When companies develop new social media products, services and applications, do you think it ever occurs to them that they are indirectly helping recruiters out? Probably not, and quite frankly, I am pleased. Maybe it is the mind of the recruiter that is the problem (now you're talking!) - with the way we look at new applications from a completely different perspective.
Today I am referring to Foursquare the location based social network that uses the GPS chip in mobile phones. A little while ago I demonstrated how using a combination of Foursquare and Twitter could find you candidates easily at target companies. I want you show you another Foursquare tip today that also helps you find people at specific organisations, but in a little more detail. This really is social recruiting!
Some Foursquare things to consider that make this relevant:
Check-in's: People mostly check into a work place location for one of three reasons; they work there and want to be Mayor of their workplace, they are going for a meeting (and so are likely to be in the same industry) or (maybe) they are going for an interview there.
Mayor: People who have become a Mayor of a workplace, will need to have visited that location on several occasions and will therefore likely work there.
Foursquare is mainly used by early adopters, people tuned into social media and tech savvy people (and by default smart phone users).
First stage is to get yourself a Foursquare account - don't worry it is very easy and free to just sign up for one.
Next in the search bar put in the name of the company you are targeting to find people from:
This will show you all the different offices/locations (and even different names) of the company, that people have 'checked in' at on Foursquare.
Then you need to find the one(s) that you are looking for. As you can see in the example above, I selected Accenture as my target company. Click on that company and it will show you who has checked in to that location recently, and of course, the Mayor of that company location.
As you can see Mike H is the Mayor of Accenture Interactive - he is an active Foursquare user, he has many badges and has checked in to many locations. Better than that though, is that he has his Twitter account linked to Foursquare. Click on the Twitter icon (many people also have their Facebook accounts linked as well) and open up the Twitter profile.
It tells you his name, his website (with contact details on) and some details about him. If you use Twitter (which you should be doing as a recruiter by the way), then you may want to follow him and engage with him that way.
If you then want to take it a stage further then simply do a search in LinkedIn for him. Don't worry if he is outside of your network, because a simple Google x-ray search (site:linkedin.com "name") will show you the full profile.
There you go - from an innocuous and seemingly irrelevant social media tool, you now have a clever way of identifying and sourcing targeted candidates.
Not everyone, attaches their Twitter or Facebook accounts to their Foursquare profile, so if the first search doesn't deliver, keep trying. As with all candidate sourcing, a good dose of guile and lateral thinking are required!
If you know anymore Foursquare sourcing tips let me know!
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