Have we Gone Rating MAD?

Everywhere, everyone and everything wants to be rated nowadays.
Whether it’s a café you get your morning coffee from, a restaurant or a service you receive like Uber. I’ve even seen at an airport toilet as you exit a touch screen to rate the experience (or cleanliness) by tapping one of the smiley or sad faces. We are bombarded with requests to rate and be rated.
It’s the same over in the recruitment space. I see increasing number of lists on social media (e.g. Twitter and LinkedIn) assigning ratings to “subject matter experts” or “thought leaders”. While it can be flattering to be recognised as an influencer, I question the criteria behind the selection. The audience are usually not privy to the benchmarks that were used and I somehow wonder if the lists were all made up.
As such, does it really matter anymore to be rated? Have ratings lost its purpose and impact?
This brings me to a recent article I came across published by LinkedIn – “Here Are the Best Social Recruiters Across Asia Pacific”. The names on this list are selected based on LinkedIn Recruiter usage statistics from June to November 2015 and I would like to, first and foremost, congratulate all who made this list – there are many excellent recruiters here who contribute a lot to our industry.
[bctt tweet=”Have ratings lost its purpose & impact in today’s digital world asks @MartinWarren.”]
However, in my opinion, this does not paint an accurate picture of what goes on in recruitment. I believe what LinkedIn is trying to do here is promote LinkedIn Recruiter as the best channel for engaging talent. The article claims that “LinkedIn’s Top Social Recruiters showcases the most effective recruiters who have been successful at embracing social recruiting” and they had ranked these talent acquisition professionals based on a LinkedIn Recruiter Index (LRI).
The LRI quantifies a recruiter’s effectiveness at using LinkedIn Recruiter by measuring four essential criteria (well at least LinkedIn bothered to include a list of criteria):

  1. Build: Establishing a professional presence on LinkedIn with a complete profile
  2. Find: Efficiently identifying qualified candidates using search and research tools
  3. Engage: Engaging candidates with personalised conversations
  4. Manage: Collaborating and organising your work to maximise team effectiveness and efficiency

Note: only one recruiter from an organisation in each country is featured in the list based on the highest LRI score.
Let us examine each criterion:Multitask Woman

Build

I have come across many recruiter profiles and often see company marketing spiel (it’s all about them) rather than articulating how, as a recruiter, they aim to engage and help their target audience. Should this be a valid criterion? This seems to put all the focus on the completion of profile rather than the quality of it.

Find

I’m really not sure how LinkedIn can measure this. Is it purely based on how many searches a recruiter executes and results returned? How can LinkedIn tell if the recruiter has been efficient? What are the metrics involved? There is a lack of clarity involved.

Engage

Again how does LinkedIn measure this? My money is on them measuring the number of personal conversations that recruiters start, i.e. how many InMails they’d sent, and I’m not sure if this is a good definition for engagement at all. In my opinion, the quality of engagement – how a recruiter communicates with candidates, is what’s count. Engaging someone without putting any heart into it is really no point.

Manage

Another vague criterion here. I think they are referring to recruiters’ LinkedIn projects and how they manage them. So my question is how and what were the strength of collaboration and organisation measured against? This is not addressed sufficiently and I feel that there are a lot of assumptions made.
Call me cynical but I seriously question the criteria applied by LinkedIn and whether it is a true indication of how a top social recruiter operates. We all know that most amounts of engagement with a candidate actually happen offline where a recruiter spends more time on the phone or during face to face meetings. The use of LinkedIn Recruiter is usually the first step in what is a multi-level process of engaging and determining the quality of the candidates.
[bctt tweet=”A top recruiter can operate effectively across all communications platforms says @MartinWarren.”]
In fact, I personally know many recruiters who don’t have, never have or need access to LinkedIn Recruiter and who are equally as competent as some of the recruiters on this list. To me, this article is misleading in its claim. In fact, I’m sick of all these “noise” on my LinkedIn and Twitter feeds.
So before you move on to connecting with all these so-called influencers, “thought leaders”, or top , I would suggest you undertake the following:

  • Do your research, determine what valve (social proof) you can gain by following or connecting;
  • Understand the criteria for being included on the list – make sure they all stack up and the recruiters are truly nominated on merit.

Don’t be taken by another ploy from individuals or vendors seeking to build their brand awareness or promote a product or service. As a recruiter operating in today’s digital world, I’m sure you should be more discerning than that.

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3 Responses to “Have we Gone Rating MAD?”

  1. Stan Rolfe

    YES! High Five Martin. I’m reading this whilst recovering from gastro and for a minute found some relief.
    Should the Title of the list been ‘LinkedIn Recruiter Recruiters in Asia Pacific’? Not taking anything away from the people listed, who are obviously doing great things.
    Its the same pitch LinkedIn put across to employers around reach, candidate sentiment, and how they say that LinkedIn can be attributed to a hire because at some point the individual checked out your individual profile, those of your colleagues or visited and followed your company page. A bit like saying Glassdoor or JobAdvisor here in Australia can be attributed to hires, maybe even Wikipedia!.
    Is linkedIn measuring the individuals use of the whole system, are they blogging, joining in conversations in groups, providing hints and tips through status updates etc or are they simply very good at mining the database and engaging with talent. I wouldn’t call that social recruiting, I’d call it research.

    Reply
  2. Stan Rolfe

    YES! High Five Martin. I’m reading this whilst recovering from gastro and for a minute found some relief.
    Should the Title of the list been ‘LinkedIn Recruiter Recruiters in Asia Pacific’? Not taking anything away from the people listed, who are obviously doing great things.
    Its the same pitch LinkedIn put across to employers around reach, candidate sentiment, and how they say that LinkedIn can be attributed to a hire because at some point the individual checked out your individual profile, those of your colleagues or visited and followed your company page. A bit like saying Glassdoor or JobAdvisor here in Australia can be attributed to hires, maybe even Wikipedia!.
    Is linkedIn measuring the individuals use of the whole system, are they blogging, joining in conversations in groups, providing hints and tips through status updates etc or are they simply very good at mining the database and engaging with talent. I wouldn’t call that social recruiting, I’d call it research.

    Reply
  3. Martin

    Hey Stan thanks for your comments. I like the title Stan much more realistic to what they claim. Hope you are feeling better soon. Regards Martin.

    Reply

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