By Dan Lindley
The social network Affinity Circles has launched inCircle Recruiting, a candidate sourcing tool aimed, like many other recruiting tools these days, at generating quality rather than quantity in the search for job candidates.
InCircle lets recruiters target passive candidates through exclusive social networks they trust, the company said, because members of Affinity’s social networks are college alumni or belong to professional organizations.
Launched in 2002, Affinity Circles is a mix of Facebook and LinkedIn, according to Chuck Taylor, Affinity’s VP for marketing. It bears the more serious aspects of LinkedIn, which members use mostly for professional networking. But Affinity’s members can also do fun stuff as on Facebook, like sharing pictures. The big difference between Affinity and most other social networks, Taylor said, is that Affinity Circles is open just to members of the alumni associations and professional groups that the company works with, while the bigger social networks are open to all. That makes its members more valuable to recruiters, Taylor said.
“Everyone is who they say they are,” Taylor said. “The offline equivalent would be a country club. You go there to have fun and to make good connections.”
So far, Affinity has about 140 associations that it works with, ranging from Santa Clara University to the California State Bar Association. That gives members and recruiters a level of trust that they may not have on other social networks, Taylor averred. Members’ profiles also must be requested by a company interested in establishing contact, which adds a level of privacy, especially for those who don’t want to jeopardize their current jobs, he said.
Organizations pay about $10,000 a year to affiliate with Affinity Circles, and sign multiyear contracts. But the social network hopes to bring in the bulk of its revenue from advertising by recruiters and employers.
Employers can establish a brand on specific networks to woo employees they’re after. For instance, if they’re looking for engineers, they could target colleges with strong engineering programs. Employers’ branding ads appear on the right-hand side in the communities they’ve picked.
Beyond generating instant job applications, Taylor said, the service is about “building relationships” – establishing a presence with passive candidates who may not be looking for other work now, but who may be so in the future. Sharing an alma mater can give an instant level of trust, he said. “Inside alumni communities, you don’t have to have a personal relationship,” he said. “The connection alone is often enough.”
InCircle offers more relevant prospects than postings on traditional job boards, Taylor said, and cuts down on reams of irrelevant résumés that recruiters and employers often complain about. Still, he said, the site can provide a high number of good prospects. Since March, he said, “we’ve driven almost 4,000 candidates to Merrill Lynch.” Of those, he added, Merrill has put out feelers to 200 prospects.
Touted as the next wave in recruiting, social networking has hit a few bumps along the road recently. Monster Worldwide announced that it was closing its social network Tickle at the end of this month, for instance. “We’re all suffering from social-network fatigue,” Taylor conceded, adding that “it’s possible to waste a lot of money on social networks.”
But Affinity Circles makes searches more relevant than most job boards and social networks, he said, by getting prospects to fill in a highly detailed skills glossary that changes by occupation. For instance, programmers are asked to list specific program languages they know. The skills glossary allows recruiters to search for someone with just the skill set they’re looking for, he said. Only users with matching skills ever see an ad from an appropriate employer.
Affinity Circles has nearly 700,000 registered users. That’s small compared to better-known social networks like LinkedIn, which claims more than 20 million registered users and which Taylor views as his company’s closest competitor. Other competitors include Experience, Doostang and AfterCollege, although they’re targeted more at entry-level prospects.
It’s a competitive space, but Affinity has grand plans. Taylor said the company hopes to increase the number of associations it works with by a factor of 10. “We’re capturing large chunks of degreed professionals,” Taylor said. “Once we’re big enough, others will avoid this space. We’ll be viewed as the dominant entity.”
Perhaps. Affinity Circles, based in Mountain View, Calif., has 30 employees.
