11 ms·

Is LinkedIn Cheating Employers and Job Seekers Alike?

162 points by uladzislau 13y ago

etler 13y ago
Worst case scenario seems to be that you're advertising to potential employers that you're having trouble finding a job... That doesn't seem like a good thing to point out...
WestCoastJustin 13y ago
Age and skills seem to be a factor. The people in the video are 40+, with many doing marketing/sales. The HN community, based off the what is your age? poll [1], suggests the majority here are between 21-35, so we probably are not experiencing their problem. Second, networking is a major factor, if the software keyword system is really the issue, you need to find ways around the system, email your old co-workers, etc. This is why it is important to keep learning, as tech evolves, and to put your self out there, through quality work. One thing did bother me a little, is pride a factor here? There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them, because they felt it was below them, or they were over qualified. If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better? ▁▁▂▇█▅▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ | | 21 35 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 ps. I created the bar graph via https://github.com/holman/spark https://github.com/holman/spark
- ngoel36 13y ago
  I'm just impressed with your ascii bar graph!
  - echohack 13y ago
    https://github.com/holman/spark https://github.com/holman/spark You'll like this then.
- samspenc 13y ago
  +1 just for the ASCII graph!
- danielweber 13y ago
  Taking a lower-paid job can reduce your salary once you get back to your primary field. Workers have legitimate reasons to treat wages as sticky.
  - kamjam 13y ago
    Not to mention the boredom factor. But I have known people to take a job just cos they need the money, and also been refused a job because they were over-qualified and the employer knew they would just leave once they got a better job. It's a two way thing.
  - bobbles 13y ago
    How can that happen? It's not like your new employer will know what you were making at the last job, and even so why should that matter?
    - tieTYT 13y ago
      They ask. Are you just supposed to lie or refuse to answer?
      - nostrademons 13y ago
        Refuse to answer. It's none of their business, and nobody can compel you to answer a question.
        themodelplumber 13y ago
        "I don't have to answer that." They can't compel you to answer, but good luck landing that job.
        WestCoastJustin 13y ago
        I have a hard time believing that if the employer is in desperate need, and a potential employee has the skills, they cannot come to an agreement, especially if you make it in for an interview. This does not make sense. Someone is not motivated enough.
- dev1n 13y ago
  If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better? I'm not sure I would call it pride. Some won't apply to jobs if they feel it is below them because the general consensus among employers is that if a better job comes along that this person is more qualified for, they will quit that "lower" job. source: my Econ professor
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Yep, but the smart people just dumb down their resume. Resumes are marketing tools, they should be tailored for the job no matter the "level." I'm not saying lie, I'm just saying put in the truth that will get you hired and leave out the truth that will stop you from being hired.
    - pc86 13y ago
      Lying on a resume is a terrible decision (don't say that to michaelochurch!), but nobody expects a resume to be the whole truth. I've seen people get fired because they lied about a degree, or said they were a Senior ___________ when they were not, but I've never seen or even heard of someone getting fired because they left a job off of a resume.
- redschell 13y ago
  It seems like some people actually take pride in their technical ignorance. They boast to coworkers how unfamiliar they are with CRM platforms and lead generators, and they laugh at the notion of using very basic coding skills to script some of their more monotonous job functions. It's disheartening. They must know that, regardless of age, it's adapt or die, but they're so damn stubborn. Does anyone know of a Coursera for older, working professionals that have begun to fall behind in their skill development? I know that Coursera and other learning platforms are not necessarily designed for young people, but I'm sure the academic design/nature of it turns a lot of professionals off. Might be an interesting startup idea (though I'm sure someone's already on it).
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  There was a good HN discussion when spark was first released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237478 Several people ported it to other languages. Here was my humble effort: https://gist.github.com/quandyfactory/1368953 https://gist.github.com/quandyfactory/1368953
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them There is an interesting twist to this story. Last time I was looking for a job, I applied for a position the recruiter saw as a downgrade from my then current one. It was a very cool company that does very cool things, but no amount of talking convinced her I would not stay with them or that I would voluntarily get myself a pay cut in order to work for them and that money is not my primary motivator. Hackers may be a weird bunch, but recruiters are not much behind.
henrik_w 13y ago
I never understood the "Job Seeker Premium" badge. It just makes you look desperate in my mind.
- richardjordan 13y ago
  right - like a candidate anti-pattern - this person so lacks confidence in their abilities that they're trying to game the system to get attention (unfair probably but I'd be shocked if that wasn't the perception of many employers)
no-opinion 13y ago
I'm a student at a bush league school that doesn't have many connections to my field. Would it be in my interests to make a LinkedIn account for internship purposes?
- briandear 13y ago
  It really depends on your field, however networking should never require money. Build your network with those in your target field. That will pay off far more than a paid LinkedIn account.
  - weston 13y ago
