“How LinkedIn has turned your resume into a cash machine” is a Forbes article that has circulated quite a lot lately. It’s a huge feature about how the website now makes $1.30 for every hour a single user spends on site.
This is absolutely remarkable, when you consider Facebook earns just six cents in comparable scenario, though it’s like looking at apples and oranges: one of them was built with value in mind, the other as sheer entertainment:
Facebook, which derives 85% of its revenue from advertising, makes money only when you’re on Facebook. Once you sign up for LinkedIn, the social network monetizes your information, not your time. Weiner draws three concentric circles to show how LinkedIn makes its money.The outer one is subscriptions.
Next, marketing and advertising.
And in the center is LinkedIn’s richest and fastest-growing opportunity: turning the company’s 161 million member profiles into the 21st-century version of a “little black book” that no corporate recruiter can live without.
“That’s the bull’s-eye.”
This question isn’t meant to be adversarial or a whinge, but I’ve never met anyone that ever managed to get a job through LinkedIn alone and I keep asking this in pubs and conversations.
Perhaps this is the EU and particularly UK behaviour, but what I’ve seen so far is that people only start adding acquaintances and details to their profile post-employment (or as soon as they announce they are leaving somewhere else). And upon networking, it’s not cemented itself as a ‘let’s keep in touch’ kind of thing.
Perhaps it’s a missed opportunity for LinkedIn to provide value in that direction rather than send out daily emails with articles ‘trending’ within certain companies, usually the same ones; interesting but hardly useful if the bulls-eye is to be a “little black book” for screening recruits.
It makes more sense to gently remind users every now and then by asking ‘Are you still working at ___?’ or asking them every 6 and 12 months whether they’re happy or not – because more often than not people forget about LinkedIn until they’ve already found somewhere or hit a bad spot. Just a thought.
Luckily I have and it turned out to be a very efficient social media channel for me. To be fair, I haven’t met anyone else who managed to find a job through LnkdIn.
Ok, that’s one person so far at least
I’ve seen it used by recruiters who seem to peruse it to check of new hires/moves and things (eg people moving from one city from the other too) but no case of ‘applied through linkedin, made it through’ type thing.
I agree – recruiter wonderland
I’m the second one
Got the job through LinkedIn 100%. I had no idea who they were, they called me in for an interview, I liked them, they liked me, so presto, I had gotten my first job ever 
That’s super. Well done
I think it’s great for discovery and exploration for candidates too.
Not sure about how other companies operate but for instance the advertising industry doesn’t do ‘University tours’ like the Goldman Sachs, JP Morgans and Deloittes or other financial/consulting companies of this world so maybe once you know of a place, having a sort of portal for each company on LinkedIn would make a lot of sense.
I guess the ad industry’s reputation precedes it but it would be an interesting side for LinkedIn: me, candidate, wanting to know more about a company I’ve never heard of (but maybe wants to hire me). However I haven’t tried its Jobseeker paid-for thing!
Its a bit funny because my girlfriend got all of her previous three jobs in Marketing positions through Linkedin in Romania and I was certainly not expecting that to happen.
Is there a possibility that some industries are prone to having an active approach to this type of recruiting? Or at least some recruiting agencies are using it more than others? Isn’t Linkedin the poor man’s free executive search catalogue?
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