The green shoots of 2012?

You may know of Linkedin.com ? It is something like Facebook but for "work". Undoubtedly it has real value for me and others as an aid to building up ones own network of past colleagues and new contacts, but its commercial model is to make this huge database available to recruiters and headhunters who pay a premium to be able to search and contact members.

As I embarked on my latest phase of work that looks to include interim and contract work I decided to make sure that profile (rather like an online CV) was "attractive" and likely to appear in searches. As an indicator there is some feedback on Linkedin about how many searches ones profile appears in each week and indeed how many people actually viewed your profile.

I managed to improve my numbers until, as expected, the numbers fell away in the last couple of weeks before Christmas. This was totally predictable and expected, but the recovery I have seen in the first (4-day) business week of 2012 was not.

Now I know that these are indicators of "recruiter" activity and not of recruitment, and as such may be an indictaor of hope and effort rather than real opportunity and results, but considering that last week was a 4-day week following the long Christmas holiday I am surprised an encouraged to see the levels back up so quickly.

It will be interesting to see if this continues?

PS I make no comment about whether these are "good" figures or not, but am looking at the trends and patterns instead.