Identifying the influencers

Those recruiting in the technology sector can make use of a new tool that rates an individual’s influence and expertise. The Influence Graph has been developed by WorkFu, the social recruitment service for the technology industry.
June 2013 | By Sue Weekes

Those recruiting in the technology sector can make use of a new tool that rates an individual’s influence and expertise. The Influence Graph has been developed by WorkFu, the social recruitment service for the technology industry. WorkFu chief technology officer Rik Heywood told Recruiter that the graph provides a vehicle for endorsing skills and could turn social recruiting on its head. “It uses the networks as a metric as to what people know, what they are good at and where their experience is,” he said. 

Heywood, a web developer and entrepreneur, explained that WorkFu came about after its founders believed that social networks were not performing well as a recruiting tool. “It was particularly obvious in the technology industry where a lot of skills are new and in a constant state of flux,” he said. “The fact that someone had done a course five years ago or worked at a company eight years ago is almost irrelevant. People are more interested in how a person can prove they are capable of delivering on the skills and expertise they claim they have.”

Using WorkFu, individuals can create a Smart Profile that links up all of their profiles held on social networks and other relevant sites. The Influence Graph is created by a clever algorithm that will look for evidence of the person’s skills and expertise across all of these online spaces and then delivers a score. So, if one of a person’s skills is ‘programming’, for instance, it will look for followers with similar keywords in their profiles as this suggests people in this area feel it is beneficial to follow them. 

One of the reasons WorkFu works well for the technology sector is the proliferation of specialist networks and sites that exist, such as Stack Overflow, the question and answer site for programmers, and GitHub, which enables techies to share their code. Users don’t even have to return to WorkFu to update their profile if something changes on one of their networks that might affect their score because this is done automatically.

The Influence Graph is one of several features in the WorkFu pipeline that Heywood believes will help recruiters compare talent and find the right person for a particular role. “Once we get scores against people’s skills and expertise, there are all sorts of useful things we can do on the recruitment side,” he said. “For instance, we can issue awards and give people an extra flag on their profile to indicate they are in the top 10% for that skill.”

WorkFu, which launched last May, has tens of thousands of profiles posted on it and also allows employers to post opportunities. The algorithms behind the site score opportunities for relevance against a candidate’s profile (called a FuScore) and it also suggests relevant candidates to employers for each opportunity posted. It provides a one-click apply button for candidates while employers can manage their opportunities and applicants through a dashboard. The site is currently in beta so all services are free but eventually employers will pay to post new opportunities and to search the talent database.

Although WorkFu is focused on technology professionals at the moment, the plan is to broaden it out to other sectors. It is currently adding more networks for the creative and design community, and in theory the technology can be applied to any profession. Disparate pockets of users are already starting to join up, reports Heywood. “For instance, we have a lot of accountants and US sports coaches,” he said. “We have a good mechanism for analysis so can see what is getting most traction.” 

www.workfu.com

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