Subscribe HereAre you a LinkedIn Groupie?
You’re probably one of the 200 million people on LinkedIn. It is likely that you are also in one of the 1.6 million groups, but what are you actually getting from being a member? And are you a groupie?
LinkedIn Groups: huge amounts of people supposedly networking and gaining value from being part of a community. I often find though that the average recruiter has maxed out their memberships and has become a groupie.
Now, I am a fan of knowing the meaning of words and if you have been on any of my training sessions you’ll hear me refer to recruiters being groupies. I looked this up the other day and was shocked at the true meaning (yes, I am naive) – click here to see the wiki definition of a groupie.
So first, apologies 
– I genuinely have not been meaning to offend.
Second, here are my thoughts about how the average recruiter needs to be more strategic about groups on LinkedIn.
- Yes you can join up to 50 parent groups and 20 sub-groups, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Can you really get involved in that many communities?
- Being on LinkedIn should be seen as a strategic task, not a box ticking exercise – “I’ve maxed out my groups therefore I’m networking” is so wrong.
- When I run my sessions I run polls on whether these recruiters actually post content to groups – my current stats:
only 15% of recruiters post (non-job related) content to groups every week – shocking!
78% of recruiters post jobs to groups every week – not surprising!
…So it’s the usual #job #job #job #hiring chat and very little else (see my previous post of being a 40 year old virgin and being a social media floosie for my views on that!)
What’s your strategy for being a group member? Do you actually have one?
Again, if you’ve been on my sessions, or read any of my blogs you’ll know that I compare being on social media to be like dating. Ergo, with LinkedIn groups, the average recruiter currently goes to loads of parties, stands outside the door (not looking their best), and trying to grab people at the entrance – not the ideal strategy for trying to get a hot date!
These are the reasons (in the very least) that you should be joining and taking part in groups
- Raising your profile
- Post / Source jobs for free
- Searching for talent, contacts, jobs and content
- Contact other group members
- Connect without contact details
- Keeping up to speed – research
- Monitor ideal contacts without being connected (yes, you can do this!)
Do you have any other reasons for being a group member? I’d love to hear about them. What’s your strategy for groups on LinkedIn? How many groups are you a member of? And do they actually deliver?
(Originally published in Technology and Recruitment Alliance – thanks Mark)
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Lisa Jones is a Director at Barclay Jones, a Consultancy working with agency and corporate recruiters advising them on the most effective use of technology, web and social media to improve their business processes, recruitment and bottom line.
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Filed under: All, Recruitment, Social Media, Social Recruitment
I do maximise my group memberships despite there only being 4 or 5 that I regularly participate in.
Some are fairly dormant groups, I just like the association with them – UK Twestival Organisers group for example. I was an organiser and I want to stay associated with it in case there is another Twestival, but the group is dormant at the moment.
Some groups are just big and in a relevant niche – I like getting the digest email of what’s most popular there in the last week. That helps me pick and choose some of the right stuff to read or think about.
Other groups, I just join for the numbers or because I want to get in touch with someone. It’s easy to send messages to people for free without needing to be connected when you share a group. So I sometimes swap in and out of groups in order to message people.
Of course, the more groups you are in then the more people can find you and contact you. I advise people to join 50 groups whether they have the time to interact or not.
Katharine
Totally agree Katharine (thanks for commenting).
The key is to be strategic rather than simply join everything you can – there’s difference between being a member and actually getting tangible value. Yes you can get value by not interacting, but only if the group has some firm of relevance. I always find that my recruiters need to do some “weeding” and pruning in order to join more appropriate groups.
Hope to see you at Tru next week.
[...] 5. Don’t be a groupie (see previous blog). [...]