Here’s a question I got from someone asking about the value of Monster in a job search:

(1) With LinkedIn’s new Company Follow feature, LI Recruiter/Premium Membership, LI Corporate Accounts and (2) of course the fact that most of its revenue comes from ads and job postings, (3) how is LinkedIn not a job board, beyond market positioning and product differentiation?

Wow, what a simple question that makes me think of complex responses!

FIRST POINT

LinkedIn’s features (and the new features that you mention, as well as the new job seeker upgrade level) are all great features for job seekers and those who are looking for job seekers.  However, if you aren’t a job seeker, or don’t want to find job seekers, LI can still provide immense value to you (as an entrepreneur, manager, etc.).  You can find people who can provide value as new customers, partners, investors, mentors, advisors, etc.  You can learn about your competition and your prospects… you can get market, company and industry intelligence (think: competitive intelligence).  You can connect with peers, strengthen individual relationships and strengthen your brand.

The magic of LinkedIn is that it can provide immense value to a professional whether you are in a job search or not.

It’s similar to the magic of a pixar movie, which is loved by children and adults alike (for different reasons – it’s simple and fun for kids but the messaging and communication and cleverness appeals to adults).

LinkedIn appeals to job seekers (and those in the job search space) as well as to those who are not in the job search.

SECOND POINT

You say that (of course) most of LinkedIn’s revenue comes from ads and job postings… I’m not sure if that is true… there are really very few job postings compared to a traditional job board, and I hope that those very few postings do not make up a significant portion of their revenues… if that is the case then LinkedIn doesn’t produce much revenues.  Perhaps that will grow, which is great, but I would guess that job postings represent a very small percentage of revenues.

I’ve always guessed that company and recruiter memberships make up the bulk of the revenue, or at least is one of the larger revenue streams for LI.  However, I’m sure the ads are good, considering the placement they get (horrible placement for the users, imho… it’s too busy).

So, I can’t really say with any authority if this is right, but my gut says this is a wrong assumption.

THIRD POINT

How is LinkedIn not a job board?  Most of my response is in the FIRST POINT, above.  I know lots of people think of LI as a place that unemployed people go but there are plenty of employed professionals on the site, actively using some of the features.

This goes back to the Pixar analogy, though… it’s really beautiful.  Since it is not designed to be a job board, or a tool solely for job seekers, but it attracts those in hiring capacities, it naturally attracts job seekers (who are told to network into their next opportunity).

So, I’d say it’s not a job board but it is a terrific tool for job seekers, because of the simple reason that it was not designed to be a tool for job seekers, but for professionals to network.

Thoughts?

I read a great post with insightful comments about recruiters using LinkedIn. It is titled LinkedIn – Just How Good is it?, written by Keith Robinson. Some of the interest lines:

“when we use LinkedIn we find that at least 20% of LinkedIn profiles are essentially defunct…”

“at least 40% of their premium ‘inmail’ messages are not read by the intended recipients within a week of being sent.”

“[people] build their profile and wait to be found rather than use it as a networking tool.”

“whilst 45% of candidates say they regularly use LinkedIn, only 5% have actively responded to a job advert placed on social media sites like LinkedIn.”

“when we asked candidates to indicate how they would go about searching for their next jobs, hardly any said they would apply for jobs via social media sites.” I agree, since that is not the purpose or design of a social tool…

“so the lines seem to be clearly drawn, with social media being a means of researching firms and allowing oneself to be seen by headhunters… whilst job boards remain the places where candidates will actively head to seek out a new job.”  I DISAGREE.

Read the comments for insights from recruiters.

In the other corner we have an article by Jessi Hempel on CNN Money/Fortune titled How LinkedIn will fire up your career.  That is a long but insightful article about LinkedIn and using it as a career development tool.  It is interesting to read that Accenture plans to hire 50k jobs, apparently 40% of them coming from social media.  That is 20,000 people hired from social media… that’s amazing.  The head of global recruiting, John Campagnino, says “This is the future of recruiting for our company.”

I disagree how the article says “Facebook is for fun. Tweets have a short shelf life. If you’re serious about managing your career, the only social site that really matters is LinkedIn.”  Using just one site is a mistake, I think…. don’t discount other sites where you might encounter hiring managers, HR, recruiters, etc.

Go read the Fortune article… it provides a seemingly biased but optimistic picture of why and how LinkedIn SHOULD be a part of your career management strategy.  It’s interesting to contrast the two perspectives – what camp do you fall in?

