LinkedIn Mayhem
July 11th, 2008
I find it amazing that all the partners and managers that I used to work for/with, are connected on LinkedIn. It almost seams that the IT business in Portugal is a very small ecosystem, where everybody knows everybody.
Another interesting thing on LinkedIn is the way that human resources head hunters are using it to reach applicants. I guess it works like this:
- The head hunter searches for software developers
- For each developer, the head hunter will try to find a contact. He can use the contact methods provided by LinkedIn, of he can just call the target’s company, saying that he’s a friend, and asking for a contact (yeah, I’ve seen this happen more than once)
- Then, the hunter will contact the applicant, stating that the applicant was a referral from someone very important, and they would like to present some job opportunities on some highly interesting projects. However, if you want to know who referred you, they’ll say that it’s classified.
I already know of 3 or 4 companies that are in the business of head hunting, they earn commissions on delivering fresh applicants to companies. There’s only one thing that I don’t understand… if the market is lacking developers, then why isn’t our price rising up?
Related Posts
- Best way to load XML configuration
- Categories
- The Lack of ASP.NET Events
- Bonus for having a child
- Being a programmer is boring...
July 11th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Because the market isn’t lacking, it’s just continuously allocating developers elsewhere. Software and system engineers are always on the move.
Head hunters are funny though. A long time ago, head hunters only hunted managers upwards. When the Internet took over job allocation, they had to adapt.
They used to be a sort of elite search-and-file-contacts type of work, but now they’ll hunt almost everything and the weird part, they keep the same distinct composure like they are preparing for a highly secret mangerial manouver.