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31/03/2008

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Jamie Leonard

Interesting. I can confirm that they are opening a London office, they are building a sales team and they are targeting recruitment ad agencies. How do I know this? They’ve targeted a bunch of current or former job board sales people (yours truly included). If it wasn’t for this crazy little thing called MyLongLunch it would have been something I would have seriously considered as I think they have a fantastic proposition. Out of interest I checked out the application process and guess what? As Matt pointed out, they already knew everything about me. Current position, previous company, experience, qualifications and recommendations. I really liked the way you can request a recommendation from someone you’re Linked In with, very nice feature.

If anyone has a UK based contact that’s not Kevin Eyres can you let me know as I’d really like to get them along to our Innovation session at the end of the month.

J

Matt

and here is Seth Godin with another reason not to have a CV

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/why-bother-havi.html

dominic sumners

Agree with comments above
absolutely love Linkedin as a company and product. They have set something up that really works for the user and therefore achieves exponential growth. The monetising of the product then comes next (rather than the other way round)- like Google - and i guess Facebook too.
And then as you immerse yourself in its world - there are the unique rules or etiquettes to getting the most out of it as user or recruiter.
Absolutely fascinating to see how it will transform - has transformed - recruiting, candidate resourcing and executive search. Personal view is that the advertising/ marketing (narrow definition)part may be the least effective part of package - but we shall see.
Dom

Alan

That is true but may started in IT field mostly.I can see the trend in China also.The trend is there ! The question in how we catch it.

Stephen

Hi Matt

I couldn't help have a mention, I couldn't agree more with your comments, as I just couldn't see the point of Facebook.

Still to us web savvy people it makes sense, but many cannot see the advantage. Having been recruiting for many years in the healthcare market and dealing with professionals all my cv's arrived by email, which was great until I changed industry to help set up a welding recruitment company a couple of years back, 90% of the cv's came by fax!

Sinead

Good post Matt. I wouldn't be suprised if in the future, video type services were offered either in real time for dialogue between the prospective employer and candidate or a personal video presentation for a consistent presence on your individual career webpage - wherever that may be, LinkedIn etc.

With the next generation of the Internet enabling mash ups of various info and applications from various sources, the kind of information you will be able to present on your career 'CV' could be impressive.


On another note, as Dom mention above, its always interesting when websites embark on a drive to monetise and productise their offering. The beauty of LinkedIn to date is that it has been a non intrusive community for professionals.

Of late I've noticed an increase in emails from LinkedIn, telling me what my network have been up to. This has been interesting and useful, however the trick is to keep ading value to the users while not crossing the line where commercialism prevails over the value or interests of those in the community.

john

Hi.

I was the CTO at a dot com that went under, and wanted to network for a new job. I'm now the VP of Engineering at another startup.

Instead of writing up a resume or cv, I wrote a bio, and at the end, wrote, "for the full story, see http://linkedin.com/.....", i.e., a link to my profile. No one even blinked.

There was one potential employer who, after reading all this stuff, wanted something on paper to circulate to staff. So I simply used LinkedIn to generate a PDF of my profile, which looks much like a resume.

One last note on all this:

I asked a number of people whether I should make a proper resume. They all said YES. But in my experience, this was simply not the case, and their opinions (must of them were also startup execs of various types) had little relationship to the real world of employment networking.

Jacco Valkenburg

Hi Matt, I fully agree with your view. In The Netherlands almost 60% of the working population has a profile on a social network. It's just stupid not to make use of this dynamic content and still rely on a static CV. The first websites who ask for this information are already there, see the online application form at www.ing.jobs/im (disclaimer: I'm working at ING as external advisor for this pilot next-generation careerportal).

Peter Gold

I use Linkedinabox which allows me to display my full Linkedin profile on a web page e.g. social network profile page so anyone can view the entire profile without even leaving the site.

You can see it in action also on my blog About me page.

Good post for an ad agency geezer :>)

Matt

Thanks for some very interesting comments. Posting a follow up article shortly

Matt

Bryan

I learned something important when I went out into the job market. I discovered that you can interview the company who is trying to recruit you as much as they interview you. Without doing that, you just end up in a company you can't stand working for, like I did for nearly ten years. Anyway, I found this article about how to do that and what to look for at www.bestcompaniesguide.co.uk/interview_questions.aspx. There's even a cool podcast there if you don't feel like reading.

Peter Tren

More Cv tips and advice over here http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/cv-tips/default.aspx

career advice

Great tips!
Another important aspect is to be flexible.
When a person basically starts a career anew, it means he/she may have to make concessions about job titles, salary, relocation, etc. And this is not as easy as it may sound.

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