Sourcing Social? Don't Forget Quora!

July 3, 2014 at 12:21 PM by Rob Stevenson

The big social networks can be great sources of information on candidates, but often the nature of these Screen_Shot_2014-07-03_at_11.47.15_AMsites makes comprehensive evaluation a bit slippery. For example, someone may prefer tweeting about the World Cup than their own professional industry. Or, even if they are commenting on something relevant to their work, what's the smartest thing that's ever been written with two thumbs in 140 characters? Facebook and LinkedIn have similar issues, as the former is more personal and off-work and the latter tends to exist as a set & forget digital resume. Where does that leave you in your social recruitment efforts?

Enter Quora. Quora is a question and answer site that solves all the above shortcomings of the big three social networks. First, it is a board where people will ask serious professional questions. There's a certain amount of tomfoolery, to be sure, but once you're in the right topic, you're guaranteed to find quality questions. Secondly, people on Quora take the time to think through longer, meaningful responses, so they aren't trying to squeeze thoughts in a tiny area using AIM era shorthand. Through Quora, you can search for technical and specific questions and find the professionals who are answering them in experienced, thoughtful manners. Here's a crash course in how to source Quora!

A few things stand out about Quora:

  1. Answers get upvoted by the community, so the top answers are ones that the community deems most valuable.
  2. The community is very tech-centric but consists of many experts in a variety offields ranging from technology to cooking to film.
  3. Quora is already the 725th most visited site in the world, and traffic/engagement has been growing steadily for years.
  4. Quora recently raised $50 million, meaning the site will be around for a while and should continue to grow into the future.

Given this, how is Quora useful for recruiting? In a nutshell, Quora provides wonderful
context both about a person’s interests as well as what they’re knowledgeable bout, both of which are frequently difficult to ascertain from other data sources.
Here’s a sample Quora profile:

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While some Quora profiles may be somewhat sparse, oftentimes you’ll still be able to  derive valuable information from someone’s profile.

Header: Here you’ll notice location, company and school information. While much of this data can be ascertained from data sources like Linkedin or Facebook, Linkedin frequently contains very generalized location (i.e. San Francisco Bay Area as opposed to San Francisco or San Jose) and Facebook data can be hard to view. Quora provides another resource for determining basic candidate information.

Left pane: Quora users will often include links to their other web presences, and you’ll be able to locate this underneath their profile picture. Quora now supports Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Tumblr and Wordpress, and this connection can make it easy to get full context around any candidate. Quora even has a Linkedin integration where users can share their Quora [professional] activity directly to the professional network. Additionally, below this you’ll see a user’s Quora stats neatly organized into a number of diferent categories including:

Topics: This section can provide some valuable context about the various topics that a person may be interested in. Here’s an example:

Screen_Shot_2014-07-03_at_11.19.06_AM

These topics don’t necessarily have to be professional, giving you ample opportunity to understand someone from a cultural standpoint before connecting with them. Additionally, some people mainly follow professional topics, giving you great insight into their professional interests. Maybe a designer recently followed the Ruby on Rails or Python topics. Being able to find this type of information can give you an edge in understanding a candidate's professional interests.

 

Want to learn more? We've got a free Quora walkthrough full of many more tips for your social recruiting endeavors. Click below to access!

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