Social Media

For recruiters seeking top job talent for their companies, how does LinkedIn rate with the other traditional screening methods of cover letter, resume, references and face-to-face interview ... is it more important than all of them now? What benefits and advantages does LinkedIn mean for employers?

JDG: All of the methods have a role in the job search process but the emphasis on LinkedIn is increasing appreciably. Recruiters are big fans of LinkedIn and constantly have a browser or two open on the site. They are constantly and judiciously searching and researching applicants, by keyword, geography, former company and industry. Candidates can also be vetted on the basis of their LinkedIn footprint ... that is, their contributions in the interactive space (e.g., LinkedIn Answers, group posts, status updates, etc.).

The resume is a static document. It is formulaic and written in the past tense. It doesn't give one a sense of the candidate's humanity. The LinkedIn profile is a living document that ideally has an energy that explodes off the computer screen. Recruiters also know that LinkedIn recommendations are part of the branded content and can greatly impact the hiring process.

LinkedIn has a reputation for being "upmarket" ... do you agree with that, or does it also have a place for blue-collar jobs and other jobs not in an office?

JDG: Those in the so-called blue-collar professions or trades can leverage LinkedIn in many of the same ways as their white-collar counterparts. As long as they are in the business of meeting other businesspeople, connecting and leveraging professional relationships, they have a place on LinkedIn. It also depends on the job and the extent to which the industry is established. Many small business owners in the B2C market or trades fancy themselves as entrepreneurs and spend a great deal of time and energy marketing on LinkedIn.

Is it mainly just for young people?

JDG: It depends on your definition of young. The demographics reveal that the average age of the LinkedIn user is between 40 and 44. We see more and more baby boomers and people in their late 50s and early 60s working LinkedIn with purpose.

Is it just for the private sector or does the public sector use it as well?

JDG: LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world, approaching 85 million registered users, representing over 200 countries and territories and over 150 industries. All Fortune 500 companies are represented as are top executives from those firms. Corporate spending on LinkedIn and other social media is about ready to go through the roof in Q1 of 2011. Of course, a corporation's use of LinkedIn is going to differ from, say, that of the entrepreneur.

What specifically are you looking for in an applicant's LinkedIn material, and what advice would you give to job applicants for what they should do? Has your own company hired someone through LinkedIn and can you tell us about it?

JDG: The LinkedIn profile should convey uniqueness, humanity and positive energy. Candidates should create content that brands them as capable, confident and qualified and then attract eyeballs to their LinkedIn profile. There should be a URL to their LinkedIn profile on the resume, handbill, business card and e-mail signature. As I do not have employees or a recruiting function in my company, I cannot share any aspects of the hiring process.

Are you ever worried that job applicants soon learn to become terrific at the appearances and parameters of LinkedIn but would be unable to perform the content of the job, much like a TV anchorperson who has a great hairdo but doesn't understand the news?

JDG: As long as people represent with authenticity and honesty on LinkedIn, they can live up to their profile content in the real world. The primary LinkedIn strategy for job seekers is to secure the interview. From that point, sharp talent scouts can deploy their assessment criteria and pick up on deficiencies and discrepancies in a heartbeat.

Do other social media such as Facebook and Twitter play any sort of role for recruiters in the hiring process?

JDG: Background checks are carried out online and, yes, Facebook content can be accessed by recruiters. Many candidates have attempted to contact hiring managers on Facebook. This is not a recommended practice as most people opt to keep their Facebook personal. The jury is still out on Twitter. It can be difficult and time consuming to track and there is a great deal of noise and verbal clutter on the site.

If a company winnows LinkedIn applicants down to a final 10 and then hires one, are there any spring-forward benefits for the other nine through LinkedIn as they continue their search?

JDG: No. They are unrelated events. The other nine are back to square one regarding their job search on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn launched in May 2003 and reached profitability in March 2006. Your thoughts on that? Do you think LinkedIn will fade out or continue to flourish? Do you see any changes or new efforts coming with it, or would you like to see any?

