How to Use Identified for a Social Job Search

Have you heard of Identified yet? It is still in its beta stage and purveys itself as a site for ‘Young Professionals’. Identified was launched to the public in November 2011, and topped 1 million members in January of this year. I decided to try it out to see whether it was actually useful in finding a job.

Installation

When you first accept Identified (by connecting it to Facebook), you are given a ‘Rank’ (or a score). Scores are marked out of 100, with Identified stating that a higher score will get you seen by more companies, thus getting you more job prospects (you can see an infographic below on how scores are created). At the first window, you are given three steps to complete your profile and therefore improve your ranking.

Step 1 – School/Education –

When I updated my University details, my score went down 31 points from 38 to 7. I don’t understand why, as I had added more details!

Step 2 – Work –

When adding companies/work, each company should be linked to its own page, alongside job titles. Adding in start and end date from yearly lists, with the option to choose whether it’s your current position, gives you a higher score – when I added one company’s details, my score went up 8 points to 15, adding another took it up 40 points (to 55), which meant my ranking jumping up 34 spots.

Step 3 – Invite friends –

You are finally welcomed to invite your friends to Identified. You can invite friends either through Gmail, Yahoo mail or Windows Live mail. This is not a necessary step, and you can skip it. You are automatically linked to anyone of your Facebook friends who joins or has joined Identified.

Score

You are given a score out of 100 – a score made up from ratings on your network, work and education. You can receive a higher score by adding more details about your network, work and education. You can see more details on how the score is calculated in the infographic above.

The scoring element of the website is something I’ve never seen done before, and seems to be thought out very well – with the different components of education, work and network affecting how you turn up in searches.

Homepage

The ‘Marketplace’ is found on the homepage of the website, alongside a ranking list of how you rank amongst your friends, and ranking lists of companies and universities. The Marketplace lists news and updates about companies (which you have worked for or are suited to you) and their new employees, as well as people who have joined companies which studied the same degree at University (you can see an example of the ticker below).

However, my Marketplace listed all American companies and universities – not very useful for a British jobseeker! There is also a ‘To Do’ list, which will further improve your ranking – examples including adding your GPA to your University information).

Profile

When updating your profile, there are three different sections:

The Personal Information section is made up of ‘Basic Information’ and ‘Professional Summary’. The ‘Basic Information’ requires an email address and zip code, however the zip code has to be in the American format – something which is not helpful for British people! Professional Summary – job title / Industry / Personal bio
The Work Experience… Job titles are linked to pages. Some companies are linked to pages, some don’t have a page.
Education History….When you add a University – school name (linked to a list), Grad Year (linked to dates), Degree type (eg BS for Bachelor of Science etc) – something I haven’t seen on sites yet), and what you ‘major’ed in. I was offered to copy the information from my LinkedIn profile – however this link did not work.

On a completed profile, there are three graphs – the ‘Network’ graph (either showing the strength of your network, or on a friend’s profile – the strength of your network against theirs), the ‘Work Experience’ graph (which maps employment history using arrows across the years of employment, linking to each company and the position), and then finally the ‘Education History’ graph (which again maps school or university history using arrows across the years and links to the respective places).

Besides each graph there is a list on the left, which tells you where you rank against your friends, where your current company ranks against the others on the site (except none of my companies had a page or ranking), and where your school or university ranks against the others on the site. This is extremely interesting if all your details are ranked, however none of my companies had pages – therefore I just got presented with a list of the top 5 companies on the site.

All together, the profile section of the website has a clean design, and an interesting interface, however some parts (such as non-existant school/company pages) can bring it down a bit.

Friends

When searching for friends/other users – you are shown the level of connection (e.g. 1st, 2nd), and their score. Once onto their profile, you can send friends messages (or add them if you are not yet connected), and also get comparisons on the network graph. People in the search results are listed by rank, with highest at the top of the results, decreasing down the results.

However, you can also search for a company and job title as well as people – making it a very good search engine for recruiters who want to see the most experienced and schooled job seekers, as well as job seekers who may be looking for the perfect company or job to work for/as.

Pros

The website has a very simple and clean design – the graphics are eye catching and everything is easy to read and looks tidy.
The scoring element of the website is an interesting new format – it is the first time I have seen on it any recruiting website, and it is a different way of finding jobs or candidates.

Cons

The website is still very ‘Americanised’, with zipcode needed (and postcodes not accepted) and GPA (grade point average) accepted for universities. It seems that they have not yet moved into the UK sector.
There are very few British schools or companies listed – and these do not have scores, making the ranking very unrealistic.
Some links don’t work – like copying information from LinkedIn.

Conclusions

Identified is still in its beta version, and although there are some elements which need improving – such as the need for the British part of the website – and improvements in other areas. The ranking system is extremely interesting and a whole new way of recruiting, however, it is flawed because of some pages lacking.

Have you tried this website before? Do you think scores and ranking could work?