Part II How Low can the Cost of Name Generation go?

Let me make some clarifications on some of the comments so far.

Mary: Please re-read the original post. This is question about the cost of delivering a service. It's not about process. No matter how you slice it if Sourcing Firm A base in India/South America/Eastern Europe/Africa etc pays their people $200 a month and the US based firm pays $1280 (min wage of $8 per hour times 160 hours per month) then all the process in the world will not make a difference in the price the US firm can charge their client, it can not be lower that the cost to produce said service. My point was that Internet Name Generation can be done by anyone, anywhere in the world at any time. All you need is access to the internet and a few hours of training and off you go. (I'm over exaggerating the amount of training needed to make a point) But it was a nice plug for SGA none-the-less no matter how irrelevant I feel your comment was to the topic at hand.

Josh/Vipul - Great banter. Good points made and let me add that employee costs will climb for companies in those offshore locations. The more companies have to compete for experienced employees the more their employees costs shift. In the beginning these offshore companies will spend a lot of time and money training employees, as an employee base gains experience over many years other companies will attempt to recruit them away to reduce their training costs. By speaking with many RPO companies in India, SA and Eastern Europe I'm seeing this happening already. A few companies are in those three areas are in strategic battles with their competitors to keep employee costs to a minimum. In one area employees costs have tripled in the past 5 years and are continuing to rise. Inevitably, as the market matures and employees gain more experience, there will be more employment options for people with those skills and salaries in those offshore areas will rise. Disclaimer: As with any investment opportunity individual results may vary. These statements are not in any way a guarantee that you or your company will obtain any level of success should you decide to take part in this opportunity. Use of, being associated with or providing these services may cause fever, fainting, rash, sleeplessness, vomiting and in rare cases body odor and addiction to caffeine, chocolate or other substances. Sorry, I felt had to lighten the post up a bit

Cultural issues and language barriers will not be barriers for much longer. These companies will find ways to offset those issues, they will shift their training tactics from a "how and what to do to" to a cultural training and language training. Admittedly this is (from my understanding) is much harder to train for but the successful companies will hire people that were educated here in the USA or UK or Australia so that they will have less of a hurdle. In short, it is difficult but not impossible. There are challenges but they can be overcome with the right training and if they companies hire people with the right backgrounds.

Patrick: CPD-Candidate Pipeline Development(TM) is actually trade marked by my company HTC Research and so as not to confuse the market I'd like to state that the prices quoted in your comment were not HTC's prices or service offerings.

Also let's extrapolate Patrick's point a bit further. Instead of $8 a name what if a company opens up an office somewhere where the employee costs could be $1 USD per day. They would now offer their names at let's say 50 cents per name. And the quality is just as good if not better. This same thing happened to the data service providers when email addresses started being farmed on the Internet. Sales People and list brokers would sell names at a $5 per name not they are 50 cents, 5 cents, 1 cent per name and even lower for unverified Sales Leads. What force in the staffing market that will stop this from happening to Internet Generated names? AND if you can get a computer to do all of it for you that could reduce costs even further.

Stella: Time difference is not as big a problem as you may think. The fact that India is 12 hrs ahead of us makes little difference. India is not the only off-shoring country out there and SA is for the most part in the US time zone. The Internet is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now verifying those names by telephone is more difficult at night but not entirely impossible with the right techniques ;-) I know of one offshore company that does the internet name generation in India then they dump those names into their DB for their group in Eastern Europe and Africa to call and verify and then they have their group in SA recruit the candidates for contingency fees and all their business development people are based here in the USA. Amazingly though, they still charge a full 20%-30% placement fee. So it's what the market will accept.

OK I didn’t mean to ramble on for this long so enough for now, replies/rebuttals welcome.

Jeff Weidner
HTC Research Corp
925 313 9005 X 200
jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com

Is internet research enough?

A question originally posted on ERE.

And this is what differentiates Research Firms. Everyone has their search methodologies and strategies. Moreover what may have worked in the past may not work for the next assignment.

I can try to explain to my client how we go about starting a research assignment but honestly they wouldn't "get it". If I have an hourly research client, we charge the same rate per hour for a Internet Name Generator or a Phone Name Generator or a Pre-Screener/Profiler. All I do is split up the 40 hour work week among the group of researchers.

When starting a project I might allocate 20 hrs a week towards internet research knowing there's a lot of low hanging fruit out there, 10 hours towards phone research to pick up the pieces and 10 hours for a profiler to screen the candidates. Another project I might allocate 1 hour of internet researcher time, realize it's a waste of time and stick 30 hours towards phone research and 9 towards profiling.

