Why #LinkedIn is Not a Job Board

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“LinkedIn is becoming just another Job Board.” Is that true?

I think we are mixing up several unrelated things in a statement like this.

1) Job Boards seems to be used as a criticism. But Job Boards, such as Monster.com are still great for sourcing (you may skip the advanced semantic search when signing up if the price is a concern). Why is there a perception that Job Boards are not a place to go to? They have parsed resumes, structured search, and a good sourcer can still dig out a lot.

2) I agree, it’s too bad when LinkedIn is adding new restrictions. I have complained about LinkedIn quite a few times, but I must say that I haven’t been able to stay away from LinkedIn on any of my searches. It has become our top resource, especially given a great rate of response from potential candidates.

With any added restrictions and added functionality targeted at recruiters, LinkedIn will never become a job board, for two main reasons:

  • Job boards have resumes vs. LinkedIn profiles, 80% of which are not filled out completely; this is a challenge but is also an opportunity
  • on job boards recruiters and candidates are on the “opposite” sides and can’t view each other as members of a network; on LinkedIn we can check each other out and establish trust.

Sure, LinkedIn’s growing limitations are frustrating to all. But so far there are so many great ways to use LinkedIn for sourcing. Hope it remains this way.

Comments 3

  1. Hello Irina,

    I just saw your post on Linkedin and wanted to share a comment. Thank you for a very timely post. I’ve actually spent the past month interviewing 3rd party and corporate recruiters who have said that they say LinkedIn is becoming just another job board for the following reasons:

    1. Active LI Profiles = Active Searchers already disqualified for searches, but they show up continuously as they do on the job boards. Folks who actually tend to their profiles appear repeatedly in searches by recruiters. How can recruiters get past these profiles on Linkedin? As one recruiter shared: “I consider any complete profile on LinkedIn an Active Candidate and I want Passive Candidates.”

    2. Passive Profiles lack complete data to complete easy searches. The candidates that may be a fit don’t spend time updating their profiles and acquiring endorsements as they may be seen by their employers as looking for new positions. There is no confidentiality on a public profile and Linkedin doesn’t support confidential searches. It’s a public network.

    3. “The best candidates don’t need Linkedin. They have a network that refers them to great new opportunities and that’s how we source them”. As one recruiter mentioned, networking is still an effective way to match great candidates with great opportunities. Facilitating this confidential and trusted flow of opportunities seems to be still in high demand. It’s not clear that Linkedin is filling this need.

    It seems that Linkedin and the job-boards have overlapping datasets. Linkedin still wins out as the leader, but who will fill the need for more unique datasets? If Linkedin looks like Monster in the quality of data, isn’t it easily perceived as just another job board?

    Cheers,
    Taariq

  2. I can see how more sophisticated the dashboard gets the more restriction are added. Perhaps LinkedIn is working to have EVERYONE who uses it (as a weapon of choice for finding talent) to pay an even smaller fee, perhaps $9 per month?? hmm

  3. Wow… my fav topic. Thanks for bringing this up again Irina. I often have this argument with my colleagues and industry recruiters. In fact, I had a heated article on this on SourceCon.
    http://www.sourcecon.com/news/2011/04/13/linkedin-is-not-a-job-board/

    It is partly fault of LinkedIn to open up this platform for recruiters for free with similar attributes that of job portal. This prompts recruiters to use and abuse the data more so often. The biggest difference some of the recruiters fails to understand is that you have a different audience on LinkedIn who are not waiting to offer the jobs. You have people to network and find leads – just like sales. Your job offer may be similar to spam if you are not putting it in a right way.

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