Signal is the first of many LinkedIn products aimed at making it really easy for all professionals to glean only the most relevant insights from the never-ending stream of status updates and news. In other words, Signal allows all professionals to make sense of the noise that surrounds them today…Here are the five key features of LinkedIn Signal, a new product that we’re rolling out in limited beta today.

1. Filter: Browse only relevant status updates from your stream

Hidden in the stream of status updates is information that’s valuable and helps you be better at your job. Signal allows you to hone in on information you’re most interested in for e.g. updates from your colleagues (even from folks on your same team) or audiences you’re most interested in researching and understanding.

LinkedIn Signal offers 8 dynamic filters to navigate the stream. You can narrow or expand your view of the stream based on the following filters: Network, Industry, Company, Time published, Geo / Region, School or just most popular hash tags.

2. Search for keywords, topics or people across the stream

LinkedIn Signal allows you to also search for specific keywords or topics you’d like to keep up to date on. You could also search for your favorite public personalities or a colleague whose updates you’d like to find quickly.

Given that LinkedIn has always been about your professional identity you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll find relevant updates associated with specific names, some of which come from the LinkedIn member you’re searching for.

3. Get an auto updated real-time stream with rich content

What’s better yet is that Signal shows all the rich content shared by LinkedIn users in real time. You will see an alert at the top of the stream once new data is available. You don’t need to refresh the page anymore for the latest updates.

4. Find the hottest trending links across any relevant topic

Signal also mines all the shared links on status updates and shows you the most popular links, many of which are the hottest news stories on that topic, updated to the minute.

You will notice that the links will change over time as we continue to assess the relevance of a link based on topic, popularity and recency. Since the trending links are also sensitive to your specific search, the links shown for the search “TechCrunch” will be different than the ones for the search “Meg Whitman”.

5. Who’s Shared This Link?

Even better, you can now see who’s shared any of those Trending Links. You can also refine by industry, company and region. Imagine if you wrote a blog post on your company’s blog or were quoted in a news article, you can now see who’s shared that article and made it popular.

Signal also lets you create very personalized views of the LinkedIn stream that you can check into every day. You can go back to it quickly by simply accessing all your followed searches on the top left rail.

This will be especially helpful to those who work in multiple industries, as this will allow you to create saved searches for whatever industries from which you recruit.

According to a post by David Kirkpatrick on The Daily Beast, “…because everything everyone posts in this service [LinkedIn], unlike in Facebook, is by definition public data, everybody’s posts are searchable. What the company obviously hopes, and requires, is that its members will not only use this new capability to find information about others, but will be inclined to post more thoughts and links themselves, hoping to be more influential inside the community.”

This is a significant change for LinkedIn as it moves to become more and more like Facebook without the public search-ability issues. We’ve been noticing some strategic moves that LinkedIn has made this year with its acquisition of mSpoke in July and then last month, its acquisition of ChoiceVendor. Something big is on the horizon, as in addition to the latest beta and the summer acquisitions, LinkedIn has also been growing globally, having opened offices in Mumbai, Amsterdam, Dublin, and Toronto just this year. IPO, anybody?

At the time of this post being written, I have not been included in the beta rollout of Signal but would be interested to have comments from anyone who has so we can learn from your experience.

When I started in search in 1998, conventional wisdom said that if you were not on the phone, you were not working. In fact, two of the firms for whom I have worked had call tracking software built into the phone system. Every night, the head of the office would send out a report to the entire company detailing how many calls each recruiter made and how much time they spent on the phone. It was implied that recruiters who spent time sending e-mails and performing internet research did so because they lacked the spine to make cold calls. This attitude became deeply ingrained in me.

However, times change and technology changes behavior. Many people today are not likely to answer the phone if they do not recognize the number on the caller ID and even less likely if the caller ID is blocked. A few candidates in their twenties and thirties who work at big companies have confessed to me that they frequently go a week without checking voicemail. They feel that if information is important, it will arrive via e-mail. 

To adjust to the changes in how people communicate, I have had to change the way I initiate contact. I could still make eighty cold calls in a day, but seventy of them will go right to voicemail and of the ten people who answer, most will not be interested in speaking. Instead, my first candidate contact is nearly exclusively via e-mail. I send a brief, personal e-mail that tells the candidate who I am and the nature of my search. I’ll then ask if they would like to speak.

