Peopletoucher.com

LinkedIn releases "Seniority Level", a Beta Feature for Advanced Search

Chris — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:09:29 +0000

LinkedIn recently added "Seniority Level" as an Advanced Search filter accessible by users with premium accounts.

Tagging it as a "Beta" feature is a bit of an understatement as the feature misses the mark completely, as in it's current state, only seems to be matching profiles where the user's title begins with the keyword of the chosen level.

If "Director" is chosen, Seniority Rank Beta only matches users with a title beginning with "Director".

In other words, titles such as "eBusiness Director", "IT Director", etc., will not be found.

I would steer clear of this feature until additional development generates better results. For the time being, use with caution.

Here's a quick test illustrating the issue.

I'll search for:
Companies: Kimberly Clark, Kleenex
Rank Filter Position: Director-level only
Title Search Terms: analytics, contact, commerce, eBusiness, ecommerce, experience, information, interactive, internet, online, web

Try this search here: http://peopletoucher.com/linkedinsearch/?sel=Ykimberly_clark,Ykleenex,Winformation,Wexperience,WeBusiness,Winteractive,Wanalytics,Wcontact,Wweb,Wecommerce,Wcommerce,Winternet,Wonline&rf_1=3&rf_2=3&fr=6&syll=0&loc=A&cou=BL&zip=&rad=4

Now try the LinkedIn Seniority Level Beta filter here: (premium account required)

http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?title=%28information+OR+experience+OR+eBusiness+OR+interactive+OR+analytics+OR+contact+OR+web+OR+ecommerce+OR+commerce+OR+internet+OR+online%29&currentTitle=C&company=%28%22kimberly+clark%22+OR+kleenex%29&currentCompany=C&searchLocationType=Y&keepFacets=keepFacets&page_num=1&facet_SE=5&search=&pplSearchOrigin=MDYS&viewCriteria=1&sortCriteria=R&facetsOrder=N%2CG%2CI%2CED%2CFG%2CL%2CDR%2CSE%2CFA%2CCS%2CF%2CP%2CCC%2CPC&redir=redir

I found a few less matches using LinkedIn Seniority Level Beta, all of which had titles with "Director" as second or third words in their title.

What do you think about this feature? Do you think LinkedIn will eventually nail Advanced search to the extent possible with boolean operators used by a seasoned pro? Do you think the Peopletoucher Search Engine will someday become obsolete?

As suprising as the answer may sound, I hope so! I'm hoping the service provided on this site will eventually be weaved into LinkedIn advanced search.

In the meantime, we'll keep this site running until they do.

Please share your opinon in the comments.

LinkedIn.com Redesign Underway

Chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:28:10 +0000

Linkedin today published a post on it's blog describing changes they've begun to roll out to the overall layout of the homepage and navigation options.

A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.

Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).

More room available for page content. Less scrolling.

A cleaner, less-cluttered look.

Profile pages are also undergoing a redesign, leaving more room for profile content by moving all left-hand navigation items into the global navigation bar across the top of the page.

I think the changes are great and long overdue. People browsing the site from small workplace monitors or laptops will see more content with less scrolling.

Based on how the Inbox is featured front and center and in a bit larger font, demonstrates how important the messaging function is to LinkedIn's long term strategy. Use of LinkedIn as a messaging platform to stay in touch with friends and colleagues is a key driver in establishing the site's "daily routine" utility. In other words, it keeps you coming back.

Let's hope this helps them attract (and retain) more users!

LinkedIn Releases Profile Organzier Tool

Chris — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:45:38 +0000

LinkedIn added an upgraded "profile organizer" tool only available to premium members.

Read more about it on LinkedIn's Blog and on its description page.

Is anyone using it?

The consensus is that this feature alone is not worth the premium price of an account upgrade but LinkedIn may start to enhance these premium features in order to grow its base of paying members.

Would this feature encourage you to "go premium"?

VIDEO: LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman Addresses Speculation They Will Buy XING

Chris — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:29:48 +0000

Quick interview with Reid Hoffman at the TechCrunch 50 event (annual web startup conference) about speculation, rumors, and some of his predictions for what the future holds for some of the brightest online startups and social networking sites, including LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Reaches 47 Million Members

Chris — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:21:29 +0000

I had bookmarked a TechCrunch article last month about how LinkedIn has reached 45 million users, but never blogged it. Checking out the LinkedIn Press section this morning, it seems the site is now up to 47 million users.

Other stats include:

LinkedIn has over 47 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world.
A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Is there a plateau around the corner or do you think they will continue growing at this speed for the next few years?

Netflix CEO Has No Fear - Publishes Talent Acquisition Strategy in the Public View

Chris — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:06:52 +0000

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings releases his company's take on a values & culture "manual" which leaves nothing up to the imagination.

Details include their "rockstars only" hiring policy, a policy of no vacation policy, and guidelines and methodology behind a culture of of autonomy, responsibility and effectiveness.

Love to see more companies trash the corporate BS mission statements and get real.

Hastings, you are my new hero!

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

Search LinkedIn without Looking up Postal Codes: The Peopletoucher Search Engine Now Supports Global Cities

Chris — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:39:28 +0000

As LinkedIn grows upwards of 40M+ users, spanning 150+ industries and representing every country in the world, recruiting and sales professionals outside of the US continue to find value in searching for business contact names.

Considering all of the Search enhancements LinkedIn has released over the past few quarters, it's a surprise to see how hokey the Advanced People Search is when trying to search for contacts based in or near any non-US cities.

For the US-based recruiter who needs to place the occasional candidate based outside the US, it isn't terribly difficult to memorize a token postal code to put into the Postal Code field.

