Updated data on Professional Social Network users

April 19th, 2010 by jgiliriu

Here’s the latest update on a number of services as of today April 2010 (estimation based on own research and company data):

1.- Number of active users Linkedin: 52M, Plaxo: 20M(*), Xing: 8M

(*) Plaxo stopped publishing number of active users in 2008. -The number should be handled with care.

Trend:

Active number of users on Most Relevant social networks

Active number of users on Most Relevant social networks

 2.- Number of Recruiters on Linkedin

As of today: Number of active users 52M (data from Linkedin corp), Number of Recruiters on Linkedin (own research): 5,2M

Conclusion: 10% of users on Linkedin are recruiters

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If you are not in the network….Do You Really Exist? Social Media for Business Growth & Career Progress

April 15th, 2010 by jgiliriu

I’ve been asked to speak about Social Recruiting and how Social Media can boost your professional carreer. If interested please see agenda below. I’d love to see you guys there!

Event:
 BCN Social Media for Business Growth & Career Prog
Time:
 Wednesday 21, 19:30 – 22:00
Location:
 AON
Via Augusta 252-260 6th floor
Barcelona, ES
View map
Description:

If you are not in the network….Do You Really Exist? Social Media for Business Growth & Career Progress

Sponsored by AON, a Corporate Partner of EuropeanPWN

Speakers:

Armando Liussi
Partner at Bridgedworld, S.L.
Social Media Marketing
Manager-Associate Consultant at Onemma

Jordi Gili
 Client Service Director at Resources Global Professionals
2.0 Social Job Marketplace Innovator and Evangelist at Tom Sawyer
Social Innovator and Secretary to the Board XTB

 


A fundamental shift is taking place in howcompanies and business professionals communicate.

The social media culture and social networking platforms are having a major impact on business communication, practices and processes.
- How can these tools be best utilised?
- How can you employ strategies within your company to increase profitability?
- How can you sustain reputation and empower your employees to be brand ambassadors?
- Indeed should you employ internal social networks within your own organisation as a means of facilitating a sharing community amongst your employees, or should you use public open platforms?
- How can your career benefit from using social media?

These questions and more will be discussed in this event. Don’t miss it!

Register at:

http://epwn.etheryl.net/EPWN/exportevents.mv?script=calendarguest&uid=20100421290004
Event:
 BCN Social Media for Business Growth & Career Prog
Time:
 19:30 – 22:00
Location:
 AON
Via Augusta 252-260 6th floor
Barcelona, ES
View map
Description:

If you are not in the network….Do You Really Exist? Social Media for Business Growth & Career Progress

Sponsored by AON, a Corporate Partner of EuropeanPWN

Speakers:

Armando Liussi
Partner at Bridgedworld, S.L.
Social Media Marketing
Manager-Associate Consultant at Onemma

Jordi Gili
Client Service Director at Resources Global Professionals
2.0 Social Job Marketplace Innovator and Evangelist at Tom Sawyer
Social Innovator and Secretary to the Board XTB


A fundamental shift is taking place in howcompanies and business professionals communicate.

The social media culture and social networking platforms are having a major impact on business communication, practices and processes.
- How can these tools be best utilised?
- How can you employ strategies within your company to increase profitability?
- How can you sustain reputation and empower your employees to be brand ambassadors?
- Indeed should you employ internal social networks within your own organisation as a means of facilitating a sharing community amongst your employees, or should you use public open platforms?
- How can your career benefit from using social media?

These questions and more will be discussed in this event. Don’t miss it!

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Posted in Job Seekers | 1 Comment »

You may want to cultivate Networking…

April 6th, 2010 by jgiliriu

Just 3 months ago a good friend was telling me: “I don’t really understand why you are wasting so much time doing stuff on the net, networking, blogging, building your presence, … I don’t need that”.

He was saying that from a solid permanent position at a global leading manufacturer of data communications equipment. “Well, networking, both on line and off line, and building a network of professional contacts is something that has no obvious direct return in the short term. But, along the road, maintaining cordial communications with old providers, clients, peers … may benefit you OR you may be able to help others, which is also another form of personal benefit.”

- Nah, not for me, he concluded.

Just a couple of weeks, he called me: His solid permanent position had been made redundant. “You are an expert – help me out: where should I start looking for a job? Should I be on linkedin? How do I connect with senior executives at my competitor?”.

This must have been my friend's face two weeks ago

This must have been my friend's face two weeks ago

Now it’s all rush. Networking has to be taken seriously and you need to professionally approach new contacts. You can maybe ask them how they are doing, go for a coffee and network off-line as well and talk a little about everything. Of course some business topics will be mixed in elegantly.

On the other hand, an invitation to network or connect out of the blue with an obvious rush or making people feel used is one of the most unprofessional approach that you will make and the first impression that you will make will be very poor (and remember you only make ONE first impression). On top of that, chances of being successful -find information, introduce yourself to be considered for future positions, …- are very little.

So, start NOW! build your network. Go for coffees, never eat alone (that is also  the name of a book), gradually but constantly connect with new professionals in and out of your field. You never now when you’ll need a painter, a telecoms engineer or a connection to the Senior Hiring Manager at your competitor …

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Posted in Job Seekers, New Job Marketplace | No Comments »

Googler2Employee: Integrating Social Recruiting into a Holistic Social Media Strategy

February 16th, 2010 by jgiliriu

Social Media has to stop being seen as an exclusive Marketing/Branding Channel. The synergies with the rest of Corporate Core Processes are too major to be disregarded.

The following diagram describes our view on the role that Social Media will play in corporations in the future and HR in particular. Each corporate process will have a social media extension in order to add a channel of communication with the corporate community of stakeholders.