I receive significantly more responses than I do with voicemails—some days one-third of the people I e-mail will respond. Now, a number of candidates will respond to say “no”, but many more will respond with follow-up questions or a request to set up a time to speak. In a good day, I’ll send out forty emails that will generate four or five e-mail conversations and eight or nine phone conversations. These phone conversations are usually far more productive than the old “catching them at their desk” conversations because the candidate has agreed in advance to discuss your search (or his career, or potential referrals) and is likely taking the call at a place and time where he or she is able to focus completely on the conversation. I’ve also received numerous e-mails from candidates interested in discussing a search who were made aware of the opportunity because friends or colleagues forwarded my original note to them (frequently without responding to me).

The advantages of making initial contact with e-mail instead of a phone call are many. You get a higher response rate because e-mail is silent—candidates need not worry about who can hear them speaking. You do not have to worry about gatekeepers deflecting your call or about reaching out to too many people in the same department in a short period of time. And candidates can respond when it is convenient—you’re not calling somebody who is battling a deadline.

Obviously, the real “work” still has to be done on the phone or in person.  If you are presenting a job, interviewing a candidate, preparing for or debriefing after an interview or hopefully extending an offer and closing a placement, you still need real-time interaction. You need to listen to what a person says (and does not say), establish a personal connection and help him or her make a major life decision. That is not something I would recommend attempting via e-mail.  However, I have found that by cutting out the inefficient process of leaving seventy voicemails in a day, I can drastically increase the amount of time I spend on productive tasks.

Given how I grew up in the business, this was not an easy transformation for me to make. It was only when I saw the success that other people in my office were having that I decided to give it a try. And based on my personal results, I think that the cold e-mail will eventually replace the cold call as the standard method of initial candidate contact. There is so much information available today that uncovering candidate identities and e-mail addresses is pretty easy. What will be interesting to see is what will happen to our profession once a major barrier for entry, the willingness and ability to make cold calls, is removed from an industry with an already-low barrier for entry.

Optimistic, perhaps, but it’s this sort of positive thinking that landed him MRI‘s 2009 “Best-in-Class Consultant” award.

We recently chatted with him to learn more about what the MRI award means to him, his background, his views on our industry, his experience coaching recruiters over the years, and more survival strategies.

What did you do prior to becoming a full-time consultant to the recruiting industry?

I have always been an entrepreneur, and my first real experience was building a wholesale book distribution firm selling and merchandising computer books for computer retail operations. After that, I attempted the “employee path” in as close to a real job as I could, by getting a commodity broker’s license and selling Commodity Options over the phone.

That was amazing training, and it has influenced everything I’ve done since. It was also where I got what I call my real sales training. My first years as a consultant were kind of a smorgasbord of small businesses, but always focusing on improving sales performance, as well as improving the life and rewards the owner took from the business. It was actually six years after I started my practice that I sold my first recruiting client, back in 1993.

You were awarded Best-in-Class Consultant by MRI for 2009, and many of the biggest shops in the network attribute their success in large part to the guidance and support you give them. Yet you have never been a recruiter yourself. How do you help recruiters if you have never been one?

It’s funny. Back in 2002 when I was honored with inclusion in the recruiting industry’s top 100 most influential people, they got my profile wrong, assuming I’d sold a recruiting firm before I became a consultant. My ability to coach and consult is my real contribution, not my particular experience, per se.

Allow me to qualify. If I wasn’t a salesman and a businessman myself, I don’t think I’d be able to serve recruiters. In so many ways, the business of my practice and the selling of my services match the recruiting art such that no one has ever been able to challenge the relevance of my teachings.

I have always been able to help any client in any business learn more about their business and how to improve it. By teaching me their business, I help them build a completely new vision. My learning method actually improves the performance of my teacher, who is of course my client. That was true for all the businesses I served prior to finding recruiters, and was also true for all my early recruiting clients.

Interestingly, it took me six years to analyze enough of the recruiting industry itself from enough clients’ various perspectives to begin to feel I had an edge in my understanding of the business from those studies. That was in 1999, and there is a story I could share about exactly how the shift took place.

At that point I began to feel like I could see the industry as a whole, and that I was building an understanding that perhaps no one else quite shared. In the decade that’s followed, I have come to believe I have the best bird’s-eye view. Although it may sound arrogant, I believe that I’m one of the strongest analysts of the recruiting industry today.

Other than winning the Best-in-Class award, what other successes are you most proud of?

Some of my proudest moments are presented by the people I’ve served in their own words at my LinkedIn profile.

