A Recruiting Leader's LinkedIn Wishlist

"LinkedIn is where Monster was 10 years ago." In the 12 months since I took on the talent acquisition leadership at my company, I have heard this phrase or some variant of it uttered repeatedly by recruiting professionals, sometimes in very public settings. It's often accompanied by, "I can't wait for a good alternative to come along."

Companies in leadership positions often become the ones people love to hate.  There are competitive catalysts for this, with would-be upstarts trying to take down the top dog by propagating critiques.  But much of this can also be self-made; a strong position can lead to conservatism, which can breed slowness and even inaction (cue The Innovator's Dilemma, Only the Paranoid Survive, and a raft of other management tomes).  You start to operate more like Congress than the scrappy company you once were. Also, as the organization goes looking for new avenues of growth, it can neglect the clients that formed its initial base of business.

In "Powerhouse," the new oral history chronicling the rise of CAA, super agent Michael Ovitz described this phenomenon: "In the beginning, everyone is going to pull for you. Three years in, people will still be hoping you're there and try to be on your side. They'll want more time from you than you can give them. Five years in, they'll realize you're a force to be reckoned with, and since you're no longer the underdog and not giving them enough time, they will start to be cynical. Seven years in, they'll realize you're not giving them any time, and they'll start to criticize you. And ten years in, they're going to hate your guts." (note: Ovitz always had a flair for the dramatic)

I've written about this previously, but I'm a big believer in the promise of LinkedIn: its "professional people search 2.0" and what that can enable in the way of a more proactive, fundamentally better approach to talent acquisition.  However, I can understand the angst amongst recruiting leaders generated by annual escalators, inflexible negotiation, unclear development timelines, and spiky client support levels which ebb and flow with the renewal tide.

LinkedIn is a for-profit organization.  I don't expect them to suddenly start cutting everyone a big discount just because they're becoming a division of a bigger company.  That’s not how it works.  Still, no matter how strong your current position, it's short-sighted to overlook negative sentiment brewing in a major part of your client base.  And according to its most recent (and likely final, for awhile anyway) earnings release, Talent Solutions still drives the vast majority of LinkedIn’s revenue.

So what should you do about this, if you're LinkedIn?  Simply put, create incremental value disproportionately greater than the value you’re capturing.   Nobody on the other side of puberty is going to complain about having to take a little more medicine if they know it’s going to help them get better.   Some of the enhancements rolled out over the past year (most notably, making search easier for the boolean non-experts) have been helpful. But a) it feels like the member-oriented investments have far outweighed the ones for the companies who are actually paying the bills, and b) you have to keep going.

As the leader of a fairly large recruiting effort, here are some things on my LinkedIn wishlist:

1) Empower companies to make their jobs stand out.  

There was much hype on the Talent Connect main stage last year about the new Jobs format- more visual, more dynamic, automatically pulling in relevant info (e.g., other employees at your company who have a similar title, the candidate’s connections at the company).  A true job advertisement instead of a boring job post.

The problem is that companies still have very limited ability to customize.  The only module in the post that we can control is the job description.  And all we can put in there is a bunch of text.  That makes it hard to stand out or add other rich, relevant content.  

The ask here: take a page from enhancements recently made to Career tabs and made long-ago to Articles.  Allow companies to embed media- photos, videos, audio.  You can imagine the potential vividness of the job ads if that were possible.  Members could hear from the manager and teammates or see the office.  Give us a way to make our jobs break through the clutter to reach that right candidate.

2) Automate employer - member matches.

This is one that was actually promised when Dan Shapero- LinkedIn’s Careers Product Lead- presented at the Anaheim Talent Connect last year.  With a big blue “Something New” button on the screen behind him, Shapero announced a development on the roadmap that would allow members to declare their interest in “putting themselves on the market” in Jobs and specify what they’re interested in (e.g., relocation, new function, new industry, temp work).  He then stated that these folks would get pushed to employers that would algorithmically match those interests, via Recruiter.   

Sounds great… it’s a model that startups like Anthology, WayUp, and others employ today… the veritable Tinder for jobs.  The promise of LinkedIn doing this is, of course, that the majority of the candidates and employers (with fairly up-to-date and accurate information), is already there.  

The problem is that it’s been nearly 12 months, and we haven’t seen anything yet (or at least, I haven’t).  It struck me as a good idea... but ideas are only as valuable as your ability to execute against them. I would love to see this one brought to life.

3) Enrich candidate data.

