Today, everyone is clamouring to embrace the concept of professional networking, but there remains confusion over how sites, such as LinkedIn and Xing should be used to their best potential.
I would argue that this is particularly the case in the recruitment sector; there exists a great deal of uncertainty from both a candidate and recruiter perspective when it comes to harnessing the site’s capabilities when searching for a candidate or job.
Recruiters have been quick to use professional networking sites, appreciating their potential significance as a new route to market – particularly given the fact they offer huge reach. However, these sites are not specialist recruitment platforms, and I’d say that a comprehensive review of how they are being used by a number of players could illustrate a poor return on investment.
Professional networking certainly supports a campaign around increasing awareness for recruitment businesses, in addition to helping recruiters to ‘headhunt’. But – as a tool - does it actually win business? Or are the hidden costs in ‘getting up-to-speed’ on the best use of professional networking creating a hidden resource burden.
The current experience is a social network for your work contacts. Unlike specialist recruitment platforms, LinkedIn does not have the capability to accurately match a job with a candidate. It is very much a manual process that requires significant resource and investment – for the candidate and recruiter alike. LinkedIn is feature rich with hooks into various external sites, such as Twitter, and – as such – it is starting to look like a content aggregator. Potentially it poses a confusing proposition for anyone aiming to use it as a recruitment tool.
From a candidate perspective, the vast majority aren’t going on to professional networking sites to be marketed to by recruitment consultants. Instead, they use them to build up contacts and to generate a profile of themselves.
I would also be confident to say that if you asked a group of candidates if they were recruited into their current position via a professional networking site, the majority would advise that wasn’t the case, unless their CV was originally sourced via a site such as LinkedIn.
In a poll we conducted in March of this year[1], 53 percent of respondents advised that they use professional networking sites to build up a profile of business contacts. 52 percent claimed to have used professional networking sites to look for a job, but only 20 percent advised that they had landed a job through this platform.
Professional networks are trying to be a multi-faceted entity, and many would argue that as a result they are potentially losing their focus. They will never be a primary source for job hunting as it is not their core competency or specialism. The sites are used more as a networking source, and as an avenue for making contacts with others within a particular industry, which will undoubtedly result in the occasional job being found, or position being filled.
Today, a place certainly exists for professional networking within the recruitment space, but I would say that this is likely to be at top end of the spectrum. Recruiters will have their networks and core contacts, and professional networking provides another platform for communication. However, this type of liaison isn’t taking place in the bulk, or standard mid-range market. Professional networking isn’t going to replace recruitment to these sectors.
When it comes to the job board model, jobseekers initiate the application; they are in control of the process, and everyone is clear about the objectives. Unless a recruiter can approach a candidate (who happens to be seeking work) with the perfect ‘job of a lifetime’ through a professional networking site, then their chances of success will be low, because the two users are out of sync.
We use professional networking sites to build brand awareness of The IT Job Board, and to encourage a two-way dialogue with the IT community. Today, we have connected with a growing number of IT jobseekers across the company’s Xing and LinkedIn professional networks. For us, the candidate is king, and professional networking is certainly helping us in our bid to connect with our all-important target market. For now I am unconvinced that professional networking is a primary recruitment tool, but with huge investment and a mass pool of users, who knows how their product offering will evolve in the future.
[1] Survey to 540 candidates on the theme of ‘Professional Networking’, March 2010.