But let me tell you about two types of clients. One type of client comes to me, after many years of struggle and frustration, looking for the keys to open the treasure house that never opened up before. Typically, we focus first on his or her desk performance as a recruiter.

Then, with victories in hand, we move over into building leadership. The transformed operations of this kind of client make me smile to even think about.

The second type of client is the big producer who will do great whether they work with me or not. They often have long track records of top performance dating back years before we met. But they come to me because after having won so much, they bump their heads into glass ceilings that they can’t break. The sound of that glass shattering as we explode through previous limits is another thing that makes me excited when I get up in the morning.

How would you characterize your particular style of coaching?

I’m fast. I give each client 100% of my attention. Experiencing that alone is something everyone remembers afterward. It’s pretty rare, you know, 100% attention.

What I’m doing with all that focus is just one thing: I have to find the problem.

Well, at the same time, I have to find the strength. Sometimes you have to fight weakness; sometimes you have to target and release strength, or enhance it. In all cases, there are blocks holding clients back. I find those blocks and we overcome them. So, intense, focused conversation, white hot, really, is a very big part of the deal.

What makes it so effective?

Perhaps some context in the form of a model will help. I use three steps to might – “might” meaning your ability to explode your performance.

The three steps are simply “intellect, emotion, and decision,” but I think of these as “head, heart, and soul.”

When your head, heart, and soul are united in what you do, you’re unstoppably mighty. Let me say that one other way. Each person really does know the truth. They know who they are, and they know what they need to do, too.

But there are always things that make them miss. So our job is to find the intellectual and emotional truth that informs the best decisions and actions. My style is to zero in on those truths with a type of almost blinding speed.

The truth then guides everything else.

But maybe you’d like some pragmatics. Well, there is always something, just one thing, a truly pragmatic area of performance where immediate improvement will win improvement everywhere. We immediately search to find that area, and then we set daily targets for progress which we either win or lose. This can be executed, literally, from one day to the next. That rapid flow from discussion into action is the key to our pragmatic work.

You’ve been coaching recruiters for over 16 years. What advice would you give to someone just getting started or who is struggling in the current economy?

I have a series I am working on right now, Revolutionary Fundamentals of Recruiting. The first revolutionary bit of counsel I emphasize is recruiting in the morning, marketing in the afternoon.

This is contrary to common practice and the reason is quite compelling. It is the stories of great-performing candidates that best gets the attention of your hiring manager prospects. This requires that you pick a clear market niche to focus on, so I’d better give some quick counsel there.

The most important thing is that you be actually interested by the field of work of those you’ll place. You’re going to become the top expert in this field, and fast. But if it bores you, then that will slow or prevent your learning. Find something you’re actually truly interested in.

Are there any specific markets you recommend?

Don’t worry about the market, or market conditions. I know, that may make little sense, but it is correct. Only focus on what you’re actually interested in. Then, with that commitment in place, spend your mornings finding the best-performing, most interesting candidates you can, and make sure you build real, honest, heart-to-heart conversation.

To do that, you have to have your candidate’s best interest at the top of your concerns list. Then, in the afternoons, you’ll be presenting those stories to the executives who urgently require those very abilities. Last thing, in the afternoons, when you’re marketing, you tell stories to get attention.

But your first sales purpose is actually to shut up. That’s right. You speak only until you’re interrupted, and then your goal is to encourage your prospects to talk at least twice as much as you do.

So, by whatever means possible, you must connect, really connect with candidates and hiring managers?

Yes, any time you’re not doing that, you should be wondering whether you’ll make it as a recruiter. Every minute you are connecting with candidates and hiring managers, you should be absolutely certain you’re on the path to becoming the greatest recruiter in the world.

Timing? Market conditions? Hogwash. Pay no attention to that.

Simply be the one and only recruiter who will never go out of business, no matter what, and you’ll discover there is always need for your service, even when all the other recruiters around you are dropping like flies.

It’s the greatest job in the world, under any market conditions, if you only keep yourself constantly connecting.

Jigsaw, best known in the recruiting community for helping with passive candidate searches, will pretty much stay the same.

“Salesforce recognizes that recruiters have played a huge and key role in crowdsourcing the Jigsaw database and don’t plan to change anything that is working!” he says.

Fowler says there are no bundle plans in the works yet, the Jigsaw brand and model will stay around after the merger, and Jigsaw will operate as a separate business unit.

It’s the “need for raw business card data” that enables recruiters to do a very specific title search.