But 2 to 6 weeks into a project I'll end up flip flopping the strategy. 30 hours towards profiling and 10 hours towards phone or internet research. This is because hopefully the name generators have filled a pipeline of candidate up and it's now up to the profilers to resolve those candidates.

This is where experience comes into play and having a bench of researchers that can provide the depth needed to perform the task at hand. Whether that be Internt research or phone research doesn't matter. Bottom line is the client doesn't care where and how you found the top candidate, all they care about is that you did find them and in a timely and cost efficient manner.

Obviously, it behooves the client to understand how their research firm actually does the research. Are they a one stop shop, can they only do internet, can they only do phone or can they do internet, phone and profiling?

There's lots of different flavors of candidate research, I for one am glad that most research firms only try to sell chocolate or vanilla. Especially since I happen to love Mint Chocolate Chip.

Jeff Weidner
HTC Research Corp
925 313 9005 X 200
jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com

Father's Play How games connect kids and parents: A Father's Day requiem for a gamer.

A dear friend of my wife lost her 12 yr old daughter, Kaela, earlier this year to pneumococcal meningitis. This blog was written by Kaela's Step Father.


Reposted with permission
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3168188


On its top-10 industry-facts list, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) states that the average age of gamers today is 33 years old and that they have been playing videogames for 12 years now. As such, one would surmise that the majority of today's gamers already have, or are starting, families of their own, and that their deeply rooted pastime will be introduced to their children at some point or other. Meanwhile, everywhere you look, politicians and others seem to accuse games of having a horrible influence on people -- especially children. But can videogames really and truly be a positive influence in a family setting?

I'm here to tell you that the answer to that question is an emphatic yes! How do I know? Well, let me explain.... The nickname I gave to my 12-year-old stepdaughter, Kaela, several years ago was "K.K. Slider." I gave that name to her because of her fascination with the cool, guitar-playing canine character of the same name from Nintendo's Animal Crossing games. It started out as a silly joke, but she liked it, and it stuck.



Kaela and I shared a love of videogames, and she was about as hardcore a gamer as a tween girl could be. She was always playing something, whether it was on her Nintendogs-skinned DS, on the PC, or on one of the four consoles we own. In fact, she and I bonded through playing a videogame: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for the Nintendo 64. I remember it distinctly: My wife and I had only been together for a short while, and this whole concept of a "blended" family was still very new to us all. Kaela was about 6 or 7 at the time and was, understandably, having a rough go with some of the more difficult parts of Link's second N64 adventure. She came to me for help, and over the course of the next few weekends, I guided her to the final battle with Majora's Mask, which we beat together. From that point forward, K.K. and I always had something to talk about, whether it was who was the best character in Super Smash Brothers, who could create the crazier characters in The Sims 2, or who was better on the drums in Rock Band. Videogames had become our means for understanding one another.

Common ground

John Davison, former Ziff Davis editorial director and president of What They Play, agrees, saying that parent-kid gaming sessions are something children will remember for a long time. "It's not mom and dad imposing something on the kids, or the kids dragging the parents into something that they don't want to do," Davison says. "For us, there's equal interest on both sides, and that's what makes it really special. I know it's not going to be that way for every family, but there are more and more games available now that lower the barriers to entry and make this kind of activity possible."

I know from my own experience as a father: Nintendo, with both its Wii and DS, seems to have the pick-up-and-play/gateway-type games that Davison speaks of. I can't tell you how many impromptu games of Mario Party, WiiPlay, WarioWare, and Carnival Games I've gotten sucked into over the last year and a half that we've owned the Wii. As Derrick Schommer, father of two and proprietor of game site Tech Diversions, relates, "Nintendo has this area conquered. They understand how to make a game appeal to kids and adults at the same time without having to alter any difficulty levels or give either side a major advantage to equal each other. These are usually casual games with thin storylines -- my kids can't read anyway -- and lots of Wii-controller motion. My daughter cannot grasp the Xbox 360 controller as easily as she adapts to the Wii controller so these games work the best. Kids seem to have some innate abilities to controllers based on touch and motion."

