Business networks and reference letters
The history of letters of recommendation dates back several hundred years. One hundred and two hundred years ago, an employee who came to take a new job, handed a document to a future employer, in which either in a free form or in an official tone it was reported that “this decent young man positively recommended himself ...” or from a good family of our friends, we recommend her as honest and responsible ... ”- and with such letters, the likelihood of receiving a place increased by orders of magnitude.
During the period of Soviet power, when unemployment “did not exist”, and vagrancy was strictly pursued, the so-called “job description” became the standard. And, although frequent job shifts were not encouraged, and “continuous work experience” at one place of work was considered a sign of a successful employee, of course, people still periodically changed jobs. In these situations, a characteristic from a previous job, backed up with a wet seal, was an important document that received close attention.
However, always - in past centuries, and in Soviet times, and today, important, sometimes - a priority recommender factor in almost all situations were and remain personal recommendations, family ties and the "hairy paw." The logic of the manager / potential employer is clear and transparent: it is important that the team be some kind of loyalty to the community, sometimes to the detriment of the professional level of the organization as a whole. It is impossible to force an employee to be loyal to a firm or manager, and the employer has the choice to recruit a person who is already socially close, and in the course of work bring up a specialist from the organization or take on an already established professional in the hope that he is correct. will join the team and take its place in the existing social structure; it will become a dedicated employee and employee of the company.
')
In modern society, the famous crash in the economy in the post-Soviet era, as well as due to the fact that a huge number of new trends in the industry have appeared, in particular, in the IT industry, worker migration has become a natural matter and no longer causes neither surprise nor condemnation among society in whole Firms are created and die, enterprises do not withstand competition and fall apart, the same organizations that keep afloat or even successfully develop - periodically change their strategy and activities. For many business processes, both on the part of specialists and on the part of employers, cooperation on a contractual basis — paper or even oral — is increasingly becoming more profitable when it comes to small private freelancing. The instability of such ties is obvious - neither the employee nor the employer receive guarantees that the assigned work will be performed qualitatively and on time, on the one hand, and paid without problems, on the other.
And here again, as in the old days, recommendation becomes a significant factor for creating a connection between an employee and an employer. The employer is looking for a specialist for a one-time project - he calls around friends, is charged off with his people from the contact list with a request to recommend a knowledgeable person; the more responsible the job is supposed to be, the more time is spent on exploring this specialist’s previous relationships with other employers.
Recruitment agencies, for the most part, have missed the importance of the factor of letters of recommendation. The job placement sites, as well as the corresponding offline structures, contain bases for employers and a resume database for specialists, but rarely where can one observe the linkage base already established between the employee and the employer. There is, of course, the commercial exchanges of projects, where such connections are created and, on the basis of these connections, a rating of both employees and employers is observed not for the first year. In particular, programmer exchanges, where registration is paid, and the risks of not getting the project or running into a rotten customer still remain, the exchange organizers are still trying to reduce such risks to zero by demonstrating the ratings of the links: the customer puts the project on the exchange, the experts subscribe to development, among the entire list, the customer chooses the developers, cooperation begins, and at the end of the development, the customer gives points to the developers (no matter if it is one person or team), and publishes his comments Arias about the cooperation that took place. In this way, the same recommendation is formed, which can be crucial when selecting developers for other exchange participants.
Such exchanges are rarely universal, as a rule - a narrow industry is chosen, for example, programmer exchanges, or translators exchanges (where there is a specificity), and one of the difficulties may be that developers, translators, in general, are trapped Stock exchanges - access to the rating is provided only to employers registered in the system, and no one will give out the entire recommendation base regarding the level of qualifications of a specialist. The same employer who is unable or unwilling to register on such exchanges, respectively, will look for his specialist in the old-fashioned way, through acquaintances or through recruiting agencies, receiving, in most cases, "a cat in a bag."
On the other hand, in most cases, it turns out that the specialist required by the employer is close enough to himself — at the distance of one mutual acquaintance. To know only at any given moment exactly which friend of all needs to call or write in order to find this specialist. A friend may, in turn, forget about something, or be inaccessible - turn off the phone, go on a business trip, do not respond to a personal message - and now the connection did not take place. To create a link based on a portfolio or data in a resume, not supported by social recommendation, is always quite risky.
Modern online social networks are trying to correct this omission. The task of any such network is to build chains of dating, to show connections between people. Therefore, if the network positions itself as a “business”, “business network”, it can partly solve the problem of finding business, partner and recruiting contacts, providing in addition to the general data of the network member that can be obtained from his profile, the necessary chains of his connections with other network members.
Nevertheless, the majority of such business networks within the framework of working models do not allow the implementation of a recommendation database. Those. the usual dating chain system is implemented, transferred from the offline world to the online world, and the model’s flexibility is that a participant interested in finding a business contact can learn information from the profiles of other participants and send inquiries through a personal messaging system to your friends.
But a more advanced implementation of the model is so close! As a rule, there is all the data in order to form a system of recommendations on the basis of existing business networks by industry.