“Jigsaw has well over one million unique titles. Many recruiters are used to working with data sets where there are a very small amount of ‘normalized’ titles. Being able to search by a very specific key word in a title can help narrow a search very quickly, which makes a search far more efficient,” he says.

“Having an email and a direct dial phone number is invaluable when recruiting a passive candidate. Another way Jigsaw can help is by setting a saved search on companies and seeing which employees are added and ‘graveyarded.’ Understanding the ebb and flow of employees from a given target company is critical information that many recruiters don’t take advantage of on Jigsaw,” he notes.

The Jigsaw website claims that 75,000 in-house and independent recruiters use its service each month, but the company says third-party recruiters likely account for “well over 50%,” with “certainly more” interest among independents than in-house recruiters.

Yet for those recruiters who do not need sourcing help, Fowler suggests that there is “much more” to a search than just sourcing, since “every recruiter needs to know who gets added and subtracted to a target company.”

Jigsaw, which has dealt with privacy criticisms over the years, “decided to change our privacy model because we felt it was the right thing to do,” he says.

“Even though we weren’t legally compelled to offer an opt-out model, we decided to do it so that the market would recognize Jigsaw as having the most progressive privacy policy in existence [as a BtoB data company]. We’re proud of these changes and hope the market understands that Jigsaw sets the standard in this arena,” adds Fowler.

Under the new privacy model, Jigsaw notifies by email every person who gets added to its database. The email explains what Jigsaw is and gives them a chance to remove themselves from the database.

“Interestingly, most choose not to do this because Jigsaw — alone among data companies — allows anyone to set preferences and provide instructions on their business card. These instructions tell salespeople, marketers, recruiters, etc. how to communicate with them. These instructions save EVERYONE time,” says Fowler.

The old system gave financial incentives to upload contacts, but Fowler explains that the cash-incentive system was never a big part of its model, nor was it very effective. A tiny percentage of members participated in this program, so it was killed after about a year.

“Many businesses, and especially recruiters, need a constant source of fresh, accurate data to run their businesses. If you think about how much time a salesperson or a recruiter spends just trying to figure out the right people to contact, it can get staggering. The basic Jigsaw model is that for every record a member adds, updates, or graveyards, he or she gets a record in return,” he says.

“It is far more efficient to do bit of work on Jigsaw to get your points than to blindly cold-call a target organization. Our community continues to grow at a very rapid pace,” he adds.

Thousands of independent recruiters use Jigsaw every month. In its own words, Jigsaw touts that its services can provide “company phone, direct dial phone, work address, and B2B email for candidates,” which also “allows you to download this gold into lists, CRM, or other systems — you OWN the data with Jigsaw!”

(Cue the 70′s-era disco ball and streaming confetti…“Gold, man. You OWN it.”)

Indeed, writers for The Fordyce Letter have endorsed Jigsaw as a way to increase your online brand and implement new emerging media trends into your trusted candidate sourcing techniques.

Yet the prickly privacy angle has been a sore spot over the years because Jigsaw would reportedly pay people who uploaded other people’s contact information.

In fact, this issue was a source of contention during a moderated debate at ERE Expo back in 2008.

During the session, Jim Fowler, Jigsaw’s founder and CEO, said “there is a relatively small percentage of people who are concerned. Perhaps 2% or 3% of the world who really care about their business cards. Privacy is a huge issue, but my point is that most people don’t care about this particular piece of data.”

Yet TechCrunch now reports that Jigsaw has changed its model, and people can “see if their personal information has been uploaded, and there is a process to have it removed, at least temporarily. And users are no longer paid cash to upload contacts. Instead they receive points that can be used to download contact other people’s contact information.”

In a press release, Salesforce said “Jigsaw’s unique Wikipedia-style crowd-sourcing model delivers the world’s most complete, accurate, and up-to-date business contact data, providing developers with an opportunity to deliver entirely new applications that leverage the business contact data found in Jigsaw.”

In other words, for Salesforce, this acquisition may create more opportunities to partner with information services companies (i.e., Dun&Bradstreet, Hoover’s, and LexisNexis).

One of the most common speed bumps in this process is how we work and communicate with one another. Chances are you work with others in your daily routine in many different staffing roles (staffing firm, hiring manager, HR director, etc.) who don’t respond to your emails or phone calls as fast as you prefer.

The result is that we lose candidates in the hiring process, fail to meet hiring/revenue goals, and endure unnecessary frustration.