Lovable losers

Another way of bonding with your kids thorough videogames: losing. Let me tell you, there's nothing quite as humbling as having your butt handed to you by one of your kids. I'll always remember the first time it happened to me (a severe thrashing in Sega Soccer Slam on the Gamecube by my oldest son, Kyle) because it reminded me of the first time I schooled my own father out on the basketball court. Now, I was a bit older than Kyle was at the time (I was 14; Kyle was 9) and the venue was different (a real court as opposed to a virtual one) but the sincere feelings and emotions that came through in those moments were practically the same: "It's OK to beat Dad -- in fact, it's kinda cool!" This sentiment is echoed by parent and renowned game designer John Romero: "When [my kids] were older, it was fun to play as a team or go head-to-head. There was nothing like smacking the crud out of dad to make them get excited."



Working together as a team to achieve a common goal, as Kaela and I did with Majora's Mask, is something that another celebrated game maker, Fable's Peter Molyneux, does with his five- year-old son, Lucas. "We play games like Ratchet and Clank and Zelda," Molyneux says. "We will discuss the problems together and work with each other to come up with the solutions. I think [videogames] are a great level playing field. Lucas is about as dexterous as I am and this means we can play together as equals. I can't think of any other activity that we could do together where this would be the case."

Fun and games

Psychiatrist and author of Video Game Play and Addiction, Dr. Kourosh Dini, sees great benefits in the "two-way learning" that videogames offer a parent and child. "Some of the best parenting I've seen occurs when parents are willing to learn from their children," he explains. "A parent is still a parent, and guides and protects as necessary, of course. But, a parent in wonder and support of watching a daughter as she makes it through a level...does several things [for the child]. It sends the message that the child is trusted by the parent to do things differently. The child discovers the capacity to do things differently. And, [thirdly], it tells the child that the parent may be willing to learn the ways of the child's world -- which will always be completely different from the one in which the parent grew up. Together, these sentiments can carry much value in bringing a family together."
Humor is also a great bonding element and that was always big around our house, especially when Kaela was involved. She just had a way about her that could make you crack up at any given moment. She knew this too, and she'd usually use this "gift" at a critical moment to make you lose whatever game you happened to be playing at the time.

It is a given: Kids do funny things while watching you play or playing games themselves. As TechDiversion's Schommer relates, "At one point we had both our kids trained to say 'Yeah Baby!' after we'd finish a Guitar Hero III song. It got to the point where they would be in the living room while I was playing Guitar Hero in another room, and after I finished the song I'd hear off in the distance 'Yeah Baby!' They knew the sounds of a successful completion and would scream 'Yeah Baby!' wherever they were in the house."



After their Zelda sessions together, Molyneux says that his son Lucas has become somewhat infatuated with that storied franchise's main character, Link. "This is all fine until you go out shopping and Lucas draws out his plastic sword from his back yelling 'Hi-yah' at passersby," he says. "The worst occasion was in a shopping center when a rather grubby old man was walking towards us. Lucas pulled out his sword and said, 'Look, Daddy, it's a troll!' I don't know if the poor old guy heard but thankfully he turned in different direction. We're rather relieved that the Zelda phase is staring to wear off a bit...it will make shopping trips easier!"

Unfortunately, all the humor and good feelings that this story evokes have to end here, for much like Ebenezer Scrooge, who foresaw a crutch without its young owner in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I have Playstation, Wii, and Xbox controllers at my house that are collecting dust but are carefully preserved all the same. You see, pneumococcal meningitis claimed Kaela's life this past February. It was like she was walking down the street and got hit by a bolt of lightning. It was just that random and rare -- something that happens to other people or only on sappy television shows -- never directly to you. Honestly, I didn't even realize that people still got meningitis, or just how deadly a disease it can be. But, in a matter of hours it rendered her comatose and then, ultimately, brain dead. Yes, it was a shocking and most undeserved end because of her tender age, but also because you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who could, or would, say a bad word about K.K. And, in turn, it was a very rare thing to hear K.K. utter a bad word against anyone else. This was a genuinely good kid who possessed wit, character, and charm in spades and wasn't afraid to let you know it. And that is what set her apart. It is a damn shame that we will not get to see this singular personality in the full blossom of womanhood.

Sieze the play

Videogames have always been a very good thing in my life and in the lives of my family. From the various interviews I conducted for this article, it's clear to see that games are an exceptionally positive influence on the lives of many other families, as well. Personally, I know that they've provided me with endless hours of entertainment, information and education. To this day, I have "real world" friends because of videogames. I don't care what any pundit, or politician, or overzealous nutjob tries to spoon feed me -- those facts will never, ever change.

