{"id":999881364,"date":"2013-05-09T14:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T14:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dice.npgdev.com\/?p=622267693"},"modified":"2013-05-09T14:52:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T14:52:00","slug":"loose-connections-to-powerful-recruiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dice.npgdev.com\/hiring\/recruitment\/loose-connections-to-powerful-recruiting","title":{"rendered":"Turn Loose Connections into Powerful Recruiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever been at a party and been surprised when you met people who shared your birthday? It\u2019s actually not too surprising. Birthdays tend to cluster, just like defects in code. It\u2019s the same thing with networks. People tend to cluster around \u201cconnectors\u201d\u2014people who are well-connected. Some people are not as well-connected, and that\u2019s okay, too. If those people are connected to the highly connected people, they both have terrific networks. This is called a \u201csmall world network.\u201d You go to a party, meet someone, realize you know someone in common, and say, \u201cIt\u2019s a small world.\u201d It\u2019s the same thing online, except that with social media, it\u2019s magnified.<\/strong> How many times have you looked around in social media and noticed that people are tweeting or posting similar stories? We see memes,<\/em> or what\u2019s trending all the time. If you look at what\u2019s trending, you might have noticed that it doesn\u2019t matter who started the trend. It matters that people pick up the trend. If enough people pick up the meme, then the power law distribution comes into play. What\u2019s that? That\u2019s a fancy word for the 80\/20 rule, also known as Pareto\u2019s Law. If you\u2019re a developer or a tester or writer or business analyst (I could go on, you know who you are), you know that your customers only use about 20% of your product. The only question is, which 20%? Well, it turns out that about 20% of the people in your network are highly connected. If you catch their attention, and they promote something, they can turn that something into a trend. That\u2019s the power law distribution at work. What does this mean for the future of recruiting? Is there a way we can use the power law distribution and small world networks? Yes. If you advertise a job on Twitter and a highly connected person sees it and retweets it, their followers will see it. Boom, you\u2019ve got many more potential eyeballs on it and the possibility of a meme, or a trending tweet. That\u2019s not likely, but the potential for a retweet is there. It\u2019s much more likely that your networking for candidates will improve. Did you know that you are more likely to fill a job with a loose connection?<\/strong> Recruiters have always known that you ask people, \u201cDo you know anyone who might be a fit for this job?\u201d But now, you might phrase that differently. You might say, \u201cThink about your larger network, people you don\u2019t see very often. Are any of those people a fit for this job?\u201d When you phrase it like that, people start thinking about their loose connections. That\u2019s their 80%, the people who are their loose connections. If these people have been maintaining contact with these loose connections, they\u2019ve been adding these connections to their LinkedIn contacts. Now, it\u2019s easy to make introductions. Maybe they are Twitter peeps. It\u2019s still easy to introduce each other. If not, it\u2019s just a little more difficult. You might think in this always-on world, we would be more high-tech and less high-touch. Not so. The future of recruiting is in using our tools to be more high-touch, to reach more people and make a real connection. So, tell me, when is your birthday? Wouldn\u2019t it be funny if it was the same day as mine?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever been at a party and been surprised when you met people who shared your birthday? It\u2019s actually not too surprising. Birthdays tend to cluster, just like defects in code. It\u2019s the same thing with networks. People tend to cluster around \u201cconnectors\u201d\u2014people who are well-connected. Some people are not as well-connected, and that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":622267693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2154],"class_list":["post-999881364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sourcing-candidates"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTurn Loose Connections into Powerful Recruiting - Dice Hiring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Have you ever been at a party and been surprised when you met people who shared your birthday? 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