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Social Media Footprints

Ever wonder how recruiters judge you from your web and social media footprint?

Thanks to a link from The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian to Mashable, we know more.

"This excerpt from Boris Epstein, CEO and Founder of BINC, a Professional Search Firm that specializes in the Software Marketplace, on his post today on Mashable! titled Do You Pass the Social Media Recruitment Test? is great to share with everyone who is or who will be in the job market:

"In the golden days of recruiting we would hunt for days to find a candidate with a degree from a top university who worked for a top notch company who of course was considered priceless and absolutely worth contacting. Today however, we run a simple search on LinkedIn and find hundreds that match that exact profile. Or we run a quick search on Twitter for anybody discussing a specific keyword and we now have hundreds more to contact. But with only a set number of hours in a day, we just don?t have the bandwidth to contact everybody."

??So in today?s world of information overload where talent is literally available by the truckloads, I thought it would be relevant to write a post about how we evaluate a candidate?s social media footprint to determine (when all else is equal) which candidates we would contact and which ones get left by the wayside. I posed the following question to make it simple:

If all else were equal, like education, work history and general skill set, and I had to evaluate the social media footprints of two candidates to determine which one of them I would contact, which one would I contact and why? In my experience, I would contact the one who:

On Linkedin:

1. Has genuine recommendations from peers, managers and colleagues
2. Has the more complete profile
3. Is a member of more groups pertaining to their respective field
4. Has a picture
5. Lists interests, hobbies and other information related to their life outside of work
6. Participates and highlights their involvement in non-paid projects related to their field (open-source, community, volunteer, conference)
7. Updates their status more often
8. Asks and answers more questions
9. Links to their employer, blog and other projects of interest
10. Has the larger network

On their blog:

1. Has interesting things to say about their respective profession and industry
2. Provides glimpses into their life outside of work ? family, friends, hobbies, etc.
3. Does not bad-mouth their current or previous employer
4. Provides links to their other social networking profiles
5. Includes a link to their current resume
6. Updates with new posts regularly
7. Keeps it non-controversial ? minimal discussion of sex, politics, religion and other such controversial topics.
8. Is more genuine and honest
9. Has a blogroll with link to other interesting blogs

On Facebook:

1. Respects the overlap between their personal and professional lives
2. Updates often
3. Posts pictures of friends and family but keeps them PG-13
4. Keeps it non-controversial ? doesn?t take extreme positions on sex, drugs, religion, politics or other topics that could cause an employer to be wary of hiring
5. Is a member of groups relevant to their profession

On Twitter:

1. Tweets often (between 2-10 times per day is considered reasonable)
2. Has a healthy followers/following ratio
3. Has the biggest network
4. Keeps a healthy balance between personal and professional tweets
5. Doesn?t just update, but also responds to others and generally seems to get Twitter

When Googled:

1. Does not lead to something controversial like arrests
2. Leads to profession-related discussions and commentary on other social media sites
3. Leads me to their online blog, webpage or social media profiles
4. Doesn?t come up blank??

It's an interesting perspective in these interesting times.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on April 10, 2009 (boomark / email).