Thu, 19 Nov 2015

FROM DECEMBER 2015'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

In the digital age, change happens at an alarming pace. Take blogging, for example. I posted my first Not So Secret Recruiter post on 28 August 2013. At this point, LinkedIn Pulse was not available and a quick share of a link on LinkedIn and Facebook pushed a quite hefty amount of traffic to the blog. Fast forward two years and it is hard to find someone on LinkedIn who doesn’t blog.

Now, I am no hypocrite and I applaud anyone willing to take the time to put their thoughts into the public domain. However, this does lead me to the bigger picture of information overload. 

As with Facebook, I find myself using LinkedIn less and less, purely due to my eyes and brain becoming fried by the sheer volume of content displayed through multiple channels. This is not a criticism of those platforms, more a question of: when does information become too much information?

I guess this is subjective and the time users spend on platforms will dictate how the networking sites distribute information. After all, the user knows best. 

This leads me, in a rather roundabout way, to my top 10 pet hates on LinkedIn:

(1) Sharing inspirational quotes. Exhibit A: “Faith is not knowing what the future holds but knowing who holds the future.” Profound.

(2) Competitions to guess numbers of sweets in a jar — or any take on this.

(3) Keep Calm and ‘Fill in Anything Related to your Sector Here’ calls to action.

(4) ‘Please view my profile’ — rarely spelt correctly.

(5) People trying to be clever by putting other people down — almost never accompanied by a solution.

(6) MEMES. Any memes. Particularly the fist-pumping baby picture.

(7) Using LinkedIn as a platform for promoting religious beliefs — I am yet to see a job advert specifying “it is essential applicants love Jesus”*.

(8) Begging for sponsorship for something on your bucket list eg. Tough Mudder.

(9) Using LinkedIn Pulse to post jobs. If you are going to do this, at least make the job description interesting.

(10) Ridiculous profile pictures — cleavage, pouting, pictures next to cranes.

Some of you may call me miserable but I have neither the attention span nor the will to sift through all the endless spam that now appears on my feed. 

When I do spot something of interest, I need to click on it instantly or it will be off my feed and into the ether within seconds.

My grumpiness aside, let me bring us back to the main question. When does information become too much information? Are we in danger as recruiters of entering a digital age of paralysis by analysis? Too much reading and not enough doing? Or am I just getting old?

Answers on a postcard. I will definitely read that.

*Priesthood excepted.DEE DEE DOKE