And, best of all, videogames brought me closer to a special girl, who I miss talking and playing with very, very much. But, I know in my heart of hearts that I will see my K.K. Slider at the Roost Café next Saturday night, 7:30 PM sharp. And I just know she'll be playing my favorite song. So, all you gamer parents out there, pick up a controller and play with your kids if you aren't doing so already. Let's do our level best to prove the naysayers wrong. I cannot promise that you'll have the same experiences that I've had, but I do know it is something you will always cherish and look back on fondly when your children aren't with you any longer for whatever reason. Take this advice from someone who knows all too well.

Interesting article on Building a Social Network

http://www.cheezhead.com/xtra/2008/03/18/social-networking-and-recruitment/

March 18th, 2008 -- by Susan Burns

When gas hits $5.50 a gallon will still be able to afford to drive to work?

I originally posted this on Linkedin
Fact: In Europe and UK gas is avging about $8.50 a gal. and the US is at $4.00 as per AAA survey last weekend.

Last weekend I played paintball with a bunch of my friends and the group next to us was talking about high gas prices in the San Francisco bay area ($4.50 a gallon) now, though I found it for $4.31 gal this am. He said that he has a job where is has to drive all day and pays his own gas, about 60,000 miles per year. His car get 20 miles per gallon, and at $4.5 a gallon that's $13,500 a years in gas... at $5.50 a gal (which is approx equivalent to $135 a barrel) that's $16,500. He said that he can barely afford gas as it is, and is stuck in his current car cause he's upside down so his solution is to go get a desk job.

Have you seen this as a staffing trend in your area of the country yet?

Do you think this will be a bigger concern for long distance commuters?

Do you think it could have a ripple effect on the housing market as people would want to move closer to public transportation or work in general?

Could this be the coming of a mass migration back to the cities and out of the suburbs?



Jeff Weidner
jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com

Clarification added 23 hours ago:
Well I'm glad this is getting so much attention and replies. Thank you all for participating in the discussion.

A few points I'd like to make for those out of towners (international responders)
A) The United States is very large and since the industrial revolution and WWII Urban populations have been moving to more suburban areas. This makes biking to work next to impossible. 30-50 miles one way commutes are common place so walking or riding a bike is not practical.
B) In Northern climates it quite cold during fall and winter and snows and rains all the time. This further contributes to the difficulties of riding a bike to work or walking even if you are only 5 miles from your destination.
C) The gas prices in the US have been historically low because we're a huge producer of oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels. Especially in comparison to say France or Spain which produce virtually no oil.
D) There has not been a significant increase in production, mostly due to lack of available oil fields ready to be tapped into for the past 10 years. But demand has increased exponentially especially overseas in places like India and China.
E) Is not just cars that use oil. Every manufacturing facility uses some type of oil or oil based lubricant for their machines. Think about all the petroleum based products you use each and every day; plastic, ink, paper, shoes, glue, clothing, paint, sporting goods, you name it and it probably involves a petroleum based product in some way shape or form.
E) Lastly, I live 5 miles from work but again it would be next to impossible for me to bike to work every day as there are a lot of foothills and one big one in between me and work. Not that I couldn't bike it, as I have but it takes about 45 mins to 1 hour depending on how hot it is. Not to mention it would be very hazardous as the road I'd have to drive on is a major artery in and out of town and it has thousands of cars.

Latest Buzz from JigSaw

Dear Jigsaw Insiders,

Well, June 4th has arrived and I can finally spill the beans as to what Jigsaw has been up to for the past few months. Today Jigsaw announced the Declaration of Data Independence in the face of the traditional data companies that charge for company data. Put simply, we are giving away every one of our 1 million+ company profiles for free.

As an Insider and Jigsaw expert, you may at first react with a “big deal” type response, since you know that all of our company profiles (which come complete with company URL, HQ address, main number, revenue, industry and number of employees) have always been readily available on the website and included in a contact list delivery.



Watch as we declare
Data Independence Day


However, according to a project we’re calling the Open Data Initiative; now anyone can download any or all of the company profiles they wish for direct import into the corporate CRM system of their choosing. We might not have quite as many companies as the Data Dinosaurs (yet!), but we’re betting that we have plenty to run your prospecting and marketing efforts. And besides, what other data company out there can compete with free?

This is a win for all segments of the Jigsaw Community. Individual users or small companies can now populate their CRM systems with the same number of target companies as big companies. Large Companies get the benefit of the updates from the almost 500K Jigsaw members. The Play and Free members benefit from a large influx of new members interacting with their data, gaining royalty points and increased accuracy of the contacts. Jigsaw still makes money selling specific contact info, subscriptions and cleaning and maintaining the CRM databases. Only the dinosaurs lose, forced to leverage their relationships and distraction techniques in order to continue selling a product for a price that the market will no longer bear

Check out the revolution at www.jigsaw.com. You can see the full length video of Jim and me, dressed as the founding fathers, as well as see the CRM partners and other information about the Open Data Initiative.

