7 Critical Issues Regarding LinkedIn (Part 6 of 7)

Issue #6: Will the rising cost of a Recruiter Corporate account price independent recruiters out of the market?

LinkedIn was built by recruiters.  It was not built by the millions of individuals who have a few connections (more than 1/3 of LinkedIn® members have one or fewer connections); it was built by recruiters with thousands of direct connections.

Even today, if all recruiters closed their accounts, LinkedIn would be a shell of itself and the networks of its members would shrivel. 

Unfortunately, by pricing their flagship Recruiter Corporate at $8,639.40 per year, most recruiters who do not already have a Recruiter Corporate account cannot afford the price of entry.

So while large corporations, through volume discounts might pay $1,500.00 per year per account, the little guy takes a beating.

True, LinkedIn offers lower-priced products – but, they also offer fewer features and are less effective.

LinkedIn is also reducing the capabilities with the Recruiter Corporate account.  Earlier this year they started charging for InMail messages sent through Recruiter to group members.  For recruiters who heavily use InMail this represents a significant price increase without raising the base price. 

In 2013 they removed a key sorting feature, making it more time-consuming to identify potential recruits. 

It’s fair to say that if LinkedIn continues to see itself as a monopoly, and set its pricing accordingly, when the old guard recruiters retire you will know why it’s tough to find a knowledgeable recruiter.

Solutions

What can LinkedIn do?

Plenty.  They could start by re-instating features of the Recruiter account that they have removed. 

From a pricing standpoint, I don’t think they care if independent recruiters can afford it, if they can find enough corporations who are willing to commit.  So far, that doesn’t seem to be a problem as their Talent Solutions products are growing at a faster pace than the rest of LinkedIn and will exceed $1B in sales in 2014.

As a public company, LinkedIn answers to Wall Street.  Wall Street wants results today, not in 2019.  If LinkedIn’s growth levels out, the more pressure there will be to raise prices even further. 

If they continue to grow, they won’t be reducing prices – why should they?  If their growth should slow, there will be more pressure to raise prices to satisfy Wall Street. 

They won’t be reducing prices until there is an alternative to LinkedIn.

What can individual members do?

Unfortunately, existing recruiters can’t realistically protest by cancelling their account – the price for re-entry would be much steeper AND since their data in their Recruiter account cannot be exported, all of their data in the account would be lost.  In addition, Recruiter account contracts are for one year – they would still have to pay for the remaining months even if they were not using it.

Regardless of the type of account a recruiter may use - anywhere from a free account up to Recruiter Corporate, almost all recruiters use LinkedIn because it is a treasure trove of potential clients and candidates.  Even though larger companies have a significant price advantage, the independent recruiters will continue to use LinkedIn until there is a better option.

7 Critical Issues Regarding LinkedIn (Part 5 of 7)

Issue #5: Members of LinkedIn get a false sense of security when they search for someone with their credentials and their profile is near the top of the first page of search results.

Most LinkedIn members realize that how high their profile appears in search rankings has a tremendous impact on whether another user will take a look at their profile, or if a recruiter will end up contacting them for an appropriate opportunity.

From using search engines to find everything from flowers to tires, we know that the chance of going beyond the first or second page in Google results isn’t too likely. 

As a result most LinkedIn members are relieved to find they appear on the first page of search rankings on LinkedIn when searching for profiles with their attributes. 

They may actually be ecstatic if they find their profile right at the top and all they did was create a basic profile, threw in a few keywords and presto, they rank #1!

Unfortunately, they don’t realize their ranking is unique to their LinkedIn account.  If the same search criteria were run from another account, the results would be different – most likely much different.

Looking closely at search results, most users will notice that, in general, profiles that are 1^st or 2^nd-level connections appear first; 2^nd-level connections are intermingled with fellow group members, then 3^rd-level and Out-of-Network connections are further down the list.  This is because LinkedIn uses “relevance” as a factor in determining the order of search results – with relationship as a major relevance factor.  LinkedIn discusses search results in this Help Center article.

While the information is helpful, the algorithm they use to determine relevance is proprietary and a closely guarded secret, so most of us will never fully understand it. 

As a result members are kept in the dark about how strong their profile is and any action they should take to improve their search rankings.

To make matters worse, the Help Center article didn’t discuss Search Relevance for their prized Recruiter Corporate account – the app used by many 3^rd-party recruiters and corporate recruiters, including me.

Fortunately, search rankings in the Recruiter Corporate account do not appear to take relationship, or direct connections into consideration, as “Out-of-Network” profiles can be ranked #1 out of 1,000 results.  

Members should find out where their profile ranks in Corporate Recruiter if they want the truest indicator to the strength of your profile.  Judging your rankings based on the number of times your profile is viewed, as recommended by the Help Center article is simply not the best indicator of search rankings.

This is a real issue.  Can it be that there are 300 million members of LinkedIn and very few of them know their search rankings?  Yes.

Solutions

What can an individual member do?

1. Have a complete profile that includes a core group of relevant key words that are used repeatedly, and hope your profile achieves high search rankings;
2. Contact a LinkedIn Profile Writer for assistance - there are hundreds on LinkedIn who would be happy to help;
3. Ask someone who has a Corporate Recruiter account for your profile rank based on your criteria;
4. Appeal to LinkedIn to create a way for you to test your rankings that would be found by those using their Corporate Recruiter app;

What can LinkedIn do to solve the problem?

There is fairly simple solution that LinkedIn can provide.  Sure, it will take a some effort, but not an overwhelming amount of effort.  Not only would this solution remove the “Wizard of Oz” aspects regarding profile search rankings, it would improve member engagement – something LinkedIn already invests in heavily.  This solution would be a net gain for both LinkedIn and its members. 