However, this process can get old rather quickly if you are not based in the US, and require city/regional focus to source contact names.

For example:

Up until now your only resource has been to click the "Lookup" link and find a token postal code to use for the area your drilling towards.

Clicking "Lookup" actually brings you to Geonames.org, a non-profit postal code database site.

Once there, the process doesn't become any easier, as you have to scroll to your target city and copy/paste the code.

Using The Peopletoucher Search Engine you'll never have to visit Geonames.org ever again as we've added full auto-completing city name entry to the 17 countries LinkedIn supports for city-based search.

Expand the Location section to reveal the three Location search options: Anywhere, Country, and City. Choose "City".

Select the drop down to find the country you need.

As you begin typing, you'll notice the city names will autocomplete. Click on the desired city, or use the up & down keys to highlight, and press enter to select.

You may need to hit enter a second time to move the city/postalcode into your inventory and make it enabled. (Like everything else on the page, when it is red, it is enabled)

If you find yourself frequently switching back and forth between cities, you can store your cities in the inventory and click back and forth between them in order to prevent having to retype them in.

Peopletoucher Search - Saving you time!

Bonus Features

The autocomplete works for postal codes as well -- If you've been doing this with postal codes so long you've remembered them all, start typing them in and suggestions will be shown based on matches, with the city name included.
If you want to populate your inventory with multiple cities and already have the postal codes handy, enter them one at a time and click the matching city for each. OR, enter them all at once with a semicolon separating each and you can enter a long list at once if desired.

Test it out!
And post any feedback in the comments!

LinkedIn Advanced Search Releases New Refinement Features

Chris — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:21:59 +0000

Recently, LinkedIn rolled out new features as part of its Advanced People Search. This TechCrunch article explains the change was brought on to get people to stick around the site longer, and pointed out one in three users of the site perform regular searches.

On every search results page, you can now dynamically filter the results with additional criteria. Changes you make by checking off the boxes do not require you to re-run the search -- they appear instantly.

However, only some of the functionality is of any use to sales and recruiting professionals.

Relationship

This section would have been much more helpful if there was a checkbox for "out of network". If this existed, you could check "1st", "2nd", "3rd", and "Groups" and leave "out of network" unchecked. This would remove private profiles from your search results as their name is hidden from view due to being out of your network.

As it is now, in order to include 3rd level connections, you must include people outside of your network.

Location

Location checkboxes are helpful if you're only interested in contacts in a particular city, however it may be easier to simply start with the location in mind from the beginning.

Industry

Here's why you should never trust the LinkedIn Industry Field.

Although these features have some obvious shortcomings from the perspective of a sales or recruiting pro, any enhancements to searching are enouraged and create multiple angles and methods to find the contacts you're looking for!

Do you have any feedback on these new LinkedIn features? Please leave them in the comments below.

Searching LinkedIn with the Peopletoucher Search Engine

Chris — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:05:21 +0000

Soon after LinkedIn launched in May of 2003, it became apparent the professional networking site would turn into a great resource for B2B salespeople and recruiters.

In 2008, the site launched LinkedIn Recruiter for large enterprises and recruiting firms, yet the advanced search function (the free search tool available to everyone else) has always been watered down in order to appeal to a variety of backgrounds outside of business development and recruiting.

While creating the Peopletoucher Search Engine we took apart the features of LinkedIn's Advanced Search and put them back together piece-by-piece with our audience in mind. Here's what we found:

Before you begin, soup up your connection count.

You only have access to contacts within 3 degrees of separation to you, so each connection you add increases your searching ability. Here's the Top 3 ways to add more connections.

Titles or Keywords?

Resist the temptation to dump a few words into the Keywords section of advanced search, and instead focus on the Title section.

The Peopletoucher Search engine expands on this, and creates a complete Title Search Term section, for you to add and subtract terms in an inventory format.

"Current" or "Current and Past"?

If you're searching LinkedIn manually, you'll notice a dropdown under Titles and Companies -- leave this set to "Current". Selecting "Current and Past" will return matches outside of the scope of your search, if you're simply looking for someone with the right requirements, right now.

OR, AND, What?

Our searching methodology is to put lots of title search terms separated by "OR"; you'll need to type "term1 OR term2..." etc. Yes, "OR" must be capitalized.

The Peopletoucher Search Engine automatically adds OR between the terms you select, saving you time.

Which Industry?

Our experience and testing of the LinkedIn Industry field have proved the industry field is practically useless for sales and recruiting. We suggest you skip it.

Which level? Manager, VP, or C-Level?

LinkedIn unfortunately doesn't organize profiles according to common corporate titles, and they certainly aren't going to ask each user when filling out their profile, so in the meantime you have two options to narrow down contacts by rank:

1. Using both OR & AND operator as well as some brackets, you could create a statement like this in the Title field:

((VP OR manager) AND (interactive OR online OR web))

This would return VP or Manager-level contacts with interactive, online or web in their title.

2. The simpler way (in our biased opinion) is the RankFilter tool in the Peopletoucher Search Engine.

Rather than manually type out each title, we automate this boolean entry and include variations like VP, Vice President, SVP, for each rank.

An example to try:
http://peopletoucher.com/linkedinsearch/?sel=Winteractive,Wonline,Wweb&r...

Saving & Sharing?

LinkedIn lets you save 3 searches and receive emails whenever new matches are found. The automatic emails can come in handy (think of it like a Google News Alert for LinkedIn contacts) but the interface makes it cumbersome to modify searches or make new ones based on existing terms.

The Peopletoucher Search Engine supports saving unlimited searches for re-use, sharing the settings through links, and saving to Google Bookmarks, or del.icio.us.

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