LinkedIn and the death of the CV

I’ve always felt that in the rush to debate and trial innovation in digital recruitment the basics get neglected and the obvious gets missed. LinkedIn for me is starting to fall into the obvious category, at least in terms of where the debate should now be.

Compared to Facebook and the like it’s growth seems slow but at the end of last year it reached the million UK users milestone and I think I’m making a pretty safe prediction to say it’s second million is going to come pretty quickly. It seems to be discussed more and more these days and I know a lot of people who got hooked on social networking during the Facebook boom (is there a bust to follow?!) that are now turning to LinkedIn to explore online business networking for the first time. LinkedIn also seem have got their act together in recent months, there are more paid for advertising / engagement options on the table and rumour has it that there is now a UK office.

So what’s in it for us from a recruitment perspective? Well, in my opinion, three main things. Firstly and most obviously there is a captive audience to market /advertise to. I’m not going to say anymore about this other than to refer you to mention of a London sales office in the paragraph above. Second is pretty obviously as a source of active and passive candidates. Again I’m not going to say much about this other than that I’m amazed that there are recruiters in the UK who are unaware of LinkedIn or who are just not using it as one of their sources!

Thirdly and most interesting is what I want to focus on. Is LinkedIn the beginning of the end of the CV? I’m already starting to see people sending links to their profile rather than their CV for jobs in the digital / technology space. This a trend that is only going to continue and jump to other industries as Linkedin becomes even more mainstream. After all why bother digging out, updating and resending a word file continuously when you can have your career history in one place, update as you go and just drive potential recruiters there when the time is right for you. Makes sense doesn’t it!

Now I’m sure that lots of people won’t agree and that I’ll be inundated with 101 reason why CVs aren’t going the way of press advertising (did you see what I did there). However maybe there is another way to think about it all while we wait for the revolution to run it’s course

How often do we find ourselves in the awkward position with recruitment sites (be it a direct employer’s or a job board), where huge amounts of passive candidate register but no information is collected that is really usable. Its great having a nice email database of interested people but how do you know whether they are appropriate for your role or not? It’s almost as if we need a half way house……something that allows candidate to leave lots of usable data in a way that requires no time or effort on their part. I’ve not seen a space in a registration form to upload your Linkedin profile URL yet but surely it’s only a matter of time! Watch this space…

Matt

Comments

[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.