Best,

Garth
VP of Community and Co-Founder
garth@jigsaw.com
650.235.8383

Hmm I wonder what JigSaw is up to

Huge proponent of Jigsaw and HTC has been a member for a long time.

I wonder what they are up to with this announcement.
Dear Jigsaw Insiders,

Since we started leaking hints about the big Jigsaw announcement on June 4th, I have received an unprecedented amount of calls from members and friends of Jigsaw trying to get the inside scoop. I still have my (rapidly fraying) muzzle on, but Marketing has allowed me to send you all this one minute preview of the promotional video that Jim Fowler and I taped a few weeks ago on Haight Street in San Francisco. Despite my fears to the contrary, the full length (3 minute) video actually turned out to be pretty funny and still gets our point across.

Please do us a favor and don’t steal our viral thunder by forwarding the trailer- save that for the finished product on June 4th, when it will be available for download on our home page. If all goes well, we might double traffic to our site- and get many more people to start contributing to Jigsaw like you have! Thanks so much for your support of Jigsaw to date and for joining us in our quest to make the data dinosaurs obsolete!

Best,

Garth
VP of Community and Co-Founder
garth@jigsaw.com
650.235.8383

List of Social Networking Sites and resources for Social networkers

Other Social Networking Sites

1. 43 People : social meeting
   people online
   
2. Asoboo : social networking
   with events/places (japanese)
   
3. Blogtronix : social
   business networking ; blogging
   
4. Blue Dot : social networking
   site
   
5. Bolt : video/photo/music sharing
   service
   
6. BrightFuse
   : business networking
   operated by CareerBuilder
   NEW
   
7. Cingo : social family-based
   networking
   
8. Collective X : group
   calendar, discussions, email, sharing
   
9. Couch Surfing : CouchSurfing
   is a worldwide network for making connections between travelers
   and the local communities they visit.
   
10. dodgeball : social networking
    with mobile phones
    
11. Doostang : social professional
    networking by invitation only
    
12. Facebook : social student
    networking
    
13. Faves :
    Build your own Social Network based on templates NEW
    
14. Favorville : social
    networking doing favors
    
15. Friendster : social
    networking
    
16. hi5 : Find friends in your
    hometown or other parts of the world; upload music, videos, photos
    
17. HooversConnect:
    Business, Find the people you want to meet through the people
    you know
    
18. iKarma : social business
    networking with recommendations
    
19. imeem :
    social network where millions of fans and artists discover new
    music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends.
    
20. Jambo : social networking
    
21. Jigsaw : business card
    networking
    
22. Jookster : social networking
    
23. Jyve : skype networking and
    tools
    
24. Kaneva : social networking
    service
    
25. Konnects:
    Make connections: Locally, Internationally, in your Industry Post:
    Events, Classifieds, Jobs, Questions
    
26. LightStalkers :
    social journalists network
    
27. Linkedin : social business
    networking
    
28. Map Mix : mapped social
    networking
    
29. Meetup : localized interest
    group meeting
    
30. MyMapSpace : social
    networking site with maps
    
31. MySpace : social networking
    
32. Ning : Create
    a Social Network site of your own
    
33. openBC : social business
    networking
    
34. opinity : social networking
    with testimonials
    
35. Orkut : social networking
    
36. PeerProfile : social
    info / bookmark / photo sharing
    
37. Popist : social networking
    site
    
38. Rabble : mobile phone blogging
    and social networking
    
39. RecruiterRockStar
    : A Talent Generator and Social Network for Candidates and Recruiters
    NEW
    
40. ShoutCentral : social
    networking site; blogs, photos and fun
    
41. TagWorld : social networking
    + blog + music + storage
    
42. the black stripe
    : social photo sharing
    
43. The Well : Welcome to
    a gathering that's like none other — remarkably uninhibited, intelligent
    and iconoclastic.
    
44. Tilika : online calendar
    
45. TownCrossing : online
    communities
    
46. Tribe : social networking
    service
    
47. XING : business
    social networking; powers relationships for the world’s
    business professionals
    
48. Ziki : social networking
    site
    

 

By resending invitations on Linkedin you can add a lot of connections!

Real quick wanted to add another tip on how to get more connections on Linkedin. And FYI I'm over 5100 now so these techniques work. That's about 1000 connections in the last month and I've only sent 250 invites out. And another 100+- resends.

