Taking a little issue with LinkedIn believeing their own hype - Social Recruiting Summit

So for those of you who don't follow @mattalder on twitter (or work in whatever corners of Barkers Matt's cheery demeanor brightens each day, or belong to his close family and are in regular contact with him) you won't know that he's currently hobnobbing with some of the great and most connected of digital recruitment world at the Social Recruiting Summit  - being held at the uber webcool venue that is google HQ.

Anyway - as part of the stream of tweets coming out of google HQ (which, as I write this with the day only just starting, has me thinking that it won't be long before twitter falls over as a direct result of this event!) Matt sent this:

"accuracy of personal info when user has more than 10 connections better than a resume, people don't lie in public" RH #socialrecruiting

Now the RH he references is Reid Hoffman the founder of LinkedIn. And it got me thinking - yes they flippin well do! Certainly in my even limited experience it doesn't really prevent lying. But what worries me most is that encouraging naivety through misguided statements as above perhaps gives a greater false sense of validation to a person's profile and therefore any potential mistruths within.

I believe that as humans we're generally pretty polite to each other (in a "smile and say nothing" as opposed to "open and engaging" kind of way), particularly on a business level. So even if you click on a LinkedIn profile to read someone embellishing themselves to something unrecognisable from that which you know was the role they're describing, sometimes only discernible from the dates matching up with when you worked alongside them, would you really take steps to try and get that changed? And actually - for that matter - what steps can/would/could you take?

I recall instances where people have laughed our loud (yeh - really - not even 'LOL'd, but real laughter) having read what someone has said they've done or been responsible for on their Linkedin profile.

And then there's the validation of the profile "truth" - the recommendations from other people. It's just so, well, easy to ask a bunch of people to say nice things about you being pretty safe in the knowledge that they'll either ignore your request or be nice in the hope that you might reciprocate, perpetuating the flow of banality passing back and forth, with people so keen to scratch each others backs the true value of a reference is all but lost.

Now don't get me wrong - perhaps I'm just to polite (no - really!). I mean I took my profile off facebook because I just didn't like denying "being friends" to people I didn't know or even when I did wasn't particularly friendly with over 20years ago. Perhaps it's just me and I have social issues that transcend into social media. But I feel that Mr Hoffman has perhaps been supping a bit too much of his own Venture Capital PR laden spin-juice and is starting to believe his own hype.

I have no problem giving a reference about someone - did so quite recently as it goes - but that's when I'm asked in confidence to give my honest opinion. Integrity means different things to different people for sure, and there's nothing stopping me spouting banality in a private response to a reference check either - particularly if you wouldn't mind that person moving on from their current employ - but in social space I think the danger of that happening is even greater, so to start giving a greater level of credibility to what someone has made up about themselves being true just because "it's out there for all to see and no-one's contradicted it" I think is naive in the extreme.

LinkedIn is a great background check for starters, a living CV if you will - hell, we've even built integrating features for it into the ATS we've built (sorry for the shameless plug ;) - but to think that "people don't lie in public" is just plain delusional. Has Mr Hoffman never heard of Politicians?!!!! They're like us, just more so.

Comments

[Matt]

Interesting thoughts Alex and I'll write more when I'm back in the right timezone. I agree with what you say but would also add that he did make it as a passing comment rather than a key point in his talk. Then again their European MD did the same thing in his session at Onrec in London two weeks ago!

[Gareth George]

I agree with you on this Alex. In my experience I would be more tempted to lie with each new connection I have; particularly if I am connected with ex-school/uni peers or am looking for a new role. And if I am caught lying, what can anyone do about it, other than think a little bit less of me.

[International Careers Blogger]

In our experience most of the candidates we see from LinkedIn often exaggerates what has been their responsibility over the years. I'm not sure if that would fall under "lying in public", but these instances do happen a lot.

It's a living resume as you say but it's definitely not 100% verifiable in some ways.