I blog when I am inspired and I blog when I am mad

Today I am mad… and I figured I would give an education to those people who just don’t get it.  Listen up oh ye job posting spammers.

Here is the problem:   10-15 years ago, someone profited from sending mass emails to every contact they had an email for.  What did they send?  A job posting or a candidate.

This was not a common thing, “back in the day”.  So it worked, and a handful of people made a bunch of placements due to an enhanced network reach and the wonders of email.

Please be a student of history here.  Follow this logic

Things change.  New technology usage of any type tends to be simple and adopted by the few.  Next, the technology gets wider adoption and it gets more specialized, due to changing needs.  So sending 1000 people your candidate or job posting (henceforth “blasting”) worked 10 years ago, but today it adds to noise and has reduced impact.

Today, I got “twitter spammed”.  Someone I added to my network, posted a bunch of job postings to their account.  I was following them so the entire first page on my iPhone was filled with their postings.

I am no-longer following him.  In fact, I removed just about everyone I was following, and will only adding people that don’t do the “pizza post”.  What is a pizza post?  It is when someone has nothing better to do than tell every detail of their life.  Even if they have great thoughts sometimes, I refuse to follow anyone who used the medium for the drab and uninteresting… give me ideas and make me think!

Back to job order sharing and candidate blasting.  The problem is that if you do this despicable act, you are part of the problem, creating noise, creating spam,  LinkedIN spam, twitterSpam, etc.

Here is how to do blasting right.

  1. Build a solid network of OPTS-IN that want to accept candidates or open Job Orders.
  2. Build a strong network of people in your field, you will have better luck sending to a targeted group of 25 than a mass spam of 1000.
  3. DO NOT assume that because someone is connected to you on a social network (ie LinkedIN) that they want to get blasts from you.  THIS IS NOT OK.
  4. If you want to use Twitter, create a separate account for blasting.
  5. Use a network that is highly specialized for blasting.  Don’t use a medium like LinkedIN unless you are in a group specifically for sharing of Jobs and Candidates.
  6. Actually TALK to people that are in your network.  If you are to do business with them, adding that human element sooner rather than later will help make you a better partner.
  7. If you are one of the people that gets a blast and did not opt-in.  Remove them from your social network

There is so much possibility in candidate and job order splits, if done right.

For vendors creating new offerings in this space (taking advantage of existing social networks)

  1. Think your model through so you don’t add more noise for all of us
  2. Understand that people are best served if they can separate the blasting from their social network personas
  3. Give your users the tools to be targeted.
  4. Above all, make sure your venue has some sort of opt-in

A few months ago, I suggested to Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIN to create a “flag” in LinkedIN that told you when a message was mass-mailed.  This should be very simple for them to implement.  If someone sends THE SAME message out to over 50 people on LinkedIN, the “mass-mailed”  flag is set.   This would give LinkedIN users the ability to immediately (1) delete the offending email and (2) remove that person from your network

Reid replied that they were looking at such an option already.  Sure.   I’m still getting spam Reid.  Spam is good for LinkedIN, I would be surprised and impressed if they added the feature.

So here is an idea for someone to build a useful service:

-Create a system that you can forward a linkedIN (or any social network) spam message to
-Pick some reasonable threshold.  If any one person is reported over that threshold they go on a “block list”
-Create a LinkedIN application that automatically deletes those messages

SocialSpam.com domain is available;)

I will give a $10,000 coupon/bounty, good for any Broadlook software, to anyone who builds this application.

I really hate spam.

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