Relationship Scores are our algorithmic prediction of the strength of relationship between a Connection and a Target.
We use lots of data points to create a composite score - the Relationship Score - which helps you identify which of your Connections is the best path to your Target (i.e. which one you should ask for an intro).
Why is this important?
Because the fact that two people are connected on LinkedIn has become a weak signal - if not enriched with other data.
Many people have thousands and thousands of connections, but most of them are fleeting: they met at a conference once, they accepted a connection request from someone in their industry, they got on a sales call five years ago.
So the fact that they're connected means very little on its own.
But start combining that with other data, and that changes: did they overlap at work, and if so, for how long and when? Did they go the same school? How many mutual connections do they have? Have they ever met each other? Were they on a podcast or a TED stage together? Do they share a common investor, or have they both invested in the same company? What's their relative seniority? Etc, etc.
You want to maintain your impeccable professional reputation, so it's important that when you ask for intros, the person you're asking needs to feel like you've done the homework. They need to see that it's not just a random request - that there's some thought behind it.
Here's a question: which of the below intro requests would you react more positively to?
- 'Hey, saw you're connected to [Sam Stone] - any chance you're close enough to ping him about an intro?'
- 'Hey, saw you overlapped at [Airtable] in [Product] with [Sam Stone] a couple years ago - any chance you're still close enough to ping him about an intro?'
#2 is far superior - instead of being viewed as someone who is just shooting from the hip, you'll be seen as being thoughtful about your requests, and tailoring them to the right people.
Relationship Scores are Draftboard's way of enriching your network graph so that you can make better decisions. They're not perfect nor are they exhaustive - but they give you a huge leg up vs. simply knowing that two people are connected. And us doing the scoring for you massively reduces the amount of time you'll spend opening and closing LinkedIn profile pages as you try to manually identify who worked at the same company / went to the same school.
We're always improving our scoring, so please don't hesitate to let us know if you ideas of other data sources that can make Draftboard an even better product for you!
