Having Friends on RecruitingBlogs.com

If you don't like wrestling, don't watch the movie.

As a member of RecruitingBlogs.com, I can send out emails to a few hundred of my friends here on the network. In reality that is a lot of friends. I don’t look at RecruitingBlogs.com the way I look at LinkedIn where there exists some fascination with big numbers. I tried to send an email to my friends here on RecruitingBlogs.com before the holidays and it took me forever to get it done and it was a disaster because I have too many friends here on the network and not enough of the right ones. I know that everyone’s “right ones” are different.

As the guy who has admin rights here at RecruitingBlogs.com I know that members want to be friends with you. It’s not a bad thing but I really suggest before you request to be friends with someone or accept someone’s friendship, really take a look at their profile. You can tell a lot if you look at a few things. You can see how many friends they have. You can see how many conversations they have started or participated in. You can see how many blog posts they have done. You can form a good picture of what it is they do here and then, you can look at what it is they say they do.

As a member of RecruitingBlogs.com, I have too many friends on the network there is no point in me adding new friends anymore but the problem is lately I see so many amazing new posts and ideas and discussions that take place between people who I am not connected with and the stuff I read from them makes me want to be connected with them. I can’t though because it will just take more time. The solution I think for me as a member, and I’m going to start tomorrow, is that I am going to start cutting connections and I want to bring it down to 300. I have 913 friends so it may take a while but I am going to start tomorrow. The thing about the 300 number is that it will be easier to see how I can cut another 100. I think 200 is the right number. I can then start growing it to 500 and I think I will stop there. It's a lot, I know.

As the guy who has admin rights here at RecruitingBlogs.com I have banned over 60 people. It’s no big deal anymore. I don’t even feel bad about it anymore. Most times I don’t even give a warning. The most interesting thing about it for me is that in 99% of the time, I never get an email from them asking why and in 99% of the time, I am never on their friends list. Today I banned 3 people from the network and one from the chat. Two of them were quite attractive and the third one happened to be the fourth time I have had to cut off his access. The attractive ladies had about 1800 friends between them. I felt rejected today as a male because my face is everywhere on the site yet I was not friends with these ladies, they never asked to be my friend.

I think RecruitingBlogs.com is an amazing community with amazing people who contribute a ton of wonderful stuff. As long as I can keep the true toxic stuff out by monitoring it for certain behavior and exercising my administrator’s ability, I will. I hope you don’t mind and I hope you know I don't ban people for having too many friends. In the above cases, it was a lot more than that.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Faisal Javed on January 9, 2009 at 5:23pm

This wasn't my intention. Let me correct myself...
I am receiving those unnecessary ads. which irritates me alot. :(

I just wanted to see RBC more useful and productive. There should be something through which we can report a person if we find him doing something unfair.

I hope now I am clear.

Regards,

Recruiting Animal said:

Faisal, I haven't seen anyone sending me porn yet on RBC. But as long as it isn't an advertisement for penis extensions that's not something I'd necessarily ban or cut from my friend list.

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Permalink Reply by Recruiting Animal on January 9, 2009 at 5:32pm

JD just watched the video. Very good choice. I think I'm going to ban everyone who commented on this post including myself. Anyone who is so interested in administrative issues has to be boring.

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Permalink Reply by Kunal on January 9, 2009 at 5:44pm

Faisal,
If those are ads and they don’t have any vulgar content, how can they be unnecessary? They might be useful to someone somewhere. After all, the sender is doing his/her job.
When I don’t want to receive any emails or ADS I usually send them a reply "please remove my email address from you mailing list"

Recruiting Technology is Not Anti-Relationship!

