along with a lab to collaborate.

3. Provide Flexibility

Being a sales and recruiting manager, a big component of my job is meeting people in my office. I also manage a team of 5 recruiters, so I have to be around to answer questions and make sure they are servicing our clients at the highest level. My job requires a great deal of “face time” and therefore a virtual environment or telecommuting doesn’t make much sense. In almost every environment I have placed developers in the last 2-3 years, they have limited if any client interaction, and only interact with users 10% of the time during requirements gathering. Of this interaction, even less of it is face to face. I know from experience that the ability to telecommute (work from home, remotely) is worth cold hard cash to software engineers. I have people that willing to take 10% even 15% less simply to work from home 2-3 days a week. It only makes sense: less time in the car, less money spent on gas, less stress from traffic, more time with family, more comfortable work environment. Now, this simply doesn’t make sense for every environment, and it doesn’t work for every candidate. Some people can motivate themselves to bang out code for 8 hours straight no matter where they are sitting, others may get distracted by Oprah at 3pm and drift into la la land. If it makes sense in your environment, you should give your developers a shot at a flexible schedule and/or telecommute and see if they can maintain the same level of productivity. Often times, you will be shocked that people are actually more productive when they can zone out in their home office and crank through code in their PJ’s.

What do you think would be the ideal environment for a software developer? Are you a cubicle guy or a lab guy? Do you have a private office? What about working from home...it’s not for everyone, but have you seen success or failure from trying it in the past? Let us know in the comment section!

What Motivates Us? Purpose...

I came across this video recently and thought I should share it with our Hiring Juice faithful. Aside from being truly amazing penmanship, it actually reveals a very interesting fact about motivating people with is quite surprising - it's not money. 

People are motivated by goals that are not complicated, simple and under their control to hit them. Financial incentives are not always a true driver but rather having a purpose for what you're trying to achieve holds more substance in our minds. 

I'd like to hear other's ideas on similar stories where you used other ways to motivate people other than just a bonus, commission or raise. If we can learn anything from our Open Source community (our LAMP friends out there) it's that they contribute to the purpose of sharing and educating others to make them better. Not just for financial gain. I can tell you right now, you won't get paid to share your stories on this blog, but it sure impacts our community of leaders/managers.

Who's got a story to share? 

Retaining Talent

You could recruit the best people, you could be the best interviewer, you could be the best at making offers that get accepted but if you can’t retain these people then it’s all pointless. You’re fooling yourself if you don’t pay attention to retention because turn over that’s out of your control does more harm than good, because your reputation gets dragged in the mud by the employees you couldn’t keep.

Culture Triangle

When thinking about how to retain talent, you have to think about the importance of culture in your team. Retaining people isn’t hard, but retaining talented people is the tough part and funny enough, firing has more to do with retaining talented people than hiring. Think of culture as a organism that needs to be fed from multiple sources, you need to have people move through this system in order for you to have a thriving culture.  The Culture Triangle illustrates that if you spend more time on developing people you begin to retain them long term, and if you can’t develop them and make them perform like the rest of your team, you need to fire them.

As much as hiring and firing the right way are crucial, performance management is the key – that’s why they come to work for you!

The 365 Approach

You have to have the 365 approach to how you affect your people’s performance. In other words, have an ongoing dialogue with your employees to give them real time feedback on how they’re doing, what your objectives are for them along with your expectations of them. Do this every day – 365 times a year.

Have this be the first interaction you have with your new hire – on their first day – so there’s a constant theme to how your relationship will proceed from here on out. Give them your expectations of them and what it takes to perform well in your team. Culture is everything, you need to enforce that from the start.

If you can’t have daily interactions or reviews, have a weekly sit down with your team individually to do a review of how they’re doing. If they’re not doing well, they should know how they can get better. They also need to know what they’re excelling at - it will make them work even harder knowing that something they’re doing is impressing you. More importantly – that you’re paying attention. The positive sandwich – positive meat slapped between two slices of constructive criticism.

Fire Underperformers

Your culture is in serious trouble if underperformers are not fired. If you follow the 365 approach, this shouldn’t come as a surprise either. This employee should know they’re not performing well.

