LinkedIn and the Future of Recruiting

By Jerome Ternynck

CEO, SmartRecruiters

LinkedIn kindly invited me to attend Talent Connect, their first large scale customer event hosted this week in San Francisco. Here are some of my key takeaways.

A Crowd of Innovators:

This was not just a crowd of happy customers. It was clear attendees came to learn and to help. It felt as if the crowd was unified around a common quest: to make the world of recruiting a better place.

80 Million Users and Counting:

It took LinkedIn 477 days to reach the one million user mark, but only 9 days to sign up their most recent million for a total of over 80m users today. Their growth in the professional world is simply
staggering.

Holding 80 million resumes is incredible. Holding 80 million up-to-date resumes is incredibly disruptive. When I left MrTed to found SmartRecruiters I immediately updated my LinkedIn profile. So LinkedIn has my current profile while every headhunter, ATS, job board, and independent database has become outdated.

If you’re still relying on old-school databases (including your own for that matter) you are hunting in a graveyard.

“The Source”:

The question of whether LinkedIn is going to transform recruiting forever is not a matter of “if” or “when” but “how”.

LinkedIn has become and will remain “The Source”. No more resumes, no more databases. Just standardized online profiles. We have entered an era of transparency. Transparency generates trust and it triggers good
behaviors. Now recruiting will have to be social again. And that is
great news.

After years of hunting, fishing, and farming, recruiters (and managers) will now have to start socializing with the people they wish to hire.

Comment by Slouch on November 4, 2010 at 5:26pm: Jerome, I hope all is well with you. I appreciate the enthusiasm but surely you don't really believe this statement do you?

"If you’re still relying on old-school databases (including your own for that matter) you are hunting in a graveyard."

We should have a drink one of these days.

Congrats on the sale of your company

Comment by Christopher Poreda on November 4, 2010 at 6:37pm: Linkedin is an amazing recruiting tool, no question. But to use is effectively as your database is off base. Perhaps this is an opportunity for linkedin to either develop or integrate an ATS but for now, linkedin is simply an excellent lead source and your ATS is necessary to track those leads.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on November 4, 2010 at 6:50pm: And here we go again. Somebody drank the kool-aid now everything else is dead in the graveyard.

As we are in the process of discussing Linkedin is a great source. Then we get a real resume and we add that resume to our database or ATS. Most of the profiles are sketchy at best and certainly not a replacment for a resume. arrrrrrgggghhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by Sandra McCartt on November 4, 2010 at 6:51pm: And no my friend, hiring managers are not going to socialize with people on linkedin that they might be interested in hiring.

Comment by Jerome Ternynck on November 4, 2010 at 6:54pm: Hey Jason, I am alive and kicking as you can see. Would love to catch up.

I think Christopher nails it. The ATS database is necessary to track candidates. My point is the data source (profiles) is going to switch towards LinkedIn. There is just no way we can continue to justify the cost and efforts to manually keep a database up-to-date. Not sure where this is heading exactly but I know it's changing.

Search in LinkedIn and manage in ATS might be the way to look at it ?

Comment by Paul Alfred on November 4, 2010 at 8:52pm: Jerome great post but ... People in our business fail to realize that candidates are owned by no one agency - before LinkedIn came along a 1000 Agencies and Employers could have the same candidate on their respective databases and still technically not own the candidate their borrowed until placed off the market by an agency or directly by an Employer until they are on the market again for the next 3- 5 years.

We need to also realize that the folks on LinkedIn are not Candidates until we have engaged them and you have received a resume confirming they are on the market. Your question has been answered - LinkedIn has impacted how recruiters and Employers source Talent- I will also say that a profile on LinkedIn will not always be the same as what you might see in a resume - The LinkedIn Profile is really an Advertisement to showcase a background of the past and or a preparation for the Future Direction of where that Professional is going Career wise with or without aid of a Recruiter ...

Resumes are still necessary ... and Recruiting has never stopped being Social...

Comment by Jerome Ternynck on November 5, 2010 at 1:31am: Paul, thanks for your comments. My thoughts:

You're absolutely right. No one "owns" a candidate.

About "Resumes are still necessary", I agree but I think the trend is that they will vanish. As an example, here is my LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jerometernynck). Anything more one would need to know ?

About Recruiting never stopped being social, I think that's true for professional recruiters. However, the experience might be different for the average business and the average candidate. I guess the 80% of people who don't get an answer after submitting their resume don't see recruiting as very social ?

Comment by Jerry Albright on November 5, 2010 at 10:02am: I've placed 5 people in the past 2 weeks.

1 was someone I placed years ago - he called me and said it was time for a change.
1 was "The Kid" who was referred by the placement I just mentioned.
1 was found on a particular user community/forum on the internet.
1 was met at a gas station.
1 was found when I ran a search through every email I've received since 2001 with a simple buzzword/state/platform search.

I just looked them all up on Linkedin. One guy had a full profile and 178 connections. One had what looked like the start of some type of profile and 2 connections. The rest were nowhere to be found.

Comment by Christopher Poreda on November 5, 2010 at 10:09am: To your point Jerry, he with the most tools in the tool box wins. Gas stations, job boards, old contacts, friends, family, etc...candidates are found everywhere...you simply need to recognize and convert.

Good for you with 5 in 2 weeks!

Comment by Christopher Poreda on November 5, 2010 at 10:10am: PS...not a big fan of walking uphill to work both ways, barefoot in the snow...work smart and keep your eyes open. Not a big fan of those who poo poo any source of candidates.

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