How Foursquare Recruits in Silicon Valley [video]

Matt Alder, founder of MetaShift and one of the leading brains in the social recruitment world, recently back from a tour of Silicon Valley, quizzed Morgan Missen, FourSquare's Head of Talent on their approach to finding new talent.

Turns out Silicon Valley has even more acute problems in finding talented staff, particularly engineers, than many of the companies in the UK. As Missen points out, every person they offer a job, has competing offers from the other Silicon Valley giants. Watch the full video

If you're on a job hunt, it's worth noting how Missen uses Linkedin and social mentions as a way of cross-referencing and checking candidates, including delving back 5 years or more into their work experience.

That's probably true of virtually all recruiters out there, even those using application tracking systems. Candidates take note - it's never been more important to have a well crafted online resume whether it's Linkedin or another profile (check out the CV surgery and portfolio reviews at Chinwag's Careers Day next week)

On his travels, Matt also talks to William Uranga, Director of Recruiting at video platform Ooyala who talks about the challenges of hiring great staff when your brand name isn't so well known.

Check out the rest of Matt's video diary of his trip to the West coast, there's some interesting parallels to the challenges in London and the UK, particularly the painful dichotomy between the high number of available jobs, competition for great candidates in a landscape of rising youth unemployment.

Photo (cc) Jake Levine.