Holistic social media strategy

Holistic social media strategy

Social Recruiting has to be (and will definitely be) embedded in a holistic Social Media plan and strategy. There are significant synergies between your target social media customer audience and prospects/candidates to incorporate into your organization.

HR leaders should not ask themselves if they should use Social Media. Today they should be asking: What channels should I use: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, other social networks? Should I be involved and ask to be included and contribute to the corporate Social Media strategy? Benefits of being part of the leadership social media team are obvious if corporations can capitalize on the investment on branding.

In companies were they just realized that Linkedin is a great way to hire, and in a different department the management has just bought on the idea of using Social Media for marketing there is a major step forward in order to understand that combined social media efforts can be much more powerful.

Today we are frequently hearing expressions of system-implemented processes such as C2C (Customer to Cash), P2P (procurement to pay) and many others in worlds that are much more sophisticated than HR. Even though it will take some time for HR leaders to buy the idea, we will soon start hearing about processes such as: Googler2Employee, Employee2Alumni and Employee2Candidate.

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Posted in HR, Systems & tools | No Comments »

Why you don’t need a Linkedin Premium account

December 15th, 2009 by jgiliriu

Let me share with you a little story: I decided to upgrade to a Business Account on Linkedin basically because I had a business reason. I wanted to contact a freelance professional that I found on the site that was apparently available, to propose a really interesting business project as an interim professional.

The professional was not sharing contact info and was not open to contacts from anyone. This preference set-up is very common and is particularly not good if you are willing to be found (if you are contractor). I thought about not contacting him since his set-up does not seem very mindful of his environment and may speak very little about his attention to detail. On second thought, I decided to give him a second chance and consider that the professional was not really social network savvy and had just posted his profile but not really knowing what he was doing or why it was useful or could benefit him.

The only way for me to get in touch with him was via the mysterious – almost mystical – InMail. I didn’t think it over much (since I was very interested in contacting the freelancer) and upgraded my account.

This is what I received:

Benefits of a LinkedIn Premium Account

Hi Jordi,

Thank you for upgrading to a LinkedIn Premium Account! Your LinkedIn account now contains five benefits that aren’t available to free account holders.

As a premium subscriber, you get these perks:

  1. InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. No need to wait for an introduction: with InMails™, you can send a message to any of the 50 million members on LinkedIn.
  2. View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members. Be fully prepared with background information on potential clients, hires, and business partners.
  3. Find the right people, faster. Sharpen your ability to find decision makers, experts and leads with three times more search results. Try our advanced search.
  4. Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice. You can save important profiles into your Profile Organizer, a workspace that makes it easy for you to keep track of them, and stay up-to-date with notes and contact information. Get started with Profile Organizer.
  5. See who’s viewed your profile. Get more information on who’s interested in you from customers, to suppliers, to recruiters and more. View the complete list.

To see some of these services in action, sign-up for a complimentary training session on how to get the most out of your Premium Account.

We hope you enjoy your new powers on LinkedIn!

Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Team

After a little bit of trial and investigation of the benefits of the upgrade, here are some comments:

1. InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. – NOT

I have already used one of the three InMails to contact the professional, and it has been ignored. InMails are just e-mails. Basically you don’t need something with a new name that does exactly what e-mails do.  There are several ways to get around not knowing the target professional’s address. Amongst them, you can always “Send him an Invite”. The target will get quite an odd message, that’s true, but with the right wording, you should overcome the initial awkward impression by including … “I thought it would be of professional value to be connected I’m also sending a Linkedin invite to stay in touch…”

2. View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members – NOT

Not True either. You can and will only see the professional profiles of those who make their profiles public. On top of that, a lot of people still have incomplete profiles, so this won’t allow you to see any more of them … since it’s just not there. Disappointing feature.

3. Find the right people, faster with advanced search

Honestly, I have to say that I cannot see “any “difference of value between the standard search and the premium search.  Further disappointment.

4. Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice – Profile Organizer

Interesting feature for corporate accounts with more than two people looking at profiles, with specialised tasks (for instance ‘profile searcher’ and ‘approver-manager’) may be of certain value. Organizing the Prospecting in this sense is the only value that this new functionality may provide, and it is definitely not very valuable for the rest “not so complex” users.

5. See who’s viewed your profile – NOT

I have to admit that this was one of the most intriguing and fascinating features of the upgrade. Since I’ve had my Linkedin account I have been (I guess we all have … please admit it!) fantasizing about who and why someone was taking a look at my profile, with no rationale behind – you never know what’s on people’s mind but my guess, at this point, is that it would just be curiosity, after all. I was also fascinated by the intriguing message: “To see more people, upgrade your account”.

I felt that actually knowing the name of the people that has taken a look at my profile may give me a clue on why they would spend any time staring at my profile – a potential client? A potential provider? A potential job offer? ….

The report on this feature is that the information that you get is exactly the same as the one that you get with the free account, which nothing else than “Someone at Hewlett-Packard”, “Project Manager at Ericsson”, “Sales Manager at T-Systems” and so on. You get to see all the people, but only in those vague terms.

It is VERY disappointing … I radically support Linkedin (by itself or in comparison with the rest of tools out there), but this time I cannot help them make more money.

I will positively note that the look and feel of the premium account is better. It has a good lay-out, with the important tabs on top (the ones that the basic account has on its left-hand-side column: “Home”, “Groups”, “Profile”) and a better use of the screen space.

Overall my recommendation would be that small firms, independent recruiters, networkers, job seekers … need not to upgrade their account to a Premium service and just take full advantage of the potential of their basic account, which is, by the way, enormous.

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Posted in Systems & tools | 18 Comments »

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