Once upon a time the likes of Naukri, Monster, Timesjob and others served as staple platforms for recruitment. However, in my opinion, the emergence of LinkedIn as a recruitment platform is a serious threat to these existing market leaders.
Speak to any recruiter and she will tell you that the problem with Naukri is not the shortage of resumes but rather the overwhelming number of “responses” that one receives, that separating the grain from the chaff becomes an issue. A lot of responses seem to be based on automated match-making, which pretty much tries to push resumes to the recruiter, and job openings to a aspirant. Hence lot of applications don’t have a serious “looking for change” intent.
Another challenge that a recruiter faces is validating the contents of the resumes. Existing job portals, are a mere “database” of resumes. Hence it is just content that you are getting. However, a platform like LinkedIn is a “network” and in a network besides content you can access relationships. This is where LinkedIn scores big time.
Here are some interesting built-in features in LinkedIn, which makes it a great platform for recruiters :
- Understanding ones standing in industry: If a candidate has claimed in his resume that he is an ace salesperson, well networked at the top level, all one needs to do is to look at that persons contact list on LinkedIn. This immediately gives a feel of that persons network and thus his or her standing in the industry.
- Recommendations : LinkedIn provides a ‘recommendations’ feature. While these recommendations may be generated at the request of the profile owner, looking at these recommendations and the profile of the person who has made these recommendations, can give a better idea about the candidate
- More honest profiles : In a world that was not networked, one could be different things to different people. But in a networked world, you can have only one avatar. Once upon a time, a candidate could create multiple versions of his resume, and depending on the job opening, forward one of the many “suitable” versions. Once you are on LinkedIn, you can have only one profile, only one avatar. And if one tries to fudge your profile, someone in your network who knows you, will question the fudging. Hence profiles on LinkedIn are likely to be closer to the truth.
- Referrals : LinkedIn allows you see who in the candidates network is known to you. One could just pick up the phone and talk to one of these common contacts to a do a referral check. You no longer need to wait to do reference check via the candidates suggested references, which is any case are likely to be positive
- Understanding beyond the resume : LinkedIn allows one to link one’s presentations and articles, books that one reads etc to ones profile. Looking at this gives a more deeper understanding about the candidate
When you put all these things together, you start seeing that Linkedin is a far more effective recruitment tool and as more and more people get onto LinkedIn, it will become the preferred recruitment platform.