Old Invites can be a Gold Mine.
Yea I know you already sent them one invite but somehow it either got ignored or lost or forgotten.

I started going through my old invites and resending the invites to people and they started accepting them. Many replied back and stated they didn't know how they missed the first one, so something at Linkedin might be loosing invites or people aren't clearing out their invite box regularly and it gets archived/lost.

So go to your invitations then go to your Sent invitations.
Sort by click on the Status column you will see a bunch of invites that have a "blank" status. Then RIGHT click on each "subject line column" (this is where is says "Invitation to connect on LinkedIn" or "Join my network on LinkedIn") and open in it up in a new tab or new window. Then I click on a tab and scroll over the person's name and it will pop a little java window with a summary of their profile, I double check to make sure their are not already on my first level and click the Resend Button. I then type in a more personal note as to why I want to connect and hit send.

If there are any invitations without an email address or LI says they can't be delivered you can Withdraw the Invite. But, from what I've noticed, "Withdrawing" the invite does not necessarily put it back in your pool of available invites.

Once you go thru all the ones with "Blank" status, use the page numbers at the bottom and find the ones with a "Sent" status and do the same thing, Right Click and Click the Resend button and write a more personal note then hit Resend.

This will change both the Blank and the Sent status to a Replaced Status.

After a few weeks (3-4) you can go back thru all the Replaced and Resend again. I'm not sure how many times you can send someone an invitation before Linkedin won't allow you to send any more and my guess is that if after 2-3 Resends they still have accepted they either aren't going to ever accept or are just not active on Linkedin.

Also be fore-warned that if someone gets let's say 2 invites from you (one original and one resend) and they IDK both invites then Linkedin counts both IDK's against you. And with the 3 strike rule they will put your account on restriction.

Reference: An IDK is and response by the person receiving the invitation of (I Don't Know "Sender's Name") which not only declines the invitation but also puts a negative "mark" on your Linkedin profile. After 3 IDK's you will no longer be able to send someone an email without knowing their email address and Linkedin will not release additional invitations to you after you use up your initial 3000 invites. On a first offense of 3 IDK's they ask you to read the rules and agree to abide by them via email. Second offense they won't release more invites until you re-read the rules and "clean up" or explain your IDK's and third offense it's off with your head:-) just kidding same thing, you have to re-re-read clean up the IDK's and they won't release more invites to you =-( But the third offense they give you a much sterner warning and threaten to take away your account etc etc.

Jeff Weidner
HTC Research
925 313 9005 X 200
jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com

And join my group on Candidate Pipeline Development(TM) on Linkedin at http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/44169/3ED8F804D9C7

A reply to someone ticked off at getting IDKed from another user on Linkedin.

This was part of a long rant so I'll cut it and keep it anon to keep relevancy:

WHY JOIN A GROUP if you don't want to connect with the members?????

[Name]
I understand your frustration as I've had the same problem too. I even had invitations that I sent to people I know, declined and IDK'ed and IDK's from people I sent invites to from Mylink500 and themetanetwork lists(LION's) and they are supposedly Open Networkers. I've had my account "frozen" several times from LI as it's their policy to freeze accounts (they won't give me more invites until I clear up IDK issues) when you hit 3 IDK's

But what I realized is this;
A) I don't need their "stinking" invites to grow the network:-)(said in my best NY accent which is pretty good considering I'm from Jersey)
B) As a Sourcer/Recruiter I know why I'm on Linkedin, to get names, most people who join Linkedin have no idea why they joined or what they can do on it. That would take an effort on their part.
C)Once they join they don't know what or how to do "anything" let alone accept or send an invite. They don't read the fine print and take into consideration what will happen if they IDK your invite or decline your inmail they just do it cause they are inundated with junk and spam in every other site they've joined and don't need any more so they go into defensive mode and IDK or delete or mark as SPAm anything and everything.
D) Recruiters and especially those living in and around Silicon Valley give other people way too much credit as to other Linkedin Users level of understanding about technology/social networking "basic" rules of etiquette etc.
E) People just don't have time to "go figure it out" and tend to skim through for immediate relavance rather than "wasting" time trying to get to the bottom of it.

So to overcome all this. Keep it short, keep it sweet, keep it relavent and only send invites to those you know will accept:-)

Jeff Weidner
5000+
jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com
I accept all invites, forward all requests, respond to all inmail, send lists of contacts for free for all candidate requests and have a tendency to exagerate and become a bit satirical from time to time.