The Kult of Influence on Recruiters: Klout, Kred and PeerIndex

This post originally appeared here on SocialTalent.co

Taken from our Webinar yesterday, here's the written explanation of Influence on Social Media, and why you need it.

Old-school recruiters will back me up on this, when you're known as an influential and excellent recruiter by everyone around (clients and candidates alike), you'll get more briefs to fill and more CV's to choose from. As an influencer, and the most popular recruiter in town, you make things happen. You earn a tonne of money in commission, and can live happy in the knowledge that you successfully match jobs with people all day long.

Now, let's put that in to the context of the 21st century, an age of living online and being ruled by social media. That influence is being translated online by services like Klout, PeerIndex and Kred which measure your level of influence on the social networks you use (mainly measuring Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus, with a few others). Your online influence has never become more important than in the last 12 months, and will continue to do so over 2012. Virtually every single recruiter advertises their vacancies online, and about 60-70% of all recruiters will post a job-spec as a status update on either their LinkedIn profile, their brand's Facebook page, or out over Twitter (and sometimes all three). If you're seen as an influential person online, clients and candidates will flock to you in much the same way as old-school recruiters would reminisce about.

What is Klout?

Klout is an index, on a scale of 1-100 that measures your social influence from a range of social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, FourSquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress, Last.fm and Flickr. If you're online one one or many of these social networks somewhere, then you have a Klout score!

How do you measure your Klout Score?

Visit Klout.com, and sign in with your Facebook or Twitter account. Add whatever social network accounts you have, and let Klout work it out. There are 3 components to your Klout score - True Reach, Amplification and Network Impact.

True Reach is the number of people you influence, both within your immediate network and across their extended networks. In other words, it's about who acts on your content in the form of Retweets, Mentions, Comments, Shares, Likes etc - all this is measured by Klout. If you have 100 followers, and 10 of them retweet or mention you and your content to their 100 each followers, then your true reach multiplies to 1100 people.

Secondly, Amplification is about how many people you influence across the social web. So when you make a move on Twitter or Facebook is the world waiting with bated breath or does anybody care?

Finally, Network Impact - if your audience has no influence, no matter how many followers or friends you have, then your network strength isn't very strong. It's a combination of the two previous factors, True Reach and Amplification. How the first two are decided upon influences the third metric.

Nice bit about Klout? Klout also analyses your Style, whether you're a specialist, a networker, a dabbler, a socialiser, a conversationalist etc. Ideally as a recruiter, you're looking to fit in to the specialist and/or networker segments. Your day-job is much the same.

How will learning your behaviour online influence YOUto adjust your actions? Well if you don't know you can't change, so if Klout's analysis of your online behaviour shows up weaknesses (like that you talk about absolutely everything and anything, don't converse with other people, just listen rather than participate, don't share anything, don't thought-lead or if no one listens to you), then you can focus your strategy online to represent yourself and your reputation better so as to become the most influential recruiter about town.

Tip: there's a Klout plug-in for FireFox and Google Chrome browsers, so that when you're looking at Twitter, you instantly see everyone's Klout score and can quickly ascertain which influential people you should be networking with.

PeerIndex - What's the difference?

PeerIndex is another version of social influence ranking like Klout, claiming that they accurately measure your "web authority" as you participate in meaningful exchanges of information online, and similarly ranking your social web authority from 1 to 100. So realistically, if people on Twitter just retweet you, or fans on Facebook just Like you, it's not that meaningful. What will boost your score is when followers and fans respond to you, debate with you, read your content and comment upon it.

Let's take an example of you as a recruiter who focuses on writing a blog specifically for job seekers. If you write a weekly blog with tips to help job-seekers with their own online resumes or CV's, interview preparation tips or job research strategies, for example, this kind of content resonates with your readers. They'll share this amongst their friends and others out on the web who are looking for a job and your content will be seen as an important resource.

