According to a report on C|Net News, LinkedIn is about to start charging for job listings, as the service comes out of its beta phase. The listings show job openings and potential contacts within the hiring organisation, enabling subscribers to leverage their network as part of the job-search process.
On the face of it, LinkedIn could add a great deal of value to that process – as the site points out in its blurb, “you’re 10 times more likely to get a job through someone you know”. That’s partly true – the research actually found that you’re most likely to get a job through your weak social ties – but LinkedIn’s model of connections radiating out from your immediate acquaintances is a close approximation to the sort of social ties that the original research considered.
However, I think the reality – in the UK at least – is actually going to be a bit different. In a highly unscientific test this morning, I scanned the UK job listings, and found about 750 or so. Of these, at least 85% were listings placed by recruitment firms, rather the the hiring company themselves. Whether this is something unique to the UK market I’m not sure, but within professions such as IT and accountancy, recruitment is heavily geared towards working through intermediaries
The problem this could potentially cause are two-fold.
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