Wednesday 23 January 2013

I was wrong about LinkedIn!

If you have followed my posts or my presentations in the past you will know my views on LinkedIn.

In case you haven't there are 4 principals for Recruitment Directors:-
- Make the most of it while you can afford it
- Ensure you have a Strategy on how it fits with your other databases (CRM, Ad Response and Job Boards)
- Budget for it becoming more and more expensive each year
- Track it and make sure you can live without it

I said these things on the basis that, I thought,  LI would never really get "the Recruitment industry" and therefore Recruitment Owners would always have the upper hand. - I was wrong!


LinkedIn are now hiring good "Recruitment People" across the Globe that know the recruitment market and the number of silly sales calls will reduce and you will start to meet people who know what it is all about.

Using LI to find out about LI, they appear to have over 4,000 (3177 on there last accounts) staff and over a 100 in the UK. They forecast circa $275m Sales and $60m of EBITDA (good margins if you can get it). Also that 55% of their revenue is now coming from Talent Solutions (ie Recruiters or Clients doing it them selves)

LI have a Market Cap of £12bn (8 times the size of Manpower or Michael Page International). They are on a P/E ratio of over 700 so the new Sales have to come from somewhere. It will be Recruitment or Talent Solutions.

So I now have only one Principal - Use LI now and smartly, find the candidates and the CV and the  relationship into your Database as soon as you can.

This is not an advert for Daxtra or ebsta but consider how you get the data into your systems as soon as you can.

Finally - Imagine being a Resourcer without LI!