Faisal said
"I am receiving those unnecessary ads. Which irritates me a lot. :("

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Permalink Reply by Sean Harry on January 9, 2009 at 9:19pm

I think you have hit on something that I think is key to networking -- and since social networks have the ability to multiply EVERYTHING, it's especially key to social networking -- The key is to have a strategy and follow it. My strategy for LinkedIn is that I will ONLY connect with those people with whom I've had a significant conversation. What's the upper limit number? I don't know, because I am still having significant conversations. As for this site, I want to learn everything I can from those of you who are in the recruiting business, so I will befriend you if asked. I want to know because, as a career coach, I work with dozens of unemployed executives every week. I need to know what's happening in the larger scene in order to assist them.

One more thing, so you banned two good looking women from this site because they didn't friend you? Thank God I'm an ugly old man, because I haven't friended you yet . . . and probably won't now because I;m sure you would just de-friend me rather quickly! :-)

One more thing, we have another ning site geared towards job seekers. If any of you recruiters want to join us over there and give some tips and insights to them, you are more than welcome. You can find us at Career Crossroads 2.0.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Durbin on January 9, 2009 at 10:48pm

Sean hits it right on the money. It's difficult to do, but you need a strategy and a purpose for every social network you use. It's okay to have backups, and it's okay to not accept friends.

It depends on what you want to accomplish. Now personally, I want a lot of friends because I intend to retire early by spamming all of you with Viagra and Cialis pills. I know you'll buy them from my emails, because so many of you are trusted friends.

Actually, that's a pretty easy way to get people to defriend you. Send them a spam email and then send another saying it wasn't an accident and your account wasn't hacked.

Sean Harry said:

I think you have hit on something that I think is key to networking -- and since social networks have the ability to multiply EVERYTHING, it's especially key to social networking -- The key is to have a strategy and follow it. My strategy for LinkedIn is that I will ONLY connect with those people with whom I've had a significant conversation. What's the upper limit number? I don't know, because I am still having significant conversations. As for this site, I want to learn everything I can from those of you who are in the recruiting business, so I will befriend you if asked. I want to know because, as a career coach, I work with dozens of unemployed executives every week. I need to know what's happening in the larger scene in order to assist them.

One more thing, so you banned two good looking women from this site because they didn't friend you? Thank God I'm an ugly old man, because I haven't friended you yet . . . and probably won't now because I;m sure you would just de-friend me rather quickly! :-)

One more thing, we have another ning site geared towards job seekers. If any of you recruiters want to join us over there and give some tips and insights to them, you are more than welcome. You can find us at Career Crossroads 2.0.

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Permalink Reply by Wes Harry on January 10, 2009 at 3:01am

Slouch,

I quite understand your motives and concerns. I appreciate your work on the site.

Best regards,

Wes

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Permalink Reply by Barbara Goldman on January 13, 2009 at 11:24am

Slouch,

Thanks for your work on the network. I'm not here for friends. I don't have time. I pop in and out for good information, and to hear what other recruiters have to say about timely subjects. You are right to throw people out of here. Friends shouldn't let friends type drunk.

barb

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Permalink Reply by Dave Staats on January 16, 2009 at 10:12am

Regardless of what I have loudly said elsewhere... I know there is value here... Somewhere. Maybe we are still in the days like those described in the BIO channel's show on Alfred Nobel...after he invented dynamite they just sold it off the shelf and there were multiple bombings a week because people just use the stuff completely indiscriminately... As Jason says...these discussions will help us all figure it out.

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Permalink Reply by Recruiting Animal on January 16, 2009 at 11:04am

Dave your critique is a strong support for the limited network of trust.

It doesn't work on LinkedIn because as Harry Joiner says, LinkedIn is a meat market where you want maximum access to a large number of potential candidates.

But in the recruitosphere where you already have access to everybody, you don't need them all to be your formal pals.

The only special feature of being a friend on RBC offers is the mailing list.

So here's an idea for a quick way to judge who should be a "friend".
We ask them if they want to be on our mailing list.

You're not insulting someone if you refuse to be on their list. Everyone gets more mail that they can handle so if they are interested in yours you have to have something very substantial in common right now.