There’s a post on Forbes entitled ‘Linkedin is about to put job boards out of business‘. Although I know the author Dan Schwabel and like him, he is off-base with his assumptions.
LinkedIn just announced a new feature that allows job seekers to ‘apply with linkedin’. Its a button that companies can put on their career pages and let job seekers submit their LI profile. Dan may be correct in saying that it will put the resume out of business. A profile is a much more valuable tool to sell yourself than a resume. I think eventually in 5-10 years the online profile will be the primary tool to job hunt, not the resume. If this new feature hurts anyone, I’d point to the ATS (applicant tracking systems). ATS’s are a bigger pain point for job seekers not job boards. This has the potential to become LinkedIn’s own version of tracking candidates for employers.
But LinkedIn is not a job board. They are the nation’s resume database. Its used to research information about people and companies. Its a vast treasure trove of business data.
Dan argues that only lazy recruiters use job boards. But its not just recruiters using them. Small business owners post a lot of jobs themselves. They dont have time to “source” candidates on a site like LI. They will always be reactive when it comes to recruiting. LI is a proactive tool. And ‘lazy’ recruiters will always exist.
Dan also generalizes all job boards into one solution when in truth there are many niche and local job boards that are continually proving their worth. He should have prefaced his post by naming the big job sites monster/careerbuilder. We all know they are the biggest target in our industry.
But now that LI is a public company they could evolve into more of a traditional job board. Especially if they acquire one of the aggregators as has been rumored. My money is on them buying SimplyHired. They’re both in silicon valley and very familiar with each other.
Being a public company now means they are beholden to their shareholders. That means they have to drive growth which is not always good news for recruiters or job seekers. LI will become more costly over time in order to satisfy the streets hunger. They’ll eventually get as expensive as sites like Monster. This will always leave room for smaller niche players like me to survive and thrive. So I’m rooting for LI to get big. The bigger they get, the better we look.
1) Marketing a job opening will never be limited to a single place (i.e. LinkedIn). Nobody would do that.
2) Replacing the resume would be a question of a standardized format. Everybody who wants to submit work information would have to adhere to it. Making people do something like that has never been easy. There would have to be a major benefit (i.e. consistent and ongoing feedback about submitted job applications) for them.