Hawk Search Executive Recruitment

OTC DERIVATIVES "YEAR IN PREVIEW" WEBINAR ON 21ST JANUARY

On Thursday this week DerivSource are running a webinar at 11am EST to discuss what lies ahead for the derivatives processing and operations space and share suggestions for how both buy- side and sell-side firms can keep up with the ever-changing environment. The panel will review both how industry developments including regulation and execution of Fed Letter goals will impact both financial institutions and the industry at large in the short and long term.

The webinar is moderated by Julia Schieffer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, DerivSource.

Panellists include:

Joe Sack, Executive Adviser, SIFMA Asset Management Group

Cherie Graham, Senior Vice President, Brown Brothers Harriman

John Jay, Senior Analyst, Aite GroupTim McCullough, Chatham Financial

To register, here is a link with more information.

LINKEDIN LIKES AND DISLIKES - PART TWO

We wrote a few days ago about some things people in our LinkedIn network said they liked and disliked about LinkedIn. We also asked them for some of their recommended Don'ts in using the site. Here you go...

- Don't connect to me and ask for an introduction to someone else in the same message or in the same day.

- Don't install the LinkedIn Outlook add-in without being prepared to spend time managing the changes that are suggested. The information is sometimes inconsistent and out of date.

- Don't get linked in to so called LIONs that have 1000s of connections which breaks the usefulness of the degrees of separation as you end up being linked to people with whom you have no meaningful connection.

- Don't use the introduction functionality. This responder said it tries to over automate a human process. If you have a second degree contact, e-mail your first degree contact and ask for a personal introduction. The automated route has a lower probability of success.

- Don't invite or accept invitations from people you do not know as it creates all sorts of hassles.

- Don't add too many applications to your profile as it makes it look confusing.

- Don't write a reference for someone on there on the same day they write one for you.

- Don't forget that in updating your status you could be revealing sensitive information about yourself/your business.

- Don't forget your boss could be watching your activity on LinkedIn and become suspicious/see you are job hunting if your usage becomes more active or out of the ordinary.

- Don't use it as a substitute for real contacts or face-to-face conversations. or use it as some kind of game to see how many contacts you can amass.

- Don't send out group messages via LinkedIn as it shares contact e-mail addresses. At least it did when we asked our network what they thought of LinkedIn.

And finally, one person said...

- Don't tell people what books you are reading or which airports you are travelling through as it's nerdy.

LINKEDIN LIKES AND DISLIKES - PART ONE

We received 2 messages last week via LinkedIn that were out of kilter with the site’s motto that “Relationships Matter”. The first was a message from a Group Owner saying they were no longer including recruiter professionals in their group. Feeling unloved, we asked why. The non-specific reply was that it was a new group guideline. Fair enough. The person who sent that reply also sent an invitation to connect. Isn't that a bit cheeky? The second message was an invitation to connect. It said as we are in the same industry we can benefit from each other's network. We looked at the person's profile. It said for reasons of confidentiality they kept their contacts hidden. Again, cheeky and just a bit one-sided?

Those 2 messages got us thinking about what people liked and disliked about LinkedIn. So, we fired off a quick message to 35 people in our network and asked for a one sentence answer to the following 3 questions...

1) What is your favourite LinkedIn feature?

2) What is the most frustrating thing for you about LinkedIn?

3) If you were to provide one DON'T relating to usage, what would it be?

Twenty two people replied and these are the things they liked most...

a) Group discussions for networking, industry expertise, promoting events and being able to get answers for research/articles from people within and outside of your network.

b) The ability to re-connect with former colleagues.

c) Viewing contacts' connections to network and/or reference check before meetings/interviews.

d) Finding candidates.

e) The search function allowing you to find people by company/location/postcode.

f) The fact that people create their profiles.

g) The ability to confirm invitations via e-mail instead of logging into the site.

Frustrating things fell broadly in 2 groups relating to both functionality and best practice...

i) New users wrote that they could get more out of it if there were good online tutorials or better screen prompts.

ii) Contact sharing isn’t always reciprocal.

iii) Group Owners can't prevent members from moving discussions/event postings to the "Jobs" tab when they have nothing to do with jobs.

iv) Getting contacted by head hunters offering you US West Coast Software roles when, for example, you're UK based and in a different industry.

v) You can only use it if you pay as the "for free" account is useless.

vi) The inability to see if people are active users and when they last updated their profiles.

vii) The regular LinkedIn message, "We are currently upgrading the search engine. Search will be back momentarily."

viii) Job postings are expensive and quickly get lost in the mass.

ix) Some of the navigation is fiddly, for example, you cannot delete things from your inbox.

x) Weak integration with address book and communication tools like presence enabled IM. One responder said they'd like to make LinkedIn their address book on fixed and mobile, with the ability to make comments about individual people and integrate across fixed and mobile.

xi) Not being able to pull group e-mail lists any more - can only send a message through LinkedIn to groups.

xii) Keeping up-to-date with the changes to contacts and related news.

xiii) There's no blackberry application yet.

xiv) The iPhone application is not very good.

xv) Spam messages are increasing.

Later in the week we will list the LINKEDIN DON'Ts. There were rather a lot!