Learn from Obama about how to use Linkedin

[Peter Gold]

Barack Obama has used Linkedin to what I would suggest is some success. But no, he did not have someone send a message to everyone saying 'Vote for me; I will free America and restore our fortunes'. No, instead he used Questions:

What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead?

You can see all the responses on Linkedin.

The link in his question then take you to a very neat site: You can see the full speech etc on his Barack Obama web site:

So using the above technique your recruiters should be using questions to engage with potential new hires and then take them to a landing page that maybe has a video by your CEO or HRD? Could you see this happening? What do you think?

[Lee Evans]

I think this is a great example of how to use LI to great effect.

In a somewhat "lower level" example of this, I recently sourced a Business Intelligence Manager for our business using the same method. My searches threw up a number of potential candidates and I began asking questions of them in order to engage them and get some "buy-in" to the business and what we are trying to achieve. The process lasted for approximately 3 months before the offer was eventually made, but it worked really well.

In an ideal world, I would have had a much stronger careers site for the candidate to land on, but the value that was added to the process by the interaction between myself and the candidate meant that this did not detract from the process enough to lose the candidate's interest.