Mon, 15 Oct, 2012 | Katharine Robinson, freelance consultant and trainer at KiTS Consulting

When using the Internet, things are constantly changing, whether it is the technology we use to access it, or the information available from our favourite sites, keeping up to date is a full time job in itself. No recruiter should be spending all their time on the Internet. So, what are the biggest changes in the last few months that should be on the radar of Internet savvy recruiters?

 Searching LinkedIn

LinkedIn has locked itself down even tighter since its initial public offering (IPO). If you have a basic account you will have noticed that your access to 3rd degree, and sometimes even 2nd degree, connections is restricted. You will not be able to see full names (unless you searched for the person by name) and you will not be able to see profile details of 3rd degree connections anymore.

If you wish to keep using LinkedIn for free this makes things like solid search engine skills essential. There is still a wealth of information still available in the form of public LinkedIn profiles if you know how to interrogate the likes of Google or Bing.

 LinkedIn profiles

LinkedIn updated its “Skills & Expertise” section. You can now endorse your connections in the skills they say they have. This is much less arduous than asking for, or giving, recommendations. The “Skills & Expertise” section counts towards having a 100% complete profile – so be sure to get this updated if you haven’t already.

Google

Those of you used to using Boolean search techniques with Google may have noticed that one of the three basic operators (AND, OR and NOT) is no longer supported. Google no longer supports the use of NOT. You can still remove unwanted terms from your searches using the minus sign.

 Twitter search changes

Twitter search underwent an important overhaul in July. Previously, when you ran a search on twitter.com, you got the option of seeing ‘All’ tweets or just the ‘Top’ tweets. There is now an added option to see results from only the ‘People you follow’.

This is great if you use Twitter to engage with a specific community. For example, I almost exclusively follow UK-based recruitment professionals from one of my Twitter accounts. These are the people I want to engage with, but I don’t always want to talk to them about recruitment. I have other interests and so do they.

I can now run a search for ‘cheese’ or ‘Formula 1’, see which recruiters are talking about those things and join in. Those of you using Twitter for recruiting purposes likely follow people active in your niche – the exact people you want to engage with. You can now identify who shares other interests with you too, helping you build more meaningful relationships.  This feature also adds welcome incentive for corporate Twitter accounts to follow back real people.

Visual content

You have probably heard about the likes of Pinterest and Instagram even if you haven’t signed up and used them yourself. These are just two out of a whole wave of new social sharing sites that make visual content the focus.

Those of you that use a Facebook page as part of your social recruiting strategy will know that visual content like photos and videos are awarded a higher Edgerank in Facebook news feeds than other content like text and links.

I am recommending visual job advertisements more and more to my clients – they are more sharable and better optimised for social spaces, both well-established ones like Facebook and the fresh new upstarts like Pinterest.