The blog over at Boolean Black Belt researched the top connected recruiters on LinkedIn and I thought that might make a nice article in the middle of the “Exposing LinkedIn Connection Myths” series.
Let’s have a look…
The process
The author of the blog is Glen Cathey who describes himself as a pretty good recruiter – and I’m not in a position to question that. I like the way his site looks, and the article appears interesting enough.
Glen went to LinkedIn and searched on current titles to find individuals in the profession and ranked them by number of connections.
Here’s his list of the “Top 25 Most Connected Recruiters on LinkedIn”
Glen hasn’t put much into the article other than the fact that these particular recruiters have a lot of connections. So just don’t expect a lot;-)
The top individual has more than 30,000 connections, the bottom claims to have 14,000.
Hey – I know her;-)
And as I looked through the list, I hit upon Sheree – and said – hey I know her – and I connect to her;-)
Sheree is 7th on the list and while you might be surprised to find out that I connect to a super-connector, the fact is that Sheree and I both worked for a company of some 300 people for a period of time. I came to know and trust her during that period and I connected to her well before she started gathering connections.
So I guess I connect to her in spite of the fact that she connects to thousands of people.
And I expect that she responds when I contact her because we do have that relationship.
It’s a recruiter thing
As I mentioned to Eric in response to a comment in the Exposing LinkedIn Connection Myths kickoff post – I understand that recruiters have a specific purpose for using LinkedIn. It works for them, but unless you’re a recruiter, you might want to think twice.
Why? Because the product that any recruiter is selling is a person.
And having connections to 10,000 different potential products gives twice as many options as does connecting to 5,000…
The recruiter doesn’t have to care about the relationship, they’re filling a specific need with the best available resource.
In the pursuit of filling a position
If you happen to meet the needs of a client, you will have the recruiter’s full attention.
If you don’t, and they connect to 10,000 people, you’ll have less than 1/10,000 of their attention…
It’s a numbers thing…
Connecting to recruiters
Besides Sheree, I connect to a handful of other recruiters, some with lots of connections, others with modest amounts.
My advice to you – connect to the recruiters that you know and trust. The other ones – I wouldn’t bother with, and as Glen points out, there are over 300,000 of them on LinkedIn!
Glen made the list
Now it should not be a shock to you that Glen made his own list – he’s got the 21st position…
If the product you’re selling is an individual…
Then by all means, find a way to bring in as many of them as you can – it is very likely to make you successful.
And if your product is not – you don’t have to do that.
Recruiters – did I get that about right?
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock