LinkedIn is the social network for the serious. With over 300 million users, two new users signing up every second, and a goal of attaining three billion members, LinkedIn is going to get a lot more serious. What started out in 2003 as a great way to professionally network, LinkedIn has transformed into the online CV website and shopwindow for employees from every walk of life and recruiters across the globe. In recognition of the way LinkedIn has evolved, they recently launched Resume Builder – a tool to create a CV directly from a LinkedIn profile – choose the template, edit your info, share.
Since it’s inception, LinkedIn has been the go-to place for recruiters researching assignments. As recruitment consultants we find more and more people are flattered by the attention they receive from their LinkedIn profile, and if it’s a good profile why not be flattered? But does flattery lead to a new job? Not always. As Facebook has become a great place to gain a little peer acceptance for one’s lifestyle (likes, comments etc), LinkedIn become a great place to gain a little career adulation.
LinkedIn is a crowded place for recruitment consultants. We compete with in-house recruiters, corporate recruiters, other consultancies, and a host of others, all searching for the perfect candidate. But does the perfect candidate want to move? What are their motivations? How many people are serious about a career change and how many are just after a little career idolisation? Will all this LinkedIn attention lead to a restless employee? These are very serious considerations. In a world where flattery is easy to come by, has vanity spread to LinkedIn? Is LinkedIn still a serious recruitment tool or is has it become a website of professional narcissism?
Currently only 13% of 18 – 34 year olds use LinkedIn; has it already lost traction with the millennial generation? Are we already seeing the demise of LinkedIn? That we can’t tell you, but at Holden Jones, as experts in recruitment, we can tell you we’ve started to see the usefulness of LinkedIn wane a little. Perhaps the future of LinkedIn is as a super-integrated job board, we wait to see.