Build the Framework

Set expectations in advance! Never assume that all colleagues operate the same way. For example, some recruiters are sourcing resumes only, whereas some are interviewing, screening, and matching. Some people shun the phone and prefer to work solely by email. Leaping to any conclusions could be a mistake.

The first step? Meet with the other party (either in person or by phone) and discuss how you will communicate. A good tool here is to use past examples of experiences you’ve had that have worked or not worked, outline your expectations, and reach a verbal agreement.

Do you meet weekly by phone or in person for a status update? What are you each expecting of the other in terms of process and function? Perhaps you might even set a future date to discuss the working relationship and how well it is functioning.

Running into Problems

You have a few options if the other party with whom you’re speaking isn’t willing or interested in working and communicating on the same schedule, frequency, and method.

Ask open end-ended questions to learn about where they are coming from, and then try to help the other person to see your point of view. Using their words can often be a big help; you have to get into their dictionary. The better each party understands the goals, issues, and obstacles faced by the other person, the more easily resolution can be found (this is a life lesson that applies to any situation, of course).

If you are still unable to get the other person to work in the manner that is acceptable to you, change your expectations or no longer work with that person. It’s as simple as that.

Let’s assume that you continue working with this other party but you later find that the agreed-upon method of working together isn’t being fulfilled on the other end. It’s time to meet with them again by phone or in person and bring the issue up again. Just like the earlier conversation where you built your framework for working together, this cannot be done by email. Email is a great tool for sending a message, but is an inefficient method for open dialogue and conversation.

Building on the Framework: Candidate Communication

Above, we discussed how your communication with your peers in the staffing industry could be improved by openly setting (and following through with) expectations. What about your interaction with the candidates themselves? Some of the concepts above carry over to the candidate too, but other issues arise that you can prevent:

I sent the candidate email and I’m waiting for a response.
Sending an email is not recruiting; it’s sourcing. Sourcing is the precursor to recruiting and is great for softening up the landing in preparation for when you (or a recruiter) will be calling and talking to the candidate.

I recall the proud recruiter telling me that they had submitted 10 candidates today! Wow, you mean you sent 10 emails? If your role required work beyond sourcing resumes, it’s time to step out from behind the computer monitor, put a smile on your face, and pick up the phone. The art of the “call and present” may help you to break through.

I submitted the resume but haven’t heard any feedback.
Any article that mentions communication and staffing in the same topic is going to repeatedly say the same thing: pick up the phone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a staffing firm submitting to a client or an internal recruiter submitting to a hiring manager; if you have a rock-star candidate you’ve submitted, pick up the phone.

Don’t let email become your main tool of dialogue. Again, email is great for sending a message or a file, but for true dialogue, you have to meet them in person or call them on the phone.

Of course, you want to avoid the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome, too. In other words, not every candidate you stumble across is a perfect fit. Take the feedback you’re given on previous submittals and apply it to those you do from now on. This is a major hallmark of a great staffing professional. But if you’ve got a “must see” candidate, let the recipient know! This is quite possibly one of the most frequent causes for delays in the hiring process: assuming that the other party has read your emails and has given it the attention deserved, when in fact this may not have happened at all.

I had the candidate complete the questionnaire, so now I’m done.
This is an easy one to address. Having a candidate fill out a survey or questionnaire is not a valid substitute for talking to the candidate. To correctly identify a candidate as a fit for an opportunity, you need to understand their personality, aspirations, pet peeves, and red flags. You’ll never get an accurate feel for any of this from a one-page form the candidate submits to you. The simple answer is: have a good candidate interview form with lots of open-ended questions. And here it comes again: pick up the phone.

A Review of the ‘Rules of Communication’

• Make sure the person you’re trying to communicate with desires the same level of communication you do. Ensure that you have a good person to work with to help you meet your goals.
• Set expectations in advance both in terms of how you’ll work together as well as how you’ll communicate (email, phone, meetings, time of day, etc.). Don’t assume that your process for running your staffing is a universal standard that others share.
• Review the process by which you and the other person(s) are working. Are both parties meeting the expectations and agreed-upon goals of the other? Are you working as a team, strangers, or possibly even adversaries?
• Understand the other person’s point of view, barriers, methods, and history. It is through appreciation of another person’s perspective that you’ll reach consensus on how to continue forward and minimize the number of candidates lost in the hiring process.
• Pick up the phone when needed. Don’t be afraid to talk to people on the phone and convey information. This is especially important when dialogue is needed rather than simply conveying a message. If you get an email that probably should have been done by phone instead, don’t respond to the email; pick up the phone.