PeerIndex measures your influence (or web authority, if you will) using your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. They actively encourage you to engage in conversations with others online, talk about topics you know about and write good content about those topics too.

PeerIndex also encourages you to scrub your followers or people you follow who are spam accounts or dormant users, since this will lower your score. This is good practice anyway, because if a spam account mentions you and links to a virus which then spreads to all of your followers, you instantaneously piss off everyone. Not a good way to keep up your reputation as the best recruiter around town.

PeerIndex is now integrated with Twitter platform SocialBro, and is available as a plug-in for Chrome and Firefox.

Kred - Kred is yet another social influencer ranking service, but it ranks you out of 1000 rather than 100, and measures not what you do, but what others do because of you. Kred influence is normalized for the Twitter universe and within communities, which means that someone in every community has a score of 1000. In other words, if you're going to aim to be the best recruiter on social media, you should be aiming to be the top influencer in the community about Recruitment.

What do you think? Does having a strong online presence help you in your daily role as a recruiter? Does it bring in more business to you? +K's (little votes of confidence from Klout!) will be awarded to all of you who dare to put your Klout, PeerIndex and Kred scores in the comments!

Comment by Tim Spagnola on January 12, 2012 at 10:27am: Johnny - I know this is a topic that divides a lot of people, but this is some straight forward useful information in understanding these tools that are available to measure one's on line influence. I myself still remain on the fence since it is helpful in someways, but does not impact my actual recruiting desk all that much. I guess the one question I have is do you envision there eventually be a single tool that will be accepted and used as a benchmark? or an endless flavor of the week deal that will keep all of our toolboxes full?

As for your dare? How can I resist -

Klout: 48

Kred: 724

PeerIndex: A dismal 12, but profile not complete (if that matters)

I would also like to add (for what it is worth) that Recruiting Blogs as a whole has a Klout score of 48 and is often among top three for Top Influencers in Recruiting/Staffing topic. This is based on Twitter alone and a big pat on the back for the entire community for sharing such great content day in and day out.

Comment by Johnny Campbell on January 12, 2012 at 10:50am: Nice work Tim! It is interesting how varied your score was across the 3 platforms; just goes to show that none should be taken TOO seriously just yet.

There are lots of people who are remarkably influential online but who perhaps aren't quite using Twitter enough or particularly well. The best example is probably Irina Shamaeva who is enormously influential and who's LinkedIn Group, Boolean Strings, is one of the most active recruitment groups (and by that I meant TRUE activity, not just spam postings) out there yet her Klout is "only" 46. All of these tools over rely on Twitter when measuring online influence. To be fair, they should be called "Twitter Influence" indices as that is what they truly are. On our webinar yesterday we proposed a DIY list of ways that recruiters might measure true digital influence and I'm hoping to get around to posting a written version of it early next week.

For now, you can watch the video here. Just note that the first 2 mins of audio arent working but it kicks in, eventually!

As to the question of whether we will ever have just one index, thankfully my prediction is No. That would be handing over too much power to one place!

PS, check out Identified.com for a similar talent rating index for job seekers. It's pretty cool!

Comment by Jerry Albright on January 12, 2012 at 10:50am: I'll post a reply similar to the one I posted on the original blog.

This is a joke right? Comparing "old school" influence - which was built on results/sales/making things happen.....with "new BS school" influence of followers, friends and RT's?

I'll add this just for the RBC crowd:

This kind of thinking among my peers is exactly why I am kicking their ass(es).

Feel free to explain to your bank how instead of sending invoices - you are now simply building your influence for the future economy. See how long that keeps you afloat.

B.S.

