I’ve said many times that your recruiting software needs to interface with Facebook and LinkedIn. One recent commentator thinks that we’ll all forget about the latter in two years.
“Why Facebook Will Destroy LinkedIn” was the provocative title on ere.net, an excellent source of recruiting information and buzz. The author is Jody Ordioni, an HR consultant who regularly contributes to ere.net.
Ordioni argues that Facebook has four distinct advantages over LinkedIn:
- Size – as in 630 million more users.
- Same demographic for both sites – namely, young-to-middle-aged professionals
- Monster recently chose to partner with Facebook, not LinkedIn, for BeKnown, its new recruiting app.
- Another app, BranchOut, makes Facebook (not LinkedIn) a more candidate-friendly tool by shielding some personal information from recruiters.
- Facebook’s peer-to-peer marketing power is not matched by anything at LinkedIn.
Ordioni’s prediction for LinkedIn: “2011 will be a tough year for the professional networking site. 2012 will be brutal. And, sometime in 2013, Facebook will finally destroy LinkedIn.”
Is she right? I don’t think so.
For one, LinkedIn is growing faster than Facebook. Many commentators have noted that Facebook may be reaching its near-saturation point, which means that it will only grow (if at all) as more of the world comes online.
Secondly, LinkedIn is very well-established in professional circles. It’s “siloed,” as the IT people like to say, which means that, unlike Facebook, it’s for one area of a user’s life – namely, employment-related connections. Lots of people – as in, tens of millions – are comfortable sharing their work life on LinkedIn and their personal life on Facebook, and it will be hard to get them to change their practices and mindsets.
Also – as I noted in a recent post – the real social media recruiting challenge to LinkedIn and Facebook will come from Google+, which makes it easy for users to “silo” their e-lives without leaving the Google+ platform.
So don’t change your recruiting software yet. LinkedIn will be here for some time to come.
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Networking via Social Media has become a prominent source for Staffing inquiries and is easily customizable. By connecting with and reaching out to candidates on LinkedIn and Facebook allows recruiters to get in contact with candidates that may not be on the job boards. Many of these candidates are not actively seeking new work, but will jump at an opportunity when it is presented to them. As well, the job seeker can clarify on their profile whether or not they are open to learning about new career opportunities.
It just might. This is really important.