Wednesday I finished recording the videos for the second edition of the LinkedIn DVD.  It’s now at the video editing shop. I hope to have my DVDs in hand when I go to to a conference at the end of April… and ship out all the pre-orders before I head out.

Here are the sections of the LinkedIn DVD:

• Introduction – including some concepts and terminology to help you get more out of the DVD and your LinkedIn strategy.
• Home Page – so easy to overlook but usually opportunity to get value. I show you how.
• Profile: Above the Fold – First impression? Are you findable?  Is your Profile turning people off?  This section is quite valuable.
• Profile: Summary – so many summaries are INSUFFICIENT or BORING.  I tell you how to fix that.
• Profile: Below the Fold – More opportunity to brand yourself and increase the chance of being found, but so many people miss the opportunities.
• Profile: Applications – More than the 2 I usually talk about – what Apps are important and why.
• Profile: Add a Video - Step-by-step visual of how to get a video on your Profile (like you can see on my profile, or on Walter Akana’s Profile – you have to be logged in and click on the FULL PROFILE to see the video).
• Companies – GOLD!  There’s GOLD in LinkedIn Companies.  Learn why.
• Groups – Groups are powerful but misleading… learn what the value is, what to do, and what NOT to do.
• Jobs - I wish there was more value here… nonetheless, LinkedIn Jobs still provides an opportunity you don’t get elsewhere.  Learn what’s important here.
• Advanced People Search – If you aren’t using the advanced people search you aren’t using LinkedIn.  Don’t just get an account, look for key contacts!
• Communicating with Others – once you find a key contact, how do you communicate with them?  Here are the mechanisms and my formula for what communications should include.
• Recommendations – How to get them, how to give them.  What makes Recommendations valuable.
• Answers: Asking Questions – DO THIS.  Regularly.  Learn how to do it the right way and not become NOISE to your network.
• Answers: Answering Questions – Less commitment but still valuable.  You should be expert in something – prove it.
• Manage Your Settings – There are a few settings and such in here that you should know about.
• Browse Connections – Have you used this feature to strategically find more key contacts?  If not, you need to.
• BONUS: Now, 10 Things to Do – now that you’ve watched the DVD here are 10 actionable things you can do TODAY.
• BONUS: 20 Questions – 20 frequently asked questions, in a speed-answering session.  This was fun to do
• BONUS: Export Contacts – You should export your contacts… read this if you don’t know why.
• BONUS: Cleaning the Export – once you export your contacts you should clean up the file because, well, it’s a mess.  Here’s what you do to clean it up.
• BONUS: Importing to JibberJobber – You are a job seeker – you should be on JibberJobber… here’s what you can do with the imported file.

Have you gotten yours yet? Get it here.

Recruiters, HR, Employers: Do you search for talent on LinkedIn ALONE?

The question was posted by Bob McIntosh.  The answers were surprising. I didn’t expect anyone to say YES, I use LinkedIn exclusively to find talent, but I didn’t expect the feedback that I saw.

The real theme amongst the answers is Stacey’s, who says she would never use only one source for finding talent.  I agree with that.  But I didn’t expect the next part, which she says she uses LinkedIn only 5% of the time.

WOW – that is significantly lower than I would have expected.

Answers are kind of across the board – I would not say that everyone only uses it 5% of the time, as I’ve talked with recruiters who use it for hours each day.

What do you think of the responses?

I was reading the blog of my Facebook coauthor recently.  I was surprised to see that he wrote about the Brazen Careerist network because he tends to write about a lot of technology stuff, not career or job search stuff.

He starts out his 5th paragraph talking about LinkedIn… I’ll quote him and add my own comments:

>> Let’s face it. LinkedIn is for old people.

I totally disagree.  LinkedIn is for “professionals,” regardless of your age (or any other discriminatory thing: race, religion, etc.).  If you are just finishing school and want to network with professionals in your industry, I think you are hard-pressed to find another network where you can find those people.  If you are GenY and think you are too fresh and cool to be there, well, good luck in your career.  There is a reason college career centers are making a major push to get their students on LinkedIn.

>> It has hardly innovated over the years.

I regularly say that LinkedIn is old, boring and stale, compared to all of the sexy social networks likes Facebook and Twitter.  It *is* slow to add new stuff at the crazy rate those other sites do… but who says which way is better?

Facebook adds to the point where you can’t keep up with it, and they regularly get themselves in trouble because they violate user privacy, or they have major controversy in what Groups they have on their, and we routinely read about users who do something career-ending.

