SO..I took the new #Linkedin Recruiting Professional Certification test…

Full disclosure: I’m a LinkedIN Corporate Recruiter Certified Expert, have been recruiting for 5 years, and I didn’t pass it.

This just may be sour grapes, but I wanted to throw this out there to see if other recruiters share a similar sentiment.

This is not a “best practices” recruiter exam, this is most definitely a “LinkedIN Recruiter as a Product” certification (nothing wrong with that, it's a great product and lots of us make our living from it) but I believe it has several flawed assumptions at its core, namely:

a)      It assumes recruiters don’t use Outlook to manage appointments or email

b)      It assumes you import all of your candidates into LinkedIN Recruiter (and add tags and status updates there), not your Applicant Tracking System (which makes more sense)

c)      All of your hiring managers ALSO have paid LinkedIN Recruiter slots so they can review candidates as well

It seems very geared towards Corporate HR and recruiting over Agency type work, with the biggest assumption being that you have a corporate recruiting hierarchy with recruiting managers running reports in LI Recruter (rather than in your ATS) and everyone in your enterprise (from recruiters to sourcers to hiring managers) paying for a (very expensive) LI Recruiter slot.

Thoughts?

In other news, just learned that the Corporate Recruiter certification / designation is going to sunset May 10th.

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Permalink Reply by Aaron Lintz on October 23, 2013 at 4:37pm

It was much harder than the practice exam, but it is passable if you stop and ask your self WWLD "what would LInkedIn Do" as in their marketing department.

 

As for your 3 main points:

A)  LI Recuiter is a pipeline tool, not a daily task management solution. If you use statuses, and tags you can proactively recruit.  You know that thing people have been talking about online for awhile now.

B) I agree LI marketing dept. wrote some of the test answers as "best practices" but the take-away is that you need to tag people or at least have a system to know who is active and who is passive.  Corporate recruiters will also yell at you for calling them candidates.  They are potential applicants!

C) You can share profiles with hiring managers without them being paid members.  They do not get to see 100% of profile details (the same info you get when you save as PDF from LI Recruiter).  

I don't want to diss you but I passed without access to the training material since I have not have a paid seat in 4 months.  You didn't study and you expected to pass without understanding the agenda LI wanted to convey with this test.  Try doing some sourcing and study next time.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Charney on October 23, 2013 at 4:58pm

What's the value to this certification? Whether or not the testing methods are valid, the bigger and more important question is: why does it matter if you're certified or not?  I'm not sure whether or not this is like paying for a for-profit MBA - the value is eroded by the fact that it doesn't prove you're competent or skilled, only that you've paid for something with questionable ROI to begin with.

Permalink Reply by Keith D. Halperin on October 23, 2013 at 6:00pm

IMHO, while gaining knowledge is a useful end in itself, if a successfully- passed certification or exam won't get you a new or better (paying) job for passing it, then it's not useful.

Keith "SPHR_Emeritus" Halperin

Permalink Reply by Tim Spagnola on October 23, 2013 at 7:34pm

Will it get you a placement? In the end is that not the only question to ask?

Interested in learning more in hearing original announcement, but now- not so much. 

Thanks for sharing Daylon. Curious to hear what others have to say.

WWLD

Permalink Reply by Daylon Walton on October 23, 2013 at 7:47pm

I took the test more out of curiosity (got a free code) - to see what it was all about. 

Fact is that I don't use hiring manager reviews in LI, and wouldn't import leads into it (I use my ATS), and once I have an outside email address, I switch to Outlook for appointments / conference calls / to do lists. 

If i'm at a conference or a business function, I use Outlook to reach out (and with the social media extension, i can request their LI connection from THERE rather than having to go to the extra step of logging into LI).

I dunno, seems LI is trying to fashion itself an "all in one" sourcing, placement, job, ATS, candidate tracking tool..

Now if they would just kill off those stupid one-click endorsements...

Permalink Reply by Tim Spagnola on October 23, 2013 at 7:53pm

Now if they would just kill off those stupid one-click endorsements... <- second that

Permalink Reply by Daylon Walton on October 23, 2013 at 7:56pm

I think i'm up to 698 endorsements for Technical Recruiting and over 500 for Recruiting at this point... that and a dollar will get me a Coke. 

Tim Spagnola said:

Now if they would just kill off those stupid one-click endorsements... <- second that

Permalink Reply by Linda Ferrante on October 24, 2013 at 2:25pm

Thanks for being honest, Daylon.  I don't see the value in being certified by LI for a LI product.  It means nothing in the grand scheme of recruiting for me.  

I have had a bad experience with LinkedIn recently, regarding a seminar on 'employer branding' that I attended.  They repeatedly told I shouldn't attend (while I was standing there in the lobby, borderline being humiliated by one of their 'account managers').  The agenda was about 'employer branding', which is completely relevant to us as a company, no different than any other company.  After the initial part on branding they shifted in to how the LI Recruiter tool will replace staffing companies completely (which is why they didn't want us there, we have the word 'staffing' in our company name, so they singled us out as a staffing company).  There was even one gentleman from DTE who said they have stopped using contractors completely because of their great recruiting tool.......three of the people at my table worked for a contract house and worked exclusively on DTE openings.

Ever since LI went public, the focus has been on making money and thereby reducing the impact it once had.  This recruiting certification is simply another money maker for them, and doesn't add any value to me, as a recruiter.

Permalink Reply by Sarah Calverley on October 28, 2013 at 5:14am

Linda I completely agree with you, and had the very same thing happen to me when I was in agency working on an MSP.  I was sent the invite to join a "talent conference' and when I rsvp'd I was declined due to "it not being appropriate for agency recruiters"

Apart from using Linkedin basic, premium and recruiter over the past 4 years, encouraging candidates to join and providing training and LI profile optimization services I obviously know nothing about the product or it's effectiveness.  Some internal staffing teams are provided free licences for multiple users for up to 8 months to encourage usage, but our company has never been offered the same.  They double dip in charges to both the job seeker for premium job applications and the client organisation for advertising, and practice some pretty loose data privacy and extraction.  

Everything anyone can do with a Linkedin Recruiter I can do with a basic profile and a good network, so while it provides an OK tool to find those generic candidates that are resume savvy and put the right keywords into their profiles we will use it...


Linda Ferrante LoCicero said:

Thanks for being honest, Daylon.  I don't see the value in being certified by LI for a LI product.  It means nothing in the grand scheme of recruiting for me.  

I have had a bad experience with LinkedIn recently, regarding a seminar on 'employer branding' that I attended.  They repeatedly told I shouldn't attend (while I was standing there in the lobby, borderline being humiliated by one of their 'account managers').  The agenda was about 'employer branding', which is completely relevant to us as a company, no different than any other company.  After the initial part on branding they shifted in to how the LI Recruiter tool will replace staffing companies completely (which is why they didn't want us there, we have the word 'staffing' in our company name, so they singled us out as a staffing company).  There was even one gentleman from DTE who said they have stopped using contractors completely because of their great recruiting tool.......three of the people at my table worked for a contract house and worked exclusively on DTE openings.

Ever since LI went public, the focus has been on making money and thereby reducing the impact it once had.  This recruiting certification is simply another money maker for them, and doesn't add any value to me, as a recruiter.

Permalink Reply by Keith D. Halperin on October 29, 2013 at 3:02pm

@ Linda, @ Sarah: IMHO, LI has been trying to squeeze every last dime out of recruiters while simultaneously more and more limiting what we can do/get for that same-said dime, and as a near-monopoly, they do it BECAUSE THEY CAN.

 

No Cheers,

Keith

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