I’m sure, like many of you Recruiters who use LinkedIn, you’ve probably been contacted in the last 12 months about one of their “Recruiter” Products. They have two:
1. For Corporate Recruiters - called “Recruiter”, what they call their “sourcing product”. This product gives corporate recruiters full access to see every single LinkedIn member’s information, regardless if you are connected with them or not. Very powerful for a recruiter.
2. For 3rd Party Recruiters - called “Recruiter Professional Services”, what they can’t really define without toally just saying “something we put together because we think you’re no better than a used car salesman.” This product only gives you access to view the data of those individuals you are already connected to, basically one step up from the free access since all you really get to see is full information of your 3rd tier connections. Not so powerful.I have to be honest – I’ve been wanting to write this post for almost a year, but I was scared to. Yes, me, scared – the guy who will say almost anything. Why? I don’t want this post to affect my access to LinkedIn – because I think it’s a great tool for recruiters to use. But, here it goes…
Let me say first, most of you know, I’ve worked on both sides of the fence – so I get how 3rd party Recruiters have gotten their rep. There are too many “headhunters” out there who jump right off the used car lot and onto a phone – thus, corporate HR Pros love to lump all 3rd party into the same bucket of monsters. I get it.
Here’s LinkedIn’s marketing problem with their two products though – they are both disrespectful to both parties. Corporate recruiters listen up – LinkedIn is giving you great access, because they know you won’t use it. That you aren’t as “aggressive” as the 3rd Party Recruiters. They know giving you full access is no big deal, because Post-and-Pray corporate recruiters won’t put the work into the database to really cause any issues with their membership. You are really the biggest joke of all this – LinkedIn doesn’t even see you as a threat to their membership database – so they give unfettered access to you.
3rd Party Recruiters, LinkedIn just wants to pick off the weak ones in the pack – the idiots who don’t get you can put together a simple boolean search string in Google and get the same exact access to LinkedIn information as you can get with their paid product. LinkedIn believes you don’t give a shit about your reputation so they can’t give you full access because you’ll go crackhead-crazy and contact every single one of their 100 million members to try and sell them a Java Developer job in Fargo.
I can’t remember ever seeing a company so unabashedly mock a group of people from two sides, and still ask them for money. Now, I’ve asked LinkedIn to go on record as to why they have the two products for Recruiters and here is the response from Sr. Director of Marketing for Recruiting Solutions for LinkedIn, Francois Dufour:
“Generally speaking, our product development philosophy starts with what’s best for our members and then, of course, understanding what solutions organizations need.
As a result, we provide different markets with different services. Similarly, we offer varying levels of premium subscriptions for instance (which range from the Business level, for all members, all the way up to Talent Finder for recruiters).
The feedback from members and corporate recruiting teams led us to develop LinkedIn Recruiter Corporate edition, available to direct employers.
In the same fashion, we developed LinkedIn Recruiter Professional Services for staffing agencies after collecting feedback from them and after better understanding how it could provide value to their workflows.”
Oh, so now I get it – Recruiting agencies told you we only wanted limited access, and that’s why you developed it that way? I’m sure glad that cleared it up – I thought you might really think negatively about the profession and were afraid we would contact too many members. That’s a relief! WTF!
So LinkedIn wants to make money. I get that. And they’ve developed a couple of different products to show the corporate recruiting pros that they are doing something special for you. I also get that even some of their “Giant” corporate clients would contractually not want to allow agencies the same access corporate recruiters have (allegedly). But taking the stand that LinkedIn Recruiter for Professional Services was bore out of feedback from agencies is somewhat laughable.
One product for agency recruiters to look like they like us, and another product for corporate recruiters that gets the job done. In the end, whether I’m a corporate recruiter or agency recruiter, I’m just trying to offer your membership an opportunity. I also get, being a longtime LinkedIn member, that no one wants constant spam coming to me from LinkedIn (that again assumes agency recruiters are just spammers). On the back side, someone is paying the bill regardless – either corporations are footing the bill by hiring and funding full recruiting departments, or they are paying by augmenting their staffing model by using agencies, RPO’s, sourcing professionals, etc.
So, I ask LinkedIn – why the 2 products? Why can’t both use the same product? And what about us RPO firms? Why can’t we use the “Recruiter” solution? (Do I see a 3rd product coming “Recruiter RPO Solution”!)
And Please Don’t Cut Off My Access! Pretty Please! BTW – I’m totally willing to buy, at full price, your Corporate Recruiting Solution (LinkedIn Recruiter) – today – if you have somebody call me.
First of all, I haven’t heard a single corporate recruiter complain about any supposed disrespect because they have full LinkedIn access. And why would you? They trust you to use the product as it was intended. They trust you not to abuse it. No argument that third-party guys are getting the shaft but corporate recruiters are doing just fine.