LinkedIn has taken a cautious, slow approach to many things (it took forever before they let you put your profile picture up), but realize that people are there to get a job done, not play and share videos with their BFFs.

So if this statement is true (”it has hardly innovated over the years”), I’m not sure if that is a a good thing or a bad thing… what do you think?

There is a difference between “we really need to make some changes to the product because it will make it better for our users” and “we need to make changes because everyone else is doing it and we better keep up with the joneses.”

>> it is just too hard for a new employee entering into the workforce to get the most out of such a site

Sorry GenY, you are going to have to figure this one out.  At least for now, LinkedIn is the 800lb guerrilla and ya gotta be in it to win it.  I always heard that GenY was good at technology – can you not at least figure out how to participate a little in this “find and be found” environment?  It’s not that hard, and I think this statement discredits your ability to get with it.

>> In a much more open workforce it seems suitable a new entrant into the networking marketplace came forward

Perhaps. “Inevitable” is probably a better word than “suitable.”   There are hundreds of thousands of social environments.  Some have better features than others, some have more utility, value or traffic than others.  We’ll see who is around in a few years, and who continues to add value.  I know some of the people at Brazen and hope they do well.  Innovation and competition is a good thing for everyone, right?

Here’s a traffic chart from compete.com.  LinkedIn is the green line with around 15 million visitors a month.  Brazen Careerist is the blue line on the bottom.  If you were looking for talent (hiring), partners, funding sources, customers, prospects, etc., where would you spend your time?

I’ve been thinking about prospective users of LinkedIn for a while and continue to ask myself how’d I’d answer the question:

Jon is a line worker at a manufacturing plant.  Or a miner.  Or a ________. It’s a blue collar job.  You find blue collar jobs differently than you find white collar jobs… why should Jon get on LinkedIn?  Isn’t that overkill?

So what do you think?  If you have a cousin (Jon) who just got laid off from a blue collar job, do you think LinkedIn would be a great resource for him?

This is more for HR and hiring managers who are looking for talent on LinkedIn.  There are plenty of tactics to employ, I’m sure (share yours in the comments).

The question came from a buddy:

Question: I want to leverage linked in to find a replacement for [an awesome systems guy] (he as taken a job elsewhere.)  I don’t really want to leverage the “job posting” function, as I don’t want to be overwhelmed with applicants, and I prefer to find someone that my network recommends to me.  What to you suggest as my best way to leverage linked in to get the word out?

Can you say HIDDEN JOB MARKET?  I bet this thought process happens all the time.  It pays to be connected, networked and known!

My response was this:

I would ask the question just as you posed it (take out [the name] and put something like senior systems architect) in LinkedIn Answers… that can be emailed to up to 200 of your first degree contacts.

There is a checkbox that says “is this a job posting” – leave that UNCHECKED as you are asking your network how to leverage LI, not posting a job.  Otherwise LI might want to charge you to post a job.

People are using LinkedIn as a powerful tool all the the time – some lucky guy or gal might just get an offer out of this!

Need more tips?  Get my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD – over 2 hours of watch-over-my-shoulder training.

I spent some time on my JibberJobber blog today doing a LinkedIn Profile Makeover – go check it out!

I think there is still a lot of head-scratching going on with LinkedIn – you know you should be there, you might even get more business from being on LinkedIn, but what in the world do you do once you get there?

That is why I wrote my first book, I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? (now in the second edition).  If you are a book person, that’s where I’d start.  You can get the book for about $20, or the ebook for $11.95.

I also have a terrific DVD tutorial where I walk you through many LinkedIn features - you get a sense for what you should be doing, why you should be doing, and what you can ignore.  Check out LinkedIn for Job Seekers, which is currently $49.95.

LinkedIn also has some great resources (which weren’t available when I wrote my book), including their blog (with news and how to’s), their Twitter account, and their growing Help pages.

Oh yeah, this LinkedIn blog has a bunch of posts on how-to, when-to, why-to, etc.  Have you gone through past posts?

That’s where I’d start… feel free to leave a comment if you have other LinkedIn resources.

You can learn a lot about a company by the jobs posted… whether on their own website or on a job board.  Here are some open jobs at LinkedIn that I find interesting… what does this tell you about what direction LinkedIn is headed?

By the way, LinkedIn, I know someone who would be PERFECT for either Product Manager opening… shoot me an email and I’ll make a recommendation.

The first three, to me, are the most interesting….

The other really intersting thing is the last column in the image – look at how recent those job postings are!

Cool.