Give it enough time, but not too much. The 90 day grace period should give you enough to go on. Keep in mind - if you don’t talk to the employee about what they need to work on before firing them, that’s your fault that they haven’t performed. You need to own that in front of your team otherwise this firing could severely backfire on you and lead to people quitting on you in numbers.

Like anything else, you can overboard on anything and there are certainly hiring managers that have a reputation of being “trigger happy” when it comes to their employees. The trigger happy managers often get a taste of their own bullet sooner than they think. Put away the shotgun and work on constructing a better saddle. 

5 Steps to Successful Sourcing on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a fantastic business and professional networking tool. With over 75 Million users and counting, LinkedIn represents one of the largest online resources for professional connections. With that many people, you are bound to find a handful of people in your area that are well qualified, and interested, in a position with your company. The biggest hurdle to sourcing candidates on LinkedIn is that most folks don't know where to start. These 5 tips should help you successfully navigate LinkedIn to source and contact your next potential hire.

1.) Sign Up

The first step is simple: if you don't have an account, sign up! LinkedIn is absolutely free for a standard account, and for most folks the free account will give you access to all of the tools you need to launch a small to moderate recruiting campaign. There are a few different options, including a "pro" package, which allow you to save profiles, send inMails, and get a cool logo next to your name. For all intents and purposes, let's pretend you just signed up for the free account and we'll go from there.

2.) Create a Profile

During my initial face to face interview, I advise all of my candidates to create a LinkedIn profile if they do not already have one. Think of this as your interactive online resume; a living document that is interactive, has the most up to date and relevant information, and even contains recommendations from colleagues. Make sure you are clear and concise with your information and include plenty of buzzwords about your skills and experience (just in case someone is searching for you!)

3.) Get connected

There are many options to grow your network on LinkedIn, the easiest of which is to start in your own backyard. Pull down your companies e-mail list and send all of your colleagues an invite. After that, you can import your GMail, Yahoo, or Exchange data so that anyone you have exchanged e-mails with in the past also get's an invite. The more people you are connected to, the more potential candidates that you can get introduced to.

4.) Join Groups

This is the most critical component of LinkedIn, and something that is often overlooked by users who don't understand the power of groups. Essentially, there are tens of thousands of groups on LinkedIn; anything from Wine Lovers in Napa Valley to Oracle Engineers in SoCal. Do a quick search in the group tab and join relevant groups that pertain to your industry, vertical, specialization, or interests. Once you get accepted into a few groups, you will gain access to a wealth of information, all of which is incredibly useful for recruiting that next great hire. In order to do so, you have to get your message out to an appropriate audience by reaching out to your pool of potential candidates.

5.) Reach Out

There are two methods to recruiting through LinkedIn: active and passive. A passive search is fairly straight forward: simply go into your groups discussion board and find the job post section. Once there, create a straighforward and and eye catching title for your post, ie: "Senior Oracle DBA Needed at Financial Firm in Mid-Town Manhattan". In the body section, copy and paste your job description with a quick blurb about how this job relates to the group you are posting to. "Hey Oracle DBA's United Group! I thought I would post a job for anyone who is living in NYC or interested in relocating. Looking forward to hearing from you!" Throw in your name and contact information, and wait to be contacted. 

If you are in a hurry and don't mind spending a little extra time recruiting, start actively contacting potential candidates. There are two methods to doing this, sending a message or getting introduced. You can only send messages to people you are directly connected to or people that you share a group with. Go to the member page of the most relevant groups, scroll through the active members and see who looks like a fit. Someone catch your eye? Click on their profile, and send them a quick message with the job description. If you lay it up properly, they should be flattered that you contacted them, not upset that you are trying to recruit them. The other option (and the more effective one in my opinion) is to get "introduced through a connection". Simply select the "get introduced through a connection" link on the right side of their profile and find someone you have in common. Write your connection a quick note to encourage them to forward on your description and, boom, your done!

In summary, sourcing candidates on LinkedIn is a very effective method of finding passive candidates. It takes a little bit of time to build up a network, and your profile needs to look reputable if you want people to contact you back, but once you master it, you can find some rockstar candidates.

Have you used LinkedIn as a recruiting tool before? What type of success/failure did you experience? Let us know in the comment section!