LinkedIn could provide an interface for members to enter search criteria; then inform the member of where their profile ranks in the Corporate Recruiter app, based on the search criteria entered. 

The member could be given a numerical ranking similar to this, 33 out of 215.  This will help the member determine if they need to improve their profile, or if it’s adequate and they no longer have a “false” sense of security – they know they will appear in relevant search results! 

What can MaxOut LI do to solve the problem?

Bringing the issue to the attention of the market is the first step.  That’s been done.  The next step is up to the market: if there is enough demand, for a fee, we could provide the same type of information LinkedIn could provide – only we would provide visual proof of profile rankings while maintaining the confidentiality of others.

Personally, I would like to see LinkedIn tackle this problem head-on.  If you feel the same way, let them know about!

7 Critical Issues Regarding LinkedIn (Part 4 of 7)

Issue #4: If members aren’t careful, their LinkedIn activity could cost them their job

So, you just had a meeting with your boss.  The tone of the meeting was rather cold and you left the meeting questioning if you should remain with your current employer – or have the opportunity to remain.  The terminology he used was not direct, but you got the feeling your time was limited and you should start considering new career opportunities.

Fortunately, you have a LinkedIn account.  You haven’t used it much – you’ve been very happy with your job and saw no reason to keep it up to date, or build your network.  Since you haven’t used it much you are also unfamiliar with how it works – what information gets shared, and with whom.

You shrug your shoulders and say to yourself, “I need to update my profile, join groups and grow my network”. 

You start sending invitations to all sorts of people you know and you think to yourself “why didn’t I do this before – my network would have already been built?”

You also join some groups on LinkedIn.  One of the groups you decide to join is all about finding a job, so you decide to hide that group from your profile.  You are glad you remembered to hide it.

You have taken action on LinkedIn and you congratulate yourself.  You already have an interview set up and more people are reaching out to you.  This LinkedIn thing is working well for you!

The next week your boss calls and says he’d like to meet with you to discuss some things that are happening at the company.  Since you have other companies expressing interest in you, and you think you are doing a good job in your current role, you approach the meeting with confidence.

As you meet with your boss, your stomach turns, and your facial expressions become blank.  It turns out that you are directly connected to your boss on LinkedIn.  The last meeting you had was a test to see how committed you were to the organization.  He noticed your activity on LinkedIn. as you went from 25 connections to 271 in the matter of one week. 

Since your Activity Feed and Activity Broadcasts are turned on, your boss has been notified that you recently connected with a number of recruiters.  

He even knows you joined a group that is all about finding a new job – since you are connected to him and he belongs to the same group (for spying purposes) you weren’t able to hide it from him.

Unfortunately, you didn’t know that cuts were coming and your boss was looking for loyalty.  You are the first one out the door.

Hopefully, the situation I just described hasn’t happened to you, but similar situations have happened to others – many times.

LinkedIn is a great tool for advancing ones career.  Unfortunately, it is complex and very, very public. 

Like most things, the strength of LinkedIn is also its weakness.  The very public nature of LinkedIn, and other social media outlets, gives you exposure that wasn’t dreamed of 10 years ago.  Like we have seen in the example above, with that exposure there can be danger. 

You have to understand the dangers of LinkedIn to use it effectively.

What are the solutions?

Using LinkedIn you have to accept a certain level of risk - risk that is worth the reward if you are aware of the dangers and address them properly.

LinkedIn is what LinkedIn is.  The only way members can benefit from LinkedIn is if it remains a very public website.  LinkedIn currently provides some features that help minimize the risk – the ability to turn off Activity and Broadcast feeds, hide connections and hide groups.  Let’s not expect anything more out of LinkedIn to help keep your job search private.

What can an individual member do?

1. First of all, don’t connect directly with your boss.  For some, it is tempting to send an invitation to connect to your possible future employer or current boss.  If you aren’t connected to your boss, don’t; If you are connected to your boss, take the precautions discussed below AND consider discussing with your boss why it might be better for both of you to not be connected, and drop the connection.

2. Take advantage of the features Linkedin offers to minimize your activity footprint:

·         Turn off Activity and Broadcast feeds;

·         Hide your connections;

·         Hide certain group memberships; 

3. If you have a Premium account with LinkedIn, do not display any of the badges – especially the Job-Seeker Premium badge.

4. Reaching 500+ connections as soon as possible is key to hiding your activity.  As in the example above, aggressively adding connections can signal your interest in other opportunities.  Until you reach 501 connections anyone in your network can find out exactly how many connections you have, and can track the growth. 
   
   

Once you reach 501 connections, LinkedIn no longer displays the exact number of connections you have and simply shows “500+”.  If you have hidden your connections, no one knows how many connections you have, so you can freely add connections without drawing attention.

Of course, if you decide to not aggressively add connections you may be hurting yourself by possibly     being “out-of-network” to the very person who may have a career-advancing opportunity.

The four safest times to aggressively add connections to exceed 500 connections are:

·         When you are unemployed;

·         When you have resigned from your current position, but have not started your new position;

·         If you are lucky enough to still be in college, build it now and have it for your entire career!

·         Almost anytime, if you can quickly exceed 500 direct connections;

What can MaxOut LI do?

We provide a solution that takes LinkedIn members far beyond 500 connections – quickly.  PowerNetwork^TM 1000 guarantees you will have over 700,000 2^nd-level connections within 14 days!  It’s a 100% money-back guarantee and no one has requested a refund. 

You will be “in-network” to virtually every U.S.-based recruiter who uses LinkedIn.  Don’t wait and you can take advantage of our current 50% discount using the promo code “EXPLODE” when you checkout.

Hopefully by employing these common sense tactics you can make a successful career transition without signaling your current employer that you are entertaining other offers!

Please share your stories!