If LinkedIn becomes a glorified resume database, say goodbye to the unique service they provide. Having a database that mirrors Monster or CareerBuilder would be the ultimate loss for recruiters and LinkedIn. While it seems unfair to target third-party recruiters as a whole, I don’t have a problem with the philosophy of keeping the service’s job/recruiting offerings relatively benign.
ah yes…. The stark, cold truth.
LinkedIn is trying to maintain that they’re a professional networking service, not a recruiting company. It’s a hedge so pimps like Tim Sackett don’t ruin it for everyone, which if you stand back and look at it awhile, actually makes sense from their perspective…
Nice post Tim. “Remember – All I’m offering you is the truth – nothing more”… -Morpheus
Didn’t HotJobs try that line of BS back in the day? I recall that they wouldn’t allow 3rd parties or agencies full access. It’s very “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” crap.
Maybe Townshend was onto something when he wrote that tune…
I appreciate the author’s sentiment, but can someone get him a proofreader? That was painful.
To add a little something extra to think about — LinkedIn has a product (still in beta), Referral Engine, that encourages companies to get their employees on LinkedIn and develop profiles and networks for the ultimate goal of providing a more ‘robust’ employee referral service to companies by using professional networks to do some automated match-making. (I wrote about it last year: http://www.sourcecon.com/news/2010/11/03/linkedin-two-new-products-jobs-for-you-referral-engine/) Yet at the same time, the company aggressively markets recruiting products so others can easily pursue the very people they’ve just encouraged companies to have join LinkedIn. So perhaps that’s the third product Tim is referring to
LinkedIn is business developing from every possible angle. If they’re not careful, they will alienate everyone.
Oh, Tim… you have nailed it! And LinkedIn. And now that they have gone public in bubblicious fashion, I can imagine they are really going to listen to their fanbase very carefully.
Jonathan,
It’s that public school education kicking me in the ass. I tend to write conversationally, but thanks for pointing out my errors.
Keep it classy!
Tim
I am a third party recruiter and I use LinkedIn Recruiter, the corporate recruiting tool. It’s very expensive, and it’s only somewhat effective. The problem with LinkedIn is that the A-players in every industry are being contacted by every Tom Dick and Harry recruiter. This leads to something known among direct marketers as “list fatigue.”
When I did my last deal with LinkedIn, their sales rep advised me that LinkedIn has 900,000 recruiters on it. When I first heard that number, it sounded absurdly high. But then I thought, “if there are 100 million members on LinkedIn, the 900,000 recruiters is less than 1%.”
All of this is to say that LinkedIn realizes that there is a great deal of money to be made in serving third-party recruiters. Staffing and recruiting is an $8.5 billion industry, and I would imagine that LinkedIn would much rather have us on their platform making a market for talent, as real estate agents do with Zillow, rather than dis-intermediate us and drive us off the platform.
Even if they drive us off the platform, recruiters aren’t going anywhere and the smartest among us will simply learn to leverage whatever combination of platforms remain for us.
One final note: just like there’s more than one Monster.com, I would imagine that eventually there will be more than one LinkedIn. Perhaps that will be Facebook. Perhaps that will be Indeed. Or perhaps it will be a combination of Indeed and WorkMarket, which are both Union Square Ventures portfolio companies.
Regardless of what happens, your excellent post simply underscores the critical importance for every recruiter of marketing themselves very aggressively in multiple channels (Adwords, direct mail, magazines, blogs, PR, events, etc) and on multiple platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Indeed, BountyJobs, etc).
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing.
–Harry
http://MarketingHeadhunter.com
You went H.A.M, on this one!
oh that means Hard As a Mutha, for those that don’t know.
Spot on. Great post.
I wonder how the “product development philosophy” will change once all the new IPO investors see how much agencies would be willing to pay for full access. Major revenue opportunity being missed there, and the new investors care a lot more about returns than the user base.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I am interested in subscribing to your newsletter.
I think the bots will love this. Human beings? Nnnnggg – eventually, it will be a disaster. Everything online ultimately is. Been nice knowing you, LinkedIn!
The fact that public education kick in the ass. I tend to write the conversation, but thank you note for my mistakes.
I supposed how the development will change the philosophy of all IPO investors can see how many agencies are willing to pay full. Great opportunity for the excess of income over there, and new investors more care than the revenue base of users.
I was recently told, in a not very polite way, that I was “not allowed” to attend a LinkedIn sponsored event because I work for a staffing company. I sent 2 very politely worded e-mails to 2 of the event organizers and did not receive a response. Most corporate recruiters that I know started out via the agency route. LinkedIn is doing nothing more than alienating a very large consumer base.
I read this blog from the perspective of an investor thinking about shorting the stock of Linkedin. From everything I have been able to read about the breakdown of members and customers of Linkedin, it appears a substantial number in both categories are search firms. Linkedin has over 10,000 customers. How many of those are search firms / headhunters? How many are corporations? A business must be very careful not to serve two masters. Who is the customer for Linkedin, the headhunter or the corporation the headhunters serve?