Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab

Thursday, March 03, 2005

LinkedIn Jobs

Jeff Clavier has a nice post on LinkedIn Jobs pricing themselves at the low-middle end of the online job spectrum (with heavy introductory discounts). Scanning the jobs at LinkedIn quickly vs the same search at Monster, the VAST majority appear at LinkedIn to connect you with...exactly the same HR guys that post them on Monster (ie, not real decision-makers).

Is this a longer, more costly way of doing something that's more easily done with switchboard models like Monster? Yeah - so I think the key success driver is gonna be hooking job-seekers up with decision-makers, so the ratio shifts to offer at least a significant minority of jobs offered directly by decision-makers (so LinkedIn has some source of competitive advantage or at least differentiation against Monster etc). I'm pretty sure the LinkedIn guys are clued in to this, but from the looks of things, it's gonna be a tough road.

-- umair // 1:53 PM // 3 comments

Comments:

Many jobs are actually posted by the recruiting executive, especially in the startups case. Larger companies are more challenging, as you are pointing out, since HR are handling the recruitment process.

Remember however that companies can also leverage LinkedIn to figure out who knows a given candidate, and therefore have an idea of who to use for reference checks, etc. That might be a driver for a larger adoption of the service.

# //

Jeff Clavier // 8:25 PM

LinkedIn is hoping to shift to have more hiring managers posting jobs, providing the face for trusted contacts to find, and using its contact features to avoid him/her being deluged with inquiries. LinkedIn is providing value to job seekers who use Monster, Hotjobs and other sites as well. Hence the LinkedIn JobsInsider (available for download on http://www.linkedin.com/jobs) as well as on Download.com - which will automatically search within your network for people at the company for which you're looking at a job posting. Business networking is the key to any job search as many of us have found out!

- Rob Leathern (www.analystblog.com)

# //

Anonymous // 4:52 PM

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad to see you guys are aiming to get more hiring managers using the service. I think it's a great idea - and I think the value prop of connecting job seekers to decision makers (with embedded refs) is a much more powerful one than Monster or your other competitors. Good luck!!

# //

umair // 1:57 PM