Klout announced it would be adding LinkedIn to its influence analysis. If you’re not familiar with Klout, it’s a tool that measures one’s influence online. It was first based on your Twitter presence, they then added Facebook and now LinkedIn. In other words, the more active you are online and the more followers, friends and now connections you have, the more online influence Klout says you have (that’s a simplified explanation). The tool has had marketers talking for a while now, but with the addition of LinkedIn, Klout is about to enter HR discussions. How does influence affect recruitment?
Measuring influence has been the source of some controversy in the marketing world. Some like Jeremiah Owyang argue companies will increasingly focus on clients with higher Klout scores (without ignoring the other ones). Their online “importance” makes them more valuable to the brand – positive or negative mentions of your brand will impact more people. Others, like Gary Vaynerchuk will argue that every customer matters whether she has 15 Twitter followers, 1,500,000 or none at all. As Chris Brogan and Julien Smith argue in Trust Agents
Although it would make sense to give some extra attention to those with more online influence, one big issue is that Klout can be gamed. For example, if I’m know I’m going to be checking in to a hotel who looks at Klout scores and treats me differently if I have a higher one; you can be pretty certain, I’ll be pumping up my usage to increase my score the days before…
Klout and recruitment
The question now is, how will a candidate’s Klout score influence the interview process? Evidently the goal is to hire the best candidate for the job — the one that best answers the requirements and fits within corporate culture, but how can a Klout score enter in the equation? What if you have two great candidates, but one has no Klout score and the other has a score of 52…who are you going to give the offer to first? Now, what if the one with no Klout score is a slightly better fit, who are you going to give the offer to then?
The idea of course is that, in theory, an employee with more online influence will help your employee branding through blog posts, Tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn updates because they’ll reach a broader audience.
Klout and treatment
Maybe adding influence to the recruitment equation is too farfetched for you right now. But where it becomes more evident is in the treatment of candidates through the interview process. Like customer service, candidate service is increasingly important (a post for another time perhaps). Yes, you should treat all candidates equally and with the biggest respect. But assume for a second you’ve done your research to see who exactly that candidate is and you know the woman interviewing tomorrow has a high Klout score, should you be extra nice, follow-up with her more often than with other candidates, get the VP to call her, give her a slightly higher salary?
After all, regardless of if you want to hire her or not, you want to stay on her good side because her online influence can have a impact on your consumer AND employee brand.
Should a candidate’s Klout score influence whether they get the job or how you will treat them?
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