Labels.io, the recruitment startup that wants to simplify the resume, has surfaced its social authority algorithm through the introduction of a Labels Weight score on user profiles.
Perhaps similar to PeerIndex or Klout, the Labels Weight attempts to measure a job candidate’s “online professional authority” by measuring the impact of their social web activity – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the site’s own internal metrics. However, Labels.io says it’s different from other such systems in that it only factors in relevant content by filtering out social web updates that don’t correlate with a user’s specified skills (or tags) as filled out in their Labels.io profile.
So, for example, my endless tweets about coffee and related @ replies won’t increase my Labels Weight as they’ll be deemed to be off topic because I haven’t tagged ‘coffee’ as a skill. In contrast, conversations on Twitter about technology or the media that I partake in should help to boost that score especially if they are deemed to have authority. That said, Labels.io says its algorithm is designed to avoid being a popularity contest so, presumably, number of followers has less impact but perhaps ‘engagement’ more so.
So how might this be useful to recruiters? The idea, says the company, is that when a search for a candidate with specific skills and experience brings up two or more matching results, it could be that their Labels Weight is the clincher. That’s if online authority is thought to be important in relation to the job in question.
All in all it’s a pretty neat addition to Labels.io, although it wouldn’t be hard for other recruitment sites to replicate to some degree given that both PeerIndex and Klout offer an API and pitch themselves on the ability for users to take their social capital or reputation score with them. On that note, Labels.io also offers a widget so that a user’s Labels Weight can be embedded elsewhere.