Accept Your Role

Delays in the hiring process, resume “black holes,” lost candidates, missed meetings, and all the other issues that plague a staffing business can be kept to a minimum by having a plan of action. Create and stick to your carefully agreed-upon communication methods instead of allowing events to unfold around you.

You have control, so use it. Accepting ownership for some of the communication issues you’ve experienced is the first step; now it’s up to you to craft a solution with thoughtfulness and planning. Execute, evaluate, and make adjustments as needed along the way.

Are you looking for some fresh client prospect sourcing tips?

Then save the date for Tuesday, October 27, when Shally Steckerl returns to Fordyce TV! This is a follow-up show to his episode back in August, which explored Shally’s best sourcing tips and how he reverse-engineered his world-famous Internet sourcing and research techniques.

In this live show, Shally will share more of the ways he gets insider details, including key names and job titles, contact details, internal promotions/moves, and other intel to better prepare himself for the cold call.

The show will be held at 2pm on Tuesday the 27th on www.fordyceletter.com (right before the show you’ll see a small TV logo — click the white arrow in the box — if you don’t see the box at 2, try refreshing the screen once or twice until you see it). There will be a live Q&A session via the chat box with Shally after the presentation, too, so come prepared with questions.

Over on The Source’s blog, the team shares its own thoughts on this acquisition, adding that “The Source will still be published as its own blog/newsletter.”

With this decision to step out of the recruitment arena, the company says it will focus on providing data to an in-house recruiter client base.

PracticeMatch says it uses physician databases with both graduating and practicing physician profiles, candidate tracking, a physician career center, and ancillary marketing services, including customized sourcing campaigns and direct marketing of physician opportunities.

Today, I’ll discuss the second way to find value with Twitter. As a recruiter, Twitter is a must-have tool to find clients and candidates.

How, you ask? This isn’t easy, but if you’re the kind of recruiter who prides yourself on delivering distinct candidates to your client base, I would highly recommend taking the time and figuring it out.

Now that job boards have proved themselves virtually worthless and LinkedIn is well on its way to becoming the job board of a new generation, recruiters need to stay ahead of the curve. Twitter is actually a goldmine of information that can absolutely be tapped to find clients and candidates.

The Art

As far as finding candidates, they’re all on Twitter (or they will be). It’s just a matter of finding them.

I employ a researcher who I asked to spend an entire day on Twitter looking for candidates. As I expected, he came back to me 15 minutes later passionately confirming that Twitter sucks and that it’s worthless for finding candidates.

I responded by saying:

“I totally hear what you are saying and I don’t care. You have the entire day, so get comfortable and figure it out.”

I told him to imagine every single candidate and client to be on Twitter. They’re just masking their candidacy in the form of 140-character thoughts. Just like I don’t use the word recruiter in my thoughts, even though I’m clearly a recruiter, a software engineer might not use the word software engineer in her tweets. But she might tweet about her employer, upcoming conferences, and useful technologies.

The goal is to figure out what they’re tweeting and to search accordingly. That’s the art!!

The Science

The science is to use the appropriate Boolean search strings to conduct the search. For that, I recommend going to Shally or one of the other Internet sourcing gurus. They have tips and ideas for days!!

Once you find a candidate you are interested in, here is what to do:

• Follow them, of course.
• Read their Tweetstream and you’ll very quickly get a sense of their passions and interests.
• If you can figure out where they work, you can proceed to traditional headhunting methods and contact them. In the meantime, engage them in conversation on Twitter; do not be as direct as you might be on LinkedIn, but give time for the relationship to develop.
• Retweet one of their posts (people like that).
• Comment on some of their posts (they’ll definitely get read).

The goal here would be to get followed back. That way, the next time you send out a note about a hot job or an MPC, this person will be sure to hear about it. And so the ball begins to roll.

In my year or so using Twitter, I have found it to be one of the most profound services in existence. The best way I’ve found to explain Twitter is to compare it to that Mel Gibson movie, “What Women Want,” where he gets to hear the thoughts of all women around him.

Of course, nobody wants to hear everybody’s thoughts about everything, but if you could figure out a way to slice-and-dice those thoughts and take advantage of the streams relevant to you and your marketplace, I think you will find Twitter to have a positive influence on your recruiting practice and life in general.

Good luck, and “May the Tworce be with you!!”