JDG: The company's quick rise to profitability dovetailed the acceptance of social media in our culture. As more and more people learned about social networking sites, they joined them. Clearly, LinkedIn invested their venture capital well. Curiosity about LinkedIn is at an all-time high. Within the past 12-18 months, people in all walks of business have really become switched on about LinkedIn. It dominates business conversation. Social media activity is a learned behavior and can be very addictive. It has the momentum of a runaway freight train. I believe that LinkedIn will react and adapt to shifting attitudes, introduce new features and continue to improve the user experience. If not, the public will get fed up and look to new engines of connectivity (watch out for Google!).

Is there anything else you would like to say about LinkedIn?

JDG: I love LinkedIn. I think it is by far the hottest topic in business today. It is helping people land their dream positions. As this recession continues to breed despair and gloom, LinkedIn is helping many people turn their personal economies around. For all the claims that the Internet is depersonalizing society, LinkedIn is allowing people to connect on a very deep level, engage in business dialog quickly and create mutually beneficial opportunities that may have otherwise not existed.

(Mr. Gershbein is founder and CEO of Owlish Communications in Chicago and before that was a business cartoonist. He fashions LinkedIn profiles for clients, holds LinkedIn workshop programs and offers customized LinkedIn training for individuals, groups and companies. He has been featured on FOX News and in the Chicago Tribune and has contributed numerous articles to online publications. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati and an M.S. in industrial psychology and an MBA, both from the Illinois Institute of Technology. For more information, view JD's LinkedIn profile.)

(Editor's note: LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network with more than 80 million members globally, on Oct. 4 launched Career Explorer in collaboration with PwC US, one of the largest employers of college graduates in the United States, to help students build their careers. Students at 60 universities will see a "Career Explorer" link under the "Jobs" menu at the top of the screen when they sign in to LinkedIn.)

How do you use LinkedIn for recruiting?

HP: We use LinkedIn for recruiting in two ways. We use it in the experienced job market by utilizing the client enterprise system that LinkedIn has available where you can actually buy usage for recruiters at your company ... where you can find individuals on LinkedIn who may be a fit for your positions. Also, in our recent collaboration with LinkedIn, we've just launched the Career Explorer. It allows students to map out different career paths that they take and connect with those individuals through LinkedIn in the numbers that they have ... that's a new endeavor that we've engaged with and co-created with LinkedIn, and it's really a way for PwC to distinguish our brand, as well as continue to track down talent ... so for us, it's very much focused on the campus market, and we're excited about it.

How is your recruiting different now from when you did not use LinkedIn?

HP: I think recruiting has really changed over the last five to 10 years. Where before, it was very much about your resume and your cover letter, and trying to meet someone either face-to-face on campus or sending in by mail an application, today, it really is all about social networking. We use LinkedIn as well as other areas of social networking in order to connect with students and give students a realistic preview of what PwC is. We really try to provide all sorts of career advice to students on our website, PwC.tv, and we've also provided video testimonials from PwC employees who talk to students about their own careers ... and helpful advice that helped them to build their career and figure out where to start in this very competitive job market.

What do you look for in a LinkedIn profile for a new college graduate? What do you look for in a LinkedIn profile for a person with several years' experience (i.e., a couple years down the road)? In an experienced person?

HP: I think for a campus student, it's really important to focus in on all the great things they've done on campus and to highlight those accomplishments. I realize that students don't always have a plethora of work experience, but everything that they've done ... whether it is leading a club, or leading the charge around a sports event, or putting together an event on campus ... are all important things I look for. Clearly, work experience is great ... any work experience they have, such as internships (whether they're paid or unpaid), they should definitely list those things, and I also think it's important for students to talk about what they're interested in looking for. I'm always intrigued by students who really have a focus and passion for something specific, as opposed to just saying, "I'm an economics major and I'm interested in a job." I'm interested in what research they've done to understand what paths they can take, who they've connected to ... to really begin to focus on that area of interest and describing that on your online profile and what you are looking for can definitely stand out from the crowd and get the attention of the recruiter.