For all the features LinkedIn has added over the years, at its core, its value for recruiters lies in it being an unmatched store of reliable candidate data, which candidates actually want to share with us.  Continuing to evolve this database is fundamental to LinkedIn offering recruiters additional value.

I’ve already addressed the lack of ability to capture information about candidates’ employment interests.  Allowing members to opt-in to providing that information and devising a system to ensure those disclosures don’t put their current employment at risk seems like a good way to go.

A good way to mine current skills would also be incredibly valuable for recruiters.  Of course, LinkedIn has had a go at this, but the current jumble makes the old MySpace look organized.  Finding ways to come up a with a more standardized, broadly adopted taxonomy is necessary for this to really be useful; partnering with universities, technical institutions, and industry associations might be a good way to crack this.  Some form of validation / accreditation would also be a big plus here.

Another data nut to crack is diversity.  Finding diverse candidates is at the top of most major companies’ list of recruiting priorities.  The idea of somehow bringing ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation into a member database is of course complex and sensitive.  It’s hard… but it’s worth it to figure this out.  The current system of detective work required to find diverse candidates - looking for certain affiliations and interests, judging grainy photos - is both incredibly inefficient, imprecise, and just feels wrong.  I don’t have the answer, but I’d be more than willing to work with LinkedIn and groups like DiversityInc to figure this out.  

4) Increase data integration and openness.

As LinkedIn has built up its HR and marketing tech stack, it has become stingier about system integration with its data.  While that approach is understandable in some ways - they rightly don’t want someone to siphon off their member data to abuse it or create a LinkedIn clone - it also hurts the value of the database to the companies that were a major catalyst in building that data up in the first place, through their hiring.

Data is only of value if it’s utilized.  And by blocking 3rd party CRMs or referral systems from interfacing with its member data (even if the members approve), LinkedIn is reducing the value of its data to its Talent Solutions clients.  While that may give LinkedIn offerings (e.g., a new referral system) a competitive leg up, it weakens the draw of LinkedIn overall and keeps our recruiting efforts from reaching their potential.  And it makes us think about building up our own competing data stores (or supporting other providers who are more open).

I would argue that a better long-term approach is to be more open with data and embrace integrations, while still being judicious about member privacy.  While this may come at the expense of some near-term incremental revenue, it should reinforce the value of LinkedIn, reassure companies that the data will not be held captive, and open up bigger revenue opportunities down the road.

If done correctly, LinkedIn's services could also benefit from the integrations- it doesn't just need to be a one-way street. For example, today LinkedIn allows recruiters to identify candidates that have vs. haven't applied to a posting. However, that indicator only takes into account applies through LinkedIn... if they applied (or got to the application) through some other route, they wouldn't receive the "applied" designation in the search; this leads the proactive recruiter to have to ping-pong back and forth between LinkedIn and ATS reporting. A tighter ATS integration would provide this more complete view, which would make the LinkedIn search more correct and therefore more valuable to a recruiter. A clear benefit of greater openness.

5) Allow members to clarify followership.

Every social network wants to be a utility- something that its users need to use every day, multiple times a day.  Whether Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, the feed is one of the main mechanisms by which the platforms affect this dynamic.  LinkedIn is no different, and over the past few years, we have all noticed the feed becoming a bigger and bigger part of our usage.

The problem is that, with my Recruiter hat on, this is creating a dynamic in which insights and interests are starting to dominate recruiting-related communications on the platform.  And the risk is that this is raising members’ sensitivity to these kinds of communications… even the substantive, non-spammy messages can get filtered out, in a “baby with the bathwater” kind of way.  

It’s to the point where the social media person owning the company’s LinkedIn account can be anxious to post “job-stuff” to their feed, for fear of turning off followers interested in what the company has to say but who don’t want to work there.

One way to solve this problem would be give a company’s followers the option of clarifying why they’re following.  Are they interested in insights, company news, job opportunities, or all of the above?  Depending on their answer, the company can tailor the content they push to the feed more effectively (e.g., those explicitly interested in job opportunities will see more of those kind of posts; those interested only in insights will see little to none of the job stuff).  It will keep the feed cleaner and more relevant, and it would be a win for both members and companies.

6) Enhance job ad targeting and reporting.

The state of talent marketing feels like it's where digital advertising was about five years ago (which is a lifetime).  As an industry, many are still learning the basics of digital advertising (eg targeting, frequency capping, creative rotation).  