    (S)he just asked about creating an account, not about paying LinkedIn. You can still create an account for free. Yes, that would most likely be a good idea... most recruiters and HR people check LinkedIn these days.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  You should absolutely have a LinkedIn account and begin to build the network. Just don't PAY for your LinkedIn account.
  - jusben1369 13y ago
    I feel like the "network" benefit of LinkedIn is close to zero. That is, when was the last time anyone said "I would like to talk to person X at Company Y. Oh, one of my friends is connected to person X. I'll ask that person for a warm introduction" Is anyone seeing or doing that?
    - auctiontheory 13y ago
      Yes.
    - wpietri 13y ago
      I make intros like that once or twice a month. I'm generally happy to do so, because I only accept LinkedIn connection requests from people I know well enough to recommend.
deleted 13y ago
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minouye 13y ago
I don't get why LinkedIn gets a free pass on a lot of the shady stuff it does. Case in point: if I have a free account, public details are hidden when browsing profiles and I'm told I need to "upgrade" my account to view them. Viewing the same profile in an incognito window reveals the "restricted" details. That seems like an ExpertsExchange level trick.
- hga 13y ago
  I'd assume that's for recruiters, and that what you see in the incognito window is to give them a taste (perhaps they have governors to limit how much can be found per unit of time). Not being that sort of recruiter I've only ever wanted to see that kind of thing to confirm if a particular "John Doe" is the one I'm thinking of before asking to connect to him, and personalizing the note takes care of that well enough. Otherwise I can see the profiles of people in my network just fine.
  - minouye 13y ago
    I'm definitely not a recruiter and LinkedIn could easily extrapolate that from my resume. Say for example I just want to do some due diligence on a contractor (or business associate or company exec. or whatever). I don't want to connect, just see their qualifications, general background, etc. Logged in: http://media.tumblr.com/ba1105d066fd8c3acca2909898d5b603/tumblr_inline_mornk0uQvp1qz4rgp.png http://media.tumblr.com/ba1105d066fd8c3acca2909898d5b603/tum... Logged out: http://media.tumblr.com/17fe723913901fe9a1e0c0c53b6ba6e4/tumblr_inline_mornmejci71qz4rgp.png http://media.tumblr.com/17fe723913901fe9a1e0c0c53b6ba6e4/tum...
    - hga 13y ago
      Ah, I didn't mean to suggest you were a "recruiter", although the examples you gave could be part of the recruiting function, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for LinkedIn to want some money from your to do perform such due diligence. It would be interesting to see if they've got an account level for that sort of small scale thing.
- ngoel36 13y ago
jt2190 13y ago
> But the question for everyone else is, why are employers > (who pay to access the database) and job seekers (who > pay for database positioning) playing along while > LinkedIn sells everyone out with this game of payola? > > And where does it leave LinkedIn users who just want to > meet one another to do business? While some of us are > working to help job seekers form appropriate, > substantive relationships that they can cultivate -- > and benefit from -- over time, LinkedIn keeps coming up > with silly products that cheapen the meaning of > networking and connecting with other people. I'm curious about this myself... Both employers and potential employees seem extremely hesitant to change their behavior. I can't help but feel that each side doesn't really want to deal with the other, and everyone is hiding behind websites and resumes, and sites like LinkedIn reap the rewards. There's probably some interesting social science here. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd love to hear about it. (edit: by "change behavior" I mean relying on the old system of: "you send me your resume, I'll put it in the trash." Supposedly 80-90% of jobs go unadvertised, and yet the vast majority "job search" by hurling resumes at the remaining 10-20%.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
w0rd-driven 13y ago
While the article focuses on LinkedIn, it could likely just be titled "Are Job Boards..." because the article mentions CareerBuilder and Monster. I know CB does it but wasn't paying attention to notice if Monster did. Something definitely feels slimy about the practice from a job seeker standpoint. Simply because I can't afford it, or place a high value on the cost I'm now at a disadvantage to another applicant. To borrow from another HN comment, it's akin to entering a cheat code while I'm just here normally playing the game. While I don't mind cheating in single player games, this is akin to wallhacking in a FPS. Having said that, I also don't mind it at all because if I get a job this way it proves I did so on my own merit and those that paid were complete suckers. There is definitely a sense of achievement that comes with that. I will always wonder how this came about though. How this became acceptable. I understand it's a business but creating unfair advantages in what amounts to some people's livelihood (in their mind at least) seems like playing with fire. There's also the very real threat that this is snake oil. Can anyone prove paying actually improves your chances? These companies could easily be charging for a "service" that only exists in name and actually does absolutely nothing behind the scenes.
PaulHoule 13y ago
Personally I don't pay for any premium services for LinkedIn but I can say that my LinkedIn profile consistently gets me quality calls from recruiters. In fact, it led me into a series of consistently better paying jobs quite quickly. I devoted consistent effort to building my LinkedIn network over time so I have a very large number of connections now. I get the sense that the system is underprovisioned for me, because the site is slow as hell, often I can't see the messages and invitations I've been sent until I've done several reloads. I actually would pay for a premium service that is overprovisioned for me and fast enough for me that I'd want to spend more time with it.
vladsanchez 13y ago
What really bothers me is the amount of 'bs' skills some of my coworkers state they have. It's an honor-based network being abused by some. It's also funny when non-SME (Subject Matter Experts) endorse SME skills. In