Learn everything about a candidate before reaching out
Candidate information can be found in a lot of different places on the web. If you want to be successful as a recruiter you need to have the full view of a candidate before you reach out.
Why cross referencing candidate information is important
People on average have 7.6 different social media accounts. Cross referencing data is about referencing profile data from one person to find the information they have on other platforms they are active on. You want to learn as much as you can about a person before you decide to reach out to them.
This helps you to match your job to candidates based on complete and accurate information so you can do relevant and well informed outreach.
The challenge with cross referencing data however is that not everyone goes by the same name on different platforms. Sometimes they use a nickname, sometimes only their first name and sometimes their full name. In addition, for a lot of people there are dozens of other people with the exact same name.
Therefore you need more information than only the name to find someone on other platforms and you can help yourself by using the right tools.
Here’s how to cross reference candidate information from different platforms using an engineer profile as an example.
Cross referencing example
1 — You found a LinkedIn profile with a GitHub reference
When you find a profile on LinkedIn, in quite some cases there are links provided to other social media channels. They can be either in the Contact Info or they are are somewhere in the descriptions provided by the candidate like in this case. You can also use a contact finder or sourcing tool so you can find all the contact details and social links of the candidate in one place.
2 — You find a personal website on their GitHub profile
You follow one of the social links provided by the candidate, in this case GitHub. Next to all the additional information you get to see, here you…