As a leader in the space and a company with digital in its DNA, I expected LinkedIn to be leading the charge here.  However, I quickly found that the capabilities offered were fairly rudimentary.  I am unable to target specific job opportunities to members that have specific characteristics, observed behaviors, or stated intent- which is effectively the promise of digital advertising in the first place.  

Some of this is due to fears about spamming users - the LinkedIn algorithm is seen as purer than a sponsored push; but my personal experiences with the relevance of LinkedIn prescribed jobs tells me that's not necessarily the case.  In fact, I’ve never been fed a “Picture Yourself” ad that I’ve found interesting.  I think there’d be huge value in giving members the option to select “I’m not interested” and pick from a couple reasons why (e.g., don’t like the company or industry, job is too junior or looking for a step up vs. a lateral move).  

Some of the inability to target is also about yield management, which I get.  Our inclination is to be choosy, and we’re likely largely going after a certain subset of the population.  But that’s frankly a problem for LinkedIn to solve by creating compelling, non-intrusive ad experiences and driving member usage.  

Compounding the issue is the need to work with a human being to place job ads and see results (with reporting that is very limited- we need to be able to get past basic demos, especially given the richness and quality of the LinkedIn database).  In today’s day and age, a programmatic advertising system is a must.

7) Make job slot management more intelligent.  

Job slots are the part of the LinkedIn package for recruiters where it’s probably easiest to see the ROI.  How many times did potential candidates view the job, and how often did they click on “apply”?  The issue is that this simple dynamic is predicated on making sure that the right jobs are being advertised in the first place.  Unfortunately, similar to the job ad system, the capabilities around job slot management are way too basic and quickly give out to requiring manual effort.  

You can have the system “wrap” the latest jobs into any open slots you have.  And you can manually select jobs to drop into slots, exclude, or pull down.  However, you can’t assign priority to jobs that would allow them to bump others out of slots, let alone define slightly more complex but still basic prioritization criteria (e.g., post all data science jobs first).  

For a smaller company whose job slot to open job ratio is pretty close to 1:1, this system is workable.  But for a large operation with hundreds or even thousands of open jobs at a time?  Not so much.  Allowing for pre-defined rules to dictate job slot priority and placement would be a heck of a lot more efficient for us.       

8) Alert on Recruiter usage and appropriate membership levels.

As any recruiting leader will tell you, underutilized Recruiter seats is one of the biggest pain points. And while LinkedIn probably thinks that all Recruiters can get effective use out of a full, multi-thousand dollar Recruiter seat, I’m not so sure that’s the case.  Some may be fine with Recruiter Lite (which is a multiple less in cost), and some possibly may be ok with free.  While reporting on Recruiter usage is available, it’s very manual.  

An automated diagnostic and notification about the appropriateness for a “level adjustment” (either to level down or to level up) would engender a lot of goodwill and demonstrate care for the value companies are getting from their investment; it’s one of the things that wireless providers do well now.  Recruiter seats are too expensive to become the search equivalent of an unused gym membership.

9) Fully-feature Groups to support alumni networks.

I'm all-in on the value of alumni networks, to the point where I helped get the ball rolling on my current company's launch of one; now that I'm in recruiting, I think they're even more important, since I see first-hand how valuable they are for referrals and returning talent.

LinkedIn has obviously been a big proponent of them as well, from "The Alliance" to a trove of articles on the company blog. And Groups dedicated to bringing alumni together abound on LinkedIn.

Given all of this, I've always found it odd that LinkedIn hasn't evolved Groups to be a better platform for an alumni network. Right now, Groups are basically message boards (Conversations) that allow you to post Jobs. You can't modify them much beyond adding your logo.

To support an alumni network, companies need to be able to customize this at least a little bit. For example, being able to break out areas for Alumni News, Company News, and Events- essential to building the community- would make a world of difference. Being able to change the skin around the Group (similar to what you can do in your individual profile) would also be nice.

It sounds pretty basic, but small changes like these would take Groups from "almost but not quite there" to a viable platform for an alumni network.

Looking ahead

The next big Talent Connect conference is coming up in October in Las Vegas.  It’s another opportunity for LinkedIn to come out with some big things to demonstrate that they’re committed, investing, and executing on recruiters’ behalf.  I’ll be watching to see whether any of above gets addressed.  I’m hopeful that they’ll reverse the cycle Mike Ovitz referred to, dissipate some of the cynicism, and renew the recruiting community’s sense of excitement in LinkedIn.   

What’s on your LinkedIn wishlist?

The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my current or past employers. If you would like to read more of my writing, you can follow me on Twitter at @chrislouie.