As I hinted last Friday and posted today on my blog, LinkedIn Jobs is now available as a preview.
Like other job sites, you will be able to set search criteria regarding a position (except salary level ?) and access the list of available positions. Where social networking features kick in is in the display of your degree of connection on LinkedIn to the poster of the ad (1 if you are directly connected, 2 if one person connects you and the poster through the network, etc.) and how many people have endorsed that person on the service. The whole idea is obviously to use your personal network to due diligence the company, the team and the person hiring, as well as find ways to get to them through your connections.
The detailed view of a position also mentions how many people in your network work for that company, and whether the person posting and yourself have one or more LinkedIn Groups in common.
Did I mention that posting jobs was free during the preview ? Definitely worth trying: over 360 positions have been posted in the first 4 hours, from small to very large public companies - and it is Sunday. The combination of trusted referrals and due diligence, and what I would expect to be a competitive pricing (though I don't have any specific information), should make this service very relevant a number of positions.
I started blogging a couple of years ago in the "resumeblog" space. It was an interesting experience. I noticed the new feature of LinkedIN. It will be interesting to watch what happens with it. The hardest part from our part of the world is the remote location and the "virtual" mindset that isn't quite there yet. People like to hire people they can see everyday.
Posted by: Anne Stanton | January 17, 2005 at 04:14 PM
personally, I think job opening info should be more freely available like RSS or Atom and not require someone to visit and logon to a site to find information. Why not just have companies syndicate their job openings and then use job opening aggregators?
Posted by: marty | January 18, 2005 at 08:21 PM
Syndication isn't bad in some places but honestly it would generate a ton of resumes from candidates that don't fit the bill. In some cases I find that folks hardly ever read the job opening except for the fact that it is full time and based in Portland, Oregon.
For us we need a very high caliber individual who is both technically proficient and can communicate about technology to various audiences at high and in depth levels.
Needless to say this person isn't easy to find and other folks I am sure have similar needle in a haystack hiring challenges.
For me something like LinkedIn has promise. I am having our HR director look into it this week and let me know if she thinks it has some good potential. I personally think it might as it allows some filtering of candidates unlike a standard newspaper ad or RSS feed would.
Posted by: Sean Campbell | January 18, 2005 at 08:38 PM
Marty> I think that Sean partially responds to your question. For certain types of jobs, you can definitely do that (feedster offers http://jobs.feedster.com/ for that purpose). However, when you are seeking a high profile individual, the "power of the network" brought by LinkedIn kicks in.
From a practical perspective, I already mentioned to Konstantin Guericke, the VP Marketing of LinkedIn, that I would allow the result of job searches to be syndicated out.
Posted by: Jeff Clavier | January 18, 2005 at 08:52 PM
you have convinced me. I've created a LinkedIn account and have already linked with Sean. Others are certainly welcome.
Posted by: marty | January 20, 2005 at 04:51 PM
A month later... LinkedIn is Linked out in my book. I think it's hard to program social networking. How do you program trust? Lots of issues with how it works. For starters, I can't link to people I deal with today without "permission" from people I don't know. I understand protecting links but their algorithms aren't right yet.
Posted by: marty | February 22, 2005 at 06:28 PM
Marty> You can connect directly with people you already know without going through contact requests. You can invite them by typing in their email address, or you can batch upload your rollodex and see who in already registered for the service. Upon receiving your invitation, they can accept your request and connect.
Good luck.
Posted by: Jeff Clavier | February 22, 2005 at 07:00 PM
I have really gotten some very good value from LinkedIn. Most people, like myself, simply don't know who they don't know. You have to work it though and continually build and give. Yes ... give. Networking is a two-way street ... you've gotta give to live. Be out there actively trying to help people even when it doesn't benefit you ... at least in the short term.
Posted by: Scott Jones | March 01, 2005 at 02:31 PM