By Neil Patrick
I have read a great deal recently about why some people think Linkedin is a bad place to find your next job.
And I think there’s some truth in these criticisms. Why do I say this?
- Jobs on LinkedIn are advertised because it’s a really low cost way for recruiters and hiring companies to reach a lot of people. Advertising on LinkedIn starts at $2 a click. So getting your job in front of 500 targeted candidates costs from $1000. That’s cheap in advertising terms.
- This is good news for recruiters but bad news for candidates. For candidates, the old problem of being a small fish in a big pond hasn’t gone away. In June 2013, LinkedIn reported it had 259 million registered users worldwide…
- LinkedIn’s revenues depend heavily on recruitment advertising. In 2012 this was $84.9m. I don’t yet have the 2013 figures, but growth forecasts are in the 25% - 45% range. The point is that LinkedIn will for sure be focussing hard on further growth in this sector and we’ll see more initiatives in this area of activity by LinkedIn.
- Many jobs I have seen advertised on LinkedIn have a list of required qualities and experience that are so great, you’d need to have at least 50 years of experience to get close to what is being asked for. And typically the salary range is rarely shown…
So, just like jobs boards and all online recruitment, you are forced to play a numbers game, and the odds are stacked against you right from the start.
LinkedIn is facing some business challenges
In essence, LinkedIn is a highly attractive medium for recruiters, but overcomes few of the hurdles faced by jobseekers. Result - more and more jobs are being posted on LinkedIn. And growth of the LinkedIn user base means competition for jobs advertised there must grow too. This isn’t good news if you are job hunting.
But there’re some headwinds for LinkedIn as a business too. Many analysts on Wall Street believe that we are witnessing the development of a social media bubble, citing for example the near doubling of Twitter’s equity value on the first day following its IPO.
Linkedin has a key weakness too in its user base. It isn’t getting much use by the real captains of industry. In fact there’s an argument that the more senior you are, the less you will use Linkedin. Like all social media, Linkedin also faces a challenge to grow its revenues. As it progressively introduces more and more initiatives that help achieve this, the positive user experience is difficult to maintain.
But it’s still really valuable for job hunting
Having said all of that, I still think LinkedIn is a key tool for job hunting and this goes back to two things which were part of its founding principles:
- The fostering of networking between professionals across the globe.
- It’s ability to facilitate the sharing of information between people who would probably never meet in the real world.
Baby Boomers need to understand a whole new world
Baby boomers grew up and built their careers in a time where there was no social media. The whole world operated on hierarchical structures – from heads of state to voters, from media owners to readers, from archbishops to congregations.
And of course in the business world from CEOs to workers and consumers.
Power and influence was exercised generally in a top down fashion with just the occasional acquiescence to taking up ideas and wishes from the bottom up.
The world of digital media has demolished this model. Social media scales laterally. Influence spreads from peer to peer. It fosters collaboration.
It’s a genuine social revolution. Just look at how the Arab Spring gained momentum – people in repressive dictatorships found that they could spread their influence to their peers rapidly and almost for free. And critically they could do this with absolutely no approval from their hierarchical superiors.
This characteristic of the social web is difficult to come to terms with for a generation that has grown up in a hierarchical world. I think many baby boomers like the communication tools of the social web. They see it as convenient and cheap, but they haven’t really grasped that its biggest change isn’t a technological one, it’s a societal one.
For Gen Y who have grown up with social media and digital technologies, this isn’t a change at all. For them, it’s always been this way. And for Gen X, it’s a change that they’ve been part of during most of their adult lives.
So baby boomers have a double disadvantage, the most obvious is of course that they are not as savvy with the technology as younger generations. But this can be overcome with a bit of application and persistence. The bigger problem in my view is that it requires a whole different world view. The shift from a hierarchical frame of reference to a lateral and peer to peer one requires a 90 degree rotation of your perspective.
Understand the power of networks and you’re halfway there
So to get back to the title of this post, the power of Linkedin for job search isn’t that it’s a new medium for finding job adverts. As I outlined at the start, this is really an illusion anyway and it helps recruiters and hiring organisations much more than it helps applicants.
No the real power of Linkedin is how it allows us to build powerful personal networks.
Network theorists identified the power of networks as early as the 1970s. Mark Granovetter and his paper “The Strength of Weak Ties,” and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi were pioneers in the understanding of network theory. Long before Linkedin was even set up, they identified why social networks have such tremendous reach and power.
Granovetter showed that people were more likely to get jobs from friends of friends, rather than immediate friends. The logic is that we know the same people our friends know and therefore if they know about a career opportunity, we probably already know about it, too. But your friend’s friends are more likely to know people you don’t know who know about career opportunities you haven’t heard about.
Let’s say you have ten close friends. That’s not much of a network, but if we also assume that each of your ten friends also has ten friends, your accessible network is now 100 people. If each of those ‘second degree’ friends also knows ten people, your reach is now 1,000…
But critically LinkedIn can multiply this reach many times over. If you have say 600 LinkedIn connections and these people all know a little about who you are and what you do, suddenly your reach is at least 6,000 people and probably much more.
The open sharing of information about ourselves, peer endorsement and shared community of online networks builds a sense of camaraderie and trust between members. Because LinkedIn focuses on people, it not only expands the scope of your search, it creates a network with trust created between members. Someone who is referred by someone you know (or someone who knows someone you know) is much more likely to be a helpful and valuable connection. This creates a connection that is psychologically more conducive to positive interaction.
Why it pays to be a ‘weak’ link
Most of us are or can easily become members of several different networks. The people who connect the unconnected are called “weak links.” This isn’t the same thing as “The Weakest Link” on TV. The weak link in network theory is where you start to get really powerful information flows because weak links connect previously unconnected people. LinkedIn has an extraordinary ability to enable you to be your own weak link, connecting you to people and potential career opportunities beyond your immediate network.
Looked at in this way, it’s an extraordinarily effective resource for career change, industry information, and employment opportunities.
So the real power of Linkedin for your job search isn’t the job ads it carries. It’s its extraordinary ability to empower you to build your network faster and more easily than ever before. Across countries. Across continents.
Once we start to think about our personal networks as being lateral not hierarchical and scaling them laterally, suddenly the way we think about and carry out our career development activities is transformed.
It’s a genuinely new age…thankfully without the need to buy crystals.
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