A job board owners view of LinkedIn

There’s a post on Forbes entitled ‘Linkedin is about to put job boards out of business‘. Although I know the author Dan Schwabel and like him, he is off-base with his assumptions.

LinkedIn just announced a new feature that allows job seekers to ‘apply with linkedin’. Its a button that companies can put on their career pages and let job seekers submit their LI profile. Dan is correct in saying that it will put the resume out of business. A profile is a much more valuable tool to sell yourself than a resume. I think eventually in 5-10 years the online profile will be the primary tool to job hunt, not the resume. If this new feature hurts anyone, I’d point to the ATS (applicant tracking systems). ATS’s are a bigger pain point for job seekers not job boards. This has the potential to become LinkedIn’s own version of tracking candidates for employers.

Comment by Ken Forrester on June 2, 2011 at 10:15am: If I owned stocks in any of the job boards, I would be selling!

I am not saying that this will be a game changer in recruiting overall; but it’s a game changer for how people search for jobs and how employers will adapt to find talent. Any change to avoid the black hole in the job search/application process is a step in the right direction because no one is happy with that process as it is right now, especially if they are paying for it. Yes Chris, it’s just another new shiny toy that will transform a difficult and expensive function to one that is easy and inexpensive. And we’ve been down that road before.

Comment by Simon Lewis on June 2, 2011 at 10:20am: And when LinkedIn decides to cash-in and demand that even the basic user pays to use the site, what then? The people I know are getting more and more disillusioned with LinkedIn and what somewhere new to connect, interact, search, engage etc. They didn't sign up to it for a job board - they want the stuff it professed to be.

Comment by Alasdair Murray on June 2, 2011 at 10:34am: I think the whole recruitment landscape is become increasingly muddied and confusing for would be job seekers.One day they are told look here, the next they are told somewhere else is the flavour of the day. It seems to me that as technology develops, we are making recruitment far more complicated and fragmented, almost 'hit and hope' like and at the same time seeing huge chunks of creativity being squeezed out of it in favour of the technological bells and whistles.I wouldn't be on the admin end of the poor employers/recruiters that are going to have to deal with the deluge of really mixed bag response they will get to every missive/job post,any more than I would want to be the totally baffled jobseeker who really doesn't have a clue where to start a genuine and fruitful job search anymore.

Comment by Suresh on June 2, 2011 at 11:13am: There are some trends we have seen over the years..

- Most jobseekers start at Google for their job search and they still do..

- Linkedin like facebook is closed, the discussions or jobs don't show in search engines

- The internet is very crowded and job boards provide a way to stand out (especially niche job boards who have a following)

Its an evolving space and job boards have to evolve to deliver

Comment by Henning Seip on June 2, 2011 at 11:17am: Submitting an LI profile...for what? For job seekers it always begins with Step 1: Find a job where their application has a chance. This means they have to match the requirements on job posting first! Then (Step 2) they can submit their information (profile or resume) but it should contain what parts of the requirements they (claim to) match. What they match needs to be in a standardized format so that employers can easily sort it out.

What is the LI button (Step 2) good for when job seekers have not completed Step 1?

Comment by Richard Cialone on June 2, 2011 at 12:51pm: Henning brings up a great point: Candidates need to match the job requirements. And since most experienced candidates have multiple value propositions, the prevailing strategy for using resumes is to tailor each one per the jobs being applied to. That helps the resume reviewer see the match much more easily. Can't do that with a singular LI profile. The best one can do is the include every bit of experience gained along one's career, which will make it a very unreadable document.

Comment by Steve Paul on June 2, 2011 at 12:58pm: Talk about a bunch of subjects in one sentence! Wow.

Job board owners should be developing alternative business models without the existence of Linkedin. Adding it to the mix, just increases the priority. Currently there are way too many job boards, they don't add much value and it's easy to do the same or similar stuff without spending money. Linkedin increases the pressure, but it didn't create it.

Submitting via Linkedin is also less than ideal. A Linkedin profile should be a brand statement, not an application. The mix of audiences Linkedin provides means that too much detail will disqualify a candidate from more jobs than it qualifies them for. It's a lot like an elevator pitch, it should intrigue and lead to discussion. Go on too long and people's eyes start rolling back into their heads and the snoring starts from the back rows.

Comment by Alasdair Murray on June 2, 2011 at 1:00pm: All that will happen from this is that administering the recruitment process will become an even bigger logistical nightmare. As I say, we're muddying the waters and making it more complicated than it need be.

Comment by Jessica Nettleton on June 2, 2011 at 1:20pm: The ATS systems are very cumbersome and really discourage people. Some of the systems take over an hour to get through.

Comment by Stephanie McDonald on June 2, 2011 at 1:32pm: I see a complete difference between the data in an online profile and what's in a resume. As a recruiter, I have concerns that this will not hasten the process but require more administrative and discovery.