I would say, for an experienced candidate, that job experience and those qualifications ... the skills that you've gained, any of the technical experience they have is really important to highlight. It's important for me to know not just what jobs you've had but jobs you've looked for ... it's really important for me to understand what you've accomplished and what value you've actually added to that company. Interestingly, now that I'm using LinkedIn more, I'm also finding it interesting to see how much have you created connections, how much have you built your network ... so, even outside the job you do day to day, what else are you doing in your community? What other networks have you created that maybe led to other opportunities outside of the workplace that would be interesting?

What other information do you look for online? How do you use it?

HP: I think today there is so much information online and I suggest to any job seeker, to any student, that the first thing they do is go look online. Clearly, if you are looking to interview with a company, you have to look on their website. You have to understand a bit of history of their company, what their different service lines are, you want to understand what's happened lately in the economy ... are they growing? Who are they attracting? What is their strategy? Today you have the tools to be more prepared, and it is vital that you are prepared, because those people who are really successful landing a job are those who can put their best foot forward and show someone they've really done their research.

Beyond just looking at those company websites, though, there are a lot of tools out there available. There are different websites that talk about different company cultures: clearly Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are all great ways to reach out to your network first-hand. Does anyone know someone who works there? Have you heard anything about what that employer's like? What is it really like to work there? I think it's really important now with the tools that are available that job seekers take advantage of them so that they make the right choices and they land the job that's going to be the right fit for them ... that it is a fit for cultural reasons, and for the type of environment that they're looking for, as well as the specific job that they'll be doing at the company.

What skills would you like a graduating student to have?

HP: I think there are a lot of skills today that are really important for students to have. I think the baseline is always around technical or whatever experience within your major. So, working that as a baseline, working on your GPA while you're in school to show people you can apply yourself. Outside of that, all of the social skills are extremely important. Communication skills are really key, meaning being able to talk to someone about what you're looking for and being able to do it in a confident manner. Enthusiasm is extremely important. Students standing out in the crowd when I go out on college campuses now are those who are carrying a sense of enthusiasm as to what they're doing and they're just excited to have the conversation and get the opportunity to connect with someone. You walk away feeling really good about that student. I also really like to see students who have a passion for something; something either they've done and they've shown by the different activities that they've been involved with, they've continued to pursue their passion really shows to me that when they get the idea of something they want to do, they really want to continue to work at it to get where they want to be.

I do think working in teams is something that you see more and more; certainly at PwC. Working in teams is absolutely critical to the work we do. You have to be able to work in teams in order to do really great work and add value to clients, which is really important to us at PwC. The other side of adding value to clients for us is building relationships. Students who have that ability to build new relationships and to take the skills that they're learning right now in social networking and reaching out online and being able to expand that to building very deep relationships, social networking/networking tools online are a great way to start and facilitate those conversations, but they need to take it one step further than that and they'll need to get to the point where they'll pick up the phone or have some sort of conversation that really builds a trusting relationship, because that's how business is done. People do business with folks they trust. In fact, most people today seemingly get jobs from others that they know because someone has trusted them and they're willing to say, "I trust this individual, they're a good person. They're a hard worker, they're someone you really want to take a look at to be a future employee."

What do you look for in a student resume?

HP: What we've co-created with the Career Explorer has really been a culmination of what PwC has been trying to do for students now for a number of years. I go out to college campuses all across the country, and I hear from students, especially in this tough and competitive job market, "What can I do to stand out from the crowd? What tools can help me and can you provide for me?" So, we have really tried to help students broadly ... not just students in accounting, but all students across the country with things like their personal brand which should help them stand out from a crowd and really wow their employer, to provide very specific interview tips, resume skills and those sorts of things. It's important that students focus on all of those various elements. Career Explorer is really an extension of our desire to help students. It's a great tool for students to check out different career paths to see how all of those choices can lead to the next opportunity as well as all the different resources that are going to be available on Career Explorer and being able to reach out to others through that network is just a great opportunity and one more resource students should have in their toolbelt to help them build their careers.

(Holly Paul has worked for PwC for 16 years. She has a B.A. from Lafayette College. PwC refers to the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.)