One of the few paid Sourcing tools I use is RPS (LinkedIn Recruiter, or LIR, for Agencies). It is our highest yearly expense, but we have been choosing to stay with it for a number of years now. My favorite feature of LIR has always been “Talent Pipeline” (the name doesn’t really fit), which is, in fact, the import function. As you import Excel files into LIR, the records are matched to LinkedIn profiles, and, as import finishes, you can search across the combined info. It’s a powerful Sourcing technique and has been my frequent go-to when Sourcing. The import function has also been quite reliable.
With the just-released new UI, we still have the import function, but LinkedIn has cut off its features to the point where its usefulness sounds like a question mark to me. Import appears to be a much weaker function in the new version.
Here is a brief summary of the changes.
There is no longer a way to match imported fields with LinkedIn’s.
The file to import (it seems) must be CSV-formatted with exactly these columns:
- First name
- Last name
- E-mail address
- Phone number
We used to be able to have one column with first/last, giving us some flexibility. But what is worse, I don’t see a way to import any additional values (that used to go to Notes – and we could then search by them!) Import crashes if a column is added to the import file.
(Before the changes, I was thinking that import would become even more powerful if we could match imported columns with custom fields. Forget about that now!)
And what’s worst of all – at least in my experiments, LIR can import only so many records at once. I was able to import a file with 119 records, but anything over ~140 failed with an error message.
We used to be able to import up to 5K records at a time. Is this a bug? Unless this is fixed (or we find a workaround 😉 ), the Recruiter import feature, a.k.a. Talent Pipeline will have much less value for Sourcers.
Let’s stay optimistic and hope that we will get the full functionality back.
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Comments 2
Hi Irina, some of the search filters are not live in the new experience yet, but they’re around the corner coming next quarter. If this is a blocker for your workflow, we can easily opt you back into the old experience until those features are complete. For the import limit, it is currently set to 200 at a time, but are evaluating an increase. The crashing shouldn’t be happening though, would be happy to get our support folks on the line for you.
We’re excited that you were able to be an early adopter of the experience and welcome any feedback you have– please reach out anytime!
Author
Renata,
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate your desire to make LinkedIn software changes attractive. But the new LIR UI has not given us much joy so far.
I have a question – why, in the new UI, we can’t search by all the filters within a Project? This is an essential function, it’s hard to work without it. Am I missing it?
To let you know, reducing import limits from 5,000 to 200, in my mind, makes it so much less useful. (Plus, other useful features have been cut-off from Import/Talent Pipeline, as described in the blog.) The Pipeline has been one of the major attractions, making me reniew the subscription every year.
Also, we have lost, these filters for now, in addition to Project search:
– Notes search
– Reviews search
– Reminders search
– Project Statuses
LinkedIn: What was the reason to release a partial, with fewer features, new UI??
As for many colleagues, LIR is our largest yearly expense.
Is it OK to reduce its functions mid-year, continuing to charge the same price (and going to raise the pricing as well)?
Hoping things will improve.
-Irina