According to the rules, almost every first member of the network fills in (or can fill out if they wish) a profile in which they list the place of work, previous places of work, their own interests (personal and professional). He indicates who he worked with, who he collaborated with, and the main purpose of such information is to increase the chains of acquaintances - the more information about himself the user publishes, the more likely it is that within the network there are people with whom he studied, worked, was friends.
For example, three years ago a network participant was a programmer, two years ago a system administrator, and today he is the technical director of a small IT company. Those. He is already positioning himself as a technical director with a certain work experience.
A certain employer is looking for a good technical director in his organization, an important condition - he must have a certain knowledge base and certain experience in the same industry. Of course, he will look for the right employee, using personal contacts, rather than employment agencies. Theoretically, within the framework of a developed social network, he will be able to find that technical director himself, and even assume that he will agree to move from a small company to his, well-known and large organization. But he needs confirmation that he was not mistaken in his choice. If he tries to receive these confirmations within the same network, he will also have to make inquiries through messaging systems or published contacts of other members of the network just like in offline life. But how can you optimize this data structure:
The technical director described above indicated in his profile current and previous jobs. And each of his current and future employers can add his own characteristic to each position he specifies. Those. He worked as a programmer three years ago - a link to recommendations from his employers about what kind of specialist he was. He worked as an administrator two years ago - again a link to the feature. Analyzing the published characteristics, the employer will be able to act with more confidence when choosing the specialist he needs right now.
On the one hand, with such a model, the network will grow faster, because an already registered network participant will try to attract his former employers to the network, at least with the aim of obtaining a direct recommendation text, within the same network. On the other hand, the good old system of letters of recommendation is being restored, which will allow the employer to quickly, without going beyond the scope of online communication, to get as much information as possible about the potential employee.
The next, yet far, unattainable step in the formation of a classic letter of recommendation is a sign confirming the quality and authenticity of the content. In offline life, such a sign is the wet stamp of an organization. Such a seal was placed on the characteristics of the work-study place in the Soviet era. The relevance of wet printing in the structure of modern business hampers the development of document exchange in any on-line processes, and the introduction of an electronic signature as an alternative sign still remains a dream of a civilized workflow model. But after all, it is not harmful to dream, and the desire for a civilized approach is - but if there is a sign - a seal or an electronic signature on the same employee characteristic, this text makes a meaningful and solid document.
However, it is too early to look into the distant future - for the time being even a simple model in which a network member could get a description from each employer for every position of his professional level - even this model has not yet been implemented to the extent that it would be seen. The chains are lined up - the participant-participant, which can help to find the necessary acquaintances, but the chains of the participant-position (specialization) -particle are not fully worked out. This means that a developed system of letters of recommendation is not yet available, and when it will be implemented is not known.
During the period of Soviet power, when unemployment “did not exist”, and vagrancy was strictly pursued, the so-called “job description” became the standard. And, although frequent job shifts were not encouraged, and “continuous work experience” at one place of work was considered a sign of a successful employee, of course, people still periodically changed jobs. In these situations, a characteristic from a previous job, backed up with a wet seal, was an important document that received close attention.
However, always - in past centuries, and in Soviet times, and today, important, sometimes - a priority recommender factor in almost all situations were and remain personal recommendations, family ties and the "hairy paw." The logic of the manager / potential employer is clear and transparent: it is important that the team be some kind of loyalty to the community, sometimes to the detriment of the professional level of the organization as a whole. It is impossible to force an employee to be loyal to a firm or manager, and the employer has the choice to recruit a person who is already socially close, and in the course of work bring up a specialist from the organization or take on an already established professional in the hope that he is correct. will join the team and take its place in the existing social structure; it will become a dedicated employee and employee of the company.
')
In modern society, the famous crash in the economy in the post-Soviet era, as well as due to the fact that a huge number of new trends in the industry have appeared, in particular, in the IT industry, worker migration has become a natural matter and no longer causes neither surprise nor condemnation among society in whole Firms are created and die, enterprises do not withstand competition and fall apart, the same organizations that keep afloat or even successfully develop - periodically change their strategy and activities. For many business processes, both on the part of specialists and on the part of employers, cooperation on a contractual basis — paper or even oral — is increasingly becoming more profitable when it comes to small private freelancing. The instability of such ties is obvious - neither the employee nor the employer receive guarantees that the assigned work will be performed qualitatively and on time, on the one hand, and paid without problems, on the other.
And here again, as in the old days, recommendation becomes a significant factor for creating a connection between an employee and an employer. The employer is looking for a specialist for a one-time project - he calls around friends, is charged off with his people from the contact list with a request to recommend a knowledgeable person; the more responsible the job is supposed to be, the more time is spent on exploring this specialist’s previous relationships with other employers.
