Nick Corcodilos of the PBS NewsHour site is no slouch when it comes to pointing out major issues involving getting your name out there for jobs. He knows his stuff. That being said, when his story talking about whether LinkedIn is guilty of cheating job seekers and employers many feathers were ruffled. Job seekers are now asking whether they are paying
for a service that promises more than it provides. Employers are asking whether they are getting quality candidates.
Let’s face it, if you are in the B2C or C2C business you are likely on LinkedIn. That being said, it can make a great place to network when seeking clients, employers, or job opportunities. As LinkedIn rolled out features, it made job search functions free to all users. Then the change happened. LinkedIn had to start showing some profitability. That being said, they began acting more and more like a job board. Not only were job seekers asked to pay for getting their resumé in front of more companies. On the flip side, employers were asked to start paying to have access to job posting capabilities and to be able to actually view resumés.
Thanks to in depth research by Nick Corcodilos we know that job boards have shown an extreme drop in effectiveness when they have adopted a pay for use layout. In fact both CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com showed that only a measly 2.5% of users were hired over a ten year period through their services. Talk about dismal! Now LinkedIn has embraced this same tactic even with it showing so poorly? Imagine how many dollars are spent by job seekers and companies alike in the hopes of finding the perfect position or employee.
For just $29.95 a month, job seekers get access to a premium status that offers to place their resume at the top of the proverbial pile. Does this mean that LinkedIn ensures that they are qualified for the jobs where their resume appears? Absolutely not. A highly unqualified or under-qualified individual could get there just as easily wasting both their time and the time of their unlikely future employer. According to Corcodilos this is a slippery slope that LinkedIn has chosen to take head on.
For companies seeking potential employees this means that they are paying for the privilege of having to sift through applications and resumes of people that they will never higher. This also means that LinkedIn is operating on people’s assumption that they need the extra leg up when it comes to getting their name out there. Imagine how an employer would feel knowing that you paid someone for the opportunity to go knock on the employer’s door no matter what your qualifications. That is exactly what is happening now.
So what does this mean? Does it mean that you are wasting your time signing up for LinkedIn’s services? Does it mean that LinkedIn has set out to milk the proverbial cash cow? We’ll leave this one up to you to decide.