Foursquare sucks << >> For Recruiting....

Buyer sentiment and Demographic patterns >> Boring or Worth the time?

Foursqaure, Gowalla and of course there is more.....

I need to be honest and say it's pretty darn time consuming to play with all of these tools. Are they legit? I think so, but that is not for me to decide. What I will ask is: are they legit for Recruiters? That I am not sure about, in fact I think they are not.

Here are my thoughts:

These tools are built for a reason (not recruiters) These tools will not produce results for you as a recruiter and if they do it's so far and few in between what 99% of the recruiters in the business actually need it's irrelevant.
These are consumer tools. Tools that are used by marketers and communication groups to track buyer sentiment and influences based on buying behavior.
It's cool to play private eye but downright creepy to stalk a prospect.

I get this posting may not be the best way to win a Pulitzer with these thoughts but after you peel back all the crap, all the tools and all of the time you spend checking in, how many placements have you made on these tools?

If you made a placement than kudos....but notice that the word placement is not plural. No how many placements have you made in between the last time you checked in and made that placement from Gowalla?

Just my thoughts… I like the tools, the technology and certainly the cool things you can do with them but Geo-Recruiting is not a hot topic for recruiters... is it?

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Albright on October 14, 2011 at 10:14am

Right on! As I watch all these tools come out - then the hordes of hopeful "early adopters" try to bend them into some form of recruiting tool I just have to wonder why............????

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Permalink Reply by Tim Spagnola on October 14, 2011 at 10:20am

This is rather random, but do people actually 'check in' with multiple apps from a location? Like FourSquare, Facebook Location, and Gowalla? And if so- why?

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Leary on October 14, 2011 at 10:29am

Now I will say it CAN be used under some circumstances... ie... you are in the area of say Microsoft and you notice that the SW engineers are always at Starbucks.... I get that point but in the world I live in and I assume 99% of the other recrutiers live in the volume we need to produce to make some coin far exceeds this....

Jerry Albright said:

Right on! As I watch all these tools come out - then the hordes of hopeful "early adopters" try to bend them into some form of recruiting tool I just have to wonder why............????

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Permalink Reply by Bill Boorman on October 16, 2011 at 7:34pm

Ryan,

Just a couple of uses that I've seen working for recruiters:

1: Using the check in list by location to see who works at a particular location, not too bad for starting list building.

2: Exporting check ins at a target location (competitor employer), to formulist to build an automated twitter list, and setting up a tweetdeck column for this list. It's all automated and if you only export those accounts that check in more than 3 times, most likely an employee. For one client we have set up these twitter lists for 6 surrounding tech companies. Once you have the lists, it's up to you how you use them to source.

Not saying stalk people to meet at the same coffee shop, but quite a useful source of names to start with.

Bill

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Leary on October 16, 2011 at 8:15pm

Good points Bill. How is this working for the client? Is this high volume or just a few openings?

Bill Boorman said:

Ryan,

Just a couple of uses that I've seen working for recruiters:

1: Using the check in list by location to see who works at a particular location, not too bad for starting list building.

2: Exporting check ins at a target location (competitor employer), to formulist to build an automated twitter list, and setting up a tweetdeck column for this list. It's all automated and if you only export those accounts that check in more than 3 times, most likely an employee. For one client we have set up these twitter lists for 6 surrounding tech companies. Once you have the lists, it's up to you how you use them to source.

Not saying stalk people to meet at the same coffee shop, but quite a useful source of names to start with.

Bill