If you are just thinking about building a Talent Community, you are way behind the times. Everyone is already doing it. 

In our fast paced ever changing socialized industry, we all have the tendency to jump on any bandwagon that looks like it is moving in the right direction. But wait, do we even know the first thing about what it takes to build a community?

Over the last several years as the social media firestorm has raged on, LinkedIn was quietly maintaining the status quo of being the "Professional Network." LinkedIn is like the Facebook for adults.

I used to think they would corner the market on the professional profiles and become the de-facto resume format. Anyone building an Applicant Tracking system had better be ready to process data from LinkedIn.

But ever since the IPO they have been moving in directions that make it less clear to me. 

Last week I wrote a post about how LinkedIn might be having an identity crisis. That was based purely on my own speculation and the rumor mill as I have never had an opportunity to receive a briefing from them regarding their vision.

My good friend Linda Brenner sent me an email this morning with a link to this article which I think spells it out pretty clearly.

It seems like every talent management technology vendor is scrambling to incorporate a "social" element into their products. I have listened to a lot of pitches and demos lately and I'm beginning to wonder have we hit the saturation point?

They are all propagating the concept that "we are social beings," and "this is how the millennial generation likes to operate." It makes me think with all this socialization when will any work get done? 

With any new trend, I think it's good to examine the cynical side - here's mine:

Last February LinkedIn introduced the beta feature allowing users to add Skills to their profile. They have made some changes along the way and it is now almost a year since launch.

Will this become a brilliant move to create the largest skills inventory the world has ever known? Or is it just another lame attempt to lure in corporate recruiting clients? 

The Jury is still out, but here is my take:

It seems that every time you turn around these days someone is inviting you to try out a new social tool or join a network. It does not look like it will slow down anytime soon.

Have you ever wondered how you will keep all these social profiles in synch? 

Fact: most employees occasionally use social media tools at work for personal reasons, anyway. Unsurprisingly, business leaders want guidelines in place for regulating employee use of social media outlets--and protecting against misuse--on personal and company accounts alike.

Many 2012 corporate to-do lists include creating an official policy for regulating employees’ Tweets, Likes and Shares while at work. One thing that I've noticed, though, is that while regulation-focused policies protect an organization against any potential social media blunders, they cast a shadow over the shoulder of every employee who uses the internet on a daily basis (shudder).

While all of the discussion over the last few months has been about SAP/SuccessFactors and more recently the Oracle/Taleo deal, LinkedIn has been quietly going about the business of making money.

After the hyped up IPO there was a lot of speculation that the company was overvalued and no way it could meet expectations and the stock suffered. But with a very strong fourth quarter the stock price has been boosted and is approaching $90/share again.

The question is: Can LinkedIn sustain this type of performance? 

In the late 1990's the explosion of the Web revolutionized the applicant tracking market. There were so many ATS products and it seemed like a new one popped up every week.  The market expanded, inevitably consolidated, and then more recently it has been moving horizontally to become the Talent Management Suite. In the last few years there has been lot's of speculation about whether or not the ATS is dead or dying.

But I am here to tell you that the ATS Lives! Only now it's called the Social Recruiting Platform.

I received an interesting email yesterday with a link to an Infographic put together by Jobvite. It is an illustration of the changing relationship between workers and employer and indicates the current average worker will have up to 11 jobs in their career. 

The Infographic was accompanied by a press release and the data was also incorporated into Dan Finnigan's presentation at SXSW entitled: "The Future of Work: Serial Monogamy." During his presentation he draws the analogy that in our generation, moving from one employer to the next every 4-5 years is like serial monogamy. But the next generation is moving so frequently it's more like speed dating.

Before starting The Newman Group I held four previous jobs. I only had to go through a traditional hiring process for one of them. I responded to an ad, had a phone call with a recruiter, two rounds of interviews, and I got the offer.  I have not been on that side of the fence for nearly twenty years. Until now.

I have ranted before about the hype around the use of social media technology in recruiting. There has been so much written about it, you start wondering if it’s about to jump the shark. Based on the number of new social media related tools entering the market, it is definitely clear that this won’t be a fad.

When you think about the Web 2.0 or 3.0 technology, you have to recognize that the value proposition has changed. For the last thirty years we have been deploying applications with one thing in mind. Efficiency. We needed to do more with less and so the purpose of technology used to be all about automation.

But lately it is a whole new ball game.

Back in November Jobvite published some results from their job seeker survey. From a national survey of more than 1,200 people in the workforce, the data suggests that more people use Facebook to find job opportunities than LinkedIn (48% to 26%).

I scratched my head a little, because this did not really jive with my perception of the market. Linked in is supposed to be the "professional" social network, Facebook is to share pictures of my dog?!?

I scoured the report to look for evidence to support my own preconceptions.