Comment by Johnny Campbell on January 12, 2012 at 10:55am: I half agree with you Jerry. None of the tools above has cracked it which is why we proposed our own "DIY" way of measuring digital influence on our Webinar yesterday. Saying that digital influence is not important to some recruiters is definitely BS though. It's not important to everyone but the bottom line is that nearly everyone will Google your name when you reach out to them these days, whether that is by phone, email or social media. If you don't have a strong or relevant digital footprint, you won't get the same response. That being said, if your target market aren't overly represented online, then your digital footprint is irrelevant. It is NOT a black and white issue. It may sound good for a soundbite and be suitably controversial but it's full of shades of grey.

Comment by Jerry Albright on January 12, 2012 at 11:00am: The use of the word "influence" is the biggest joke I've seen in quite a while. If a few RT's = influence then perhaps they should change the definition of the word entirely.

Groups of people (primarily recruiters, SM pros, Trainers, branders, etc.) all swirl around each other. They T and RT things back and forth - and sideways. They love the &%$@ out of each others FB pages and simply can not get enough of patting each other on the back.

That's influence? I hardly think so.

Comment by Tim Spagnola on January 12, 2012 at 11:05am: I agree with you here Jerry - 'influence' does appear to be the wrong term. There is for sure an 'echo chamber' (Thanks you Steve Boese) mentality out there.

Comment by Johnny Campbell on January 12, 2012 at 11:07am: It's not, you're right. If you're an Agency Recruiter and you bill a sh1t load of money each year, that's your Influence. If you're in an in-house recruiter and you close every hot candidate that you go after, that's your influence. For everyone else in the middle, it's about saying, I would like to be better known in my sphere, which should be your candidate marketplace, not amongst other recruiters. If you hire developers in Toronto and every developer knows you as the go-to-guy for jobs in Toronto, then job done. It's not just what you measure but whom you are measuring and none of the current tools do this right. Recruitment folk giving each other love is useless, unless of course you are a recruiter of recruiters.

Comment by Johnny Campbell on January 12, 2012 at 11:08am: PS, here's the pinnacle of a recruiter's love-in list:

http://www.hrexaminer.com/lists/online-influence-recruiting-2012-v5...

Comment by Paul Alfred on January 12, 2012 at 1:30pm: Great Post Johnny ... Jerry is in the comment thread so I have to jump in .. Jerry influence is going to become a big deal in Social Media. Every "Social Consumer" has influence regardless as to whether or not you wheel it to only 10 peeps in your network or 20,000 peeps. Online Influence is important to different types of Social Consumers - If you are a Recruiter and you write a Blog and have a following you generate negative, positive or neutral "Influence" amongst your readers that might be important to that kind of Recruiter mostly looking to exert positive influence. May not be so important to the good old school Recruiter who post a few job requirements on linkedIn or who just mines the network for bodies and could care less if his/her profile is up to date and I also know these folks who do quite well ... The future however is going to demand you build your Klout/Influence amongst your peeps around your interest/business over time ... I am a little bias because as I am doing a ton of research with a new venture on Influence ... But this is where it is ... Last time I checked you have a pretty good Klout/Peer Score Jerry . So even you, whether you like it or not wheel influence : >)

Comment by Jerry Albright on January 12, 2012 at 1:38pm: Sorry kids. I'm not buying it. Paul - I'm afraid you've now swallowed the bait as well. Your reply clearly demonstrates how you (along with countless others in recruiting) have somehow been led to believe your work (and thus compensation) is tied to some sort of larger "branding, consumer, product" experience.

I've watched this happening for quite a while.

Perhaps you may want to take your Klout score and see if Heinz will pay you to tweet about ketchup or perhaps Molson will offer you a few cases to to give Golden a thumbs-up on facebook.

The most successful recruiters (sorry - I will go ahead and put myself in that category) rely on quite a few things before any form of social media/branding/influence/klout.

The amount of effort it would take - and concentration/focus - to build a "community" or "reach" or whatever the hell you want to call it - that can offer specific RESULTS when you need them is staggering.

Note: This is only applicable if you do NOT place recruiters - or run social media circus camps - or get paid to tweet to 10,000 followers.

All you guys talking about the future better consider the present as well.