It occurred to me as I was speaking with a recruiter I’ve known for nearly a decade, that whenever new technologies come out - recruiters are one of the first of the business early adopters.  Let me clarify - this is different than consumer early adopters, these are BUSINESS early adopters.  Not the gadget geeks or technophiles, recruiters are a competitive and hungry bunch who are constantly looking for an edge.  If Victor Conte (of Balco infamy) ever decides to create a substance that helps business people compete - recruiters will be the first to sign up.  So as I was going over with him all the technologies they’ve learned to leverage over the years, it hit me that when it comes to new technologies that can impact the B2B space - recruiters are one the first to manipulate it.

Example number 1, email.  As a business communication, I remember talking to recruiters who would ask me to “email” my resume long before anyone else I did business with was emailing anything.  He and his colleagues recall similarly trying to convince contacts that emailing was safe and better than faxing.  Ask yourself - (related to business) what do you remember emailing before your resume?

Example number 2, search engines.  Want to penetrate a new company and get a contract to recruit for them?  Hit the search engines and look for contact information.  In fact, one of the first organized search engine related seminars either of us ever attended was an AIRS training on how to leverage search engines to mine for resumes and contacts at companies.  

Example number 3, Linkedin.  I analyze daily which social network or web 2.0 technology is going to have the biggest impact on business. If recruiters prove to be right again - Linkedin has already won.  

After their recent valuation, it seems obvious that Linkedin is a hit.  But for a while I think the only people using the site were recruiters and geeks.  While everyone is focused on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and FriendFeed - don’t forget the sleeper Linkedin.

Tags: linkedin, Social Media Marketing, social-networking

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.