Recruitment agencies, for the most part, have missed the importance of the factor of letters of recommendation. The job placement sites, as well as the corresponding offline structures, contain bases for employers and a resume database for specialists, but rarely where can one observe the linkage base already established between the employee and the employer. There is, of course, the commercial exchanges of projects, where such connections are created and, on the basis of these connections, a rating of both employees and employers is observed not for the first year. In particular, programmer exchanges, where registration is paid, and the risks of not getting the project or running into a rotten customer still remain, the exchange organizers are still trying to reduce such risks to zero by demonstrating the ratings of the links: the customer puts the project on the exchange, the experts subscribe to development, among the entire list, the customer chooses the developers, cooperation begins, and at the end of the development, the customer gives points to the developers (no matter if it is one person or team), and publishes his comments Arias about the cooperation that took place. In this way, the same recommendation is formed, which can be crucial when selecting developers for other exchange participants.
Such exchanges are rarely universal, as a rule - a narrow industry is chosen, for example, programmer exchanges, or translators exchanges (where there is a specificity), and one of the difficulties may be that developers, translators, in general, are trapped Stock exchanges - access to the rating is provided only to employers registered in the system, and no one will give out the entire recommendation base regarding the level of qualifications of a specialist. The same employer who is unable or unwilling to register on such exchanges, respectively, will look for his specialist in the old-fashioned way, through acquaintances or through recruiting agencies, receiving, in most cases, "a cat in a bag."
On the other hand, in most cases, it turns out that the specialist required by the employer is close enough to himself — at the distance of one mutual acquaintance. To know only at any given moment exactly which friend of all needs to call or write in order to find this specialist. A friend may, in turn, forget about something, or be inaccessible - turn off the phone, go on a business trip, do not respond to a personal message - and now the connection did not take place. To create a link based on a portfolio or data in a resume, not supported by social recommendation, is always quite risky.
Modern online social networks are trying to correct this omission. The task of any such network is to build chains of dating, to show connections between people. Therefore, if the network positions itself as a “business”, “business network”, it can partly solve the problem of finding business, partner and recruiting contacts, providing in addition to the general data of the network member that can be obtained from his profile, the necessary chains of his connections with other network members.
Nevertheless, the majority of such business networks within the framework of working models do not allow the implementation of a recommendation database. Those. the usual dating chain system is implemented, transferred from the offline world to the online world, and the model’s flexibility is that a participant interested in finding a business contact can learn information from the profiles of other participants and send inquiries through a personal messaging system to your friends.
But a more advanced implementation of the model is so close! As a rule, there is all the data in order to form a system of recommendations on the basis of existing business networks by industry.
According to the rules, almost every first member of the network fills in (or can fill out if they wish) a profile in which they list the place of work, previous places of work, their own interests (personal and professional). He indicates who he worked with, who he collaborated with, and the main purpose of such information is to increase the chains of acquaintances - the more information about himself the user publishes, the more likely it is that within the network there are people with whom he studied, worked, was friends.
For example, three years ago a network participant was a programmer, two years ago a system administrator, and today he is the technical director of a small IT company. Those. He is already positioning himself as a technical director with a certain work experience.
A certain employer is looking for a good technical director in his organization, an important condition - he must have a certain knowledge base and certain experience in the same industry. Of course, he will look for the right employee, using personal contacts, rather than employment agencies. Theoretically, within the framework of a developed social network, he will be able to find that technical director himself, and even assume that he will agree to move from a small company to his, well-known and large organization. But he needs confirmation that he was not mistaken in his choice. If he tries to receive these confirmations within the same network, he will also have to make inquiries through messaging systems or published contacts of other members of the network just like in offline life. But how can you optimize this data structure:
The technical director described above indicated in his profile current and previous jobs. And each of his current and future employers can add his own characteristic to each position he specifies. Those. He worked as a programmer three years ago - a link to recommendations from his employers about what kind of specialist he was. He worked as an administrator two years ago - again a link to the feature. Analyzing the published characteristics, the employer will be able to act with more confidence when choosing the specialist he needs right now.
On the one hand, with such a model, the network will grow faster, because an already registered network participant will try to attract his former employers to the network, at least with the aim of obtaining a direct recommendation text, within the same network. On the other hand, the good old system of letters of recommendation is being restored, which will allow the employer to quickly, without going beyond the scope of online communication, to get as much information as possible about the potential employee.
The next, yet far, unattainable step in the formation of a classic letter of recommendation is a sign confirming the quality and authenticity of the content. In offline life, such a sign is the wet stamp of an organization. Such a seal was placed on the characteristics of the work-study place in the Soviet era. The relevance of wet printing in the structure of modern business hampers the development of document exchange in any on-line processes, and the introduction of an electronic signature as an alternative sign still remains a dream of a civilized workflow model. But after all, it is not harmful to dream, and the desire for a civilized approach is - but if there is a sign - a seal or an electronic signature on the same employee characteristic, this text makes a meaningful and solid document.
However, it is too early to look into the distant future - for the time being even a simple model in which a network member could get a description from each employer for every position of his professional level - even this model has not yet been implemented to the extent that it would be seen. The chains are lined up - the participant-participant, which can help to find the necessary acquaintances, but the chains of the participant-position (specialization) -particle are not fully worked out. This means that a developed system of letters of recommendation is not yet available, and when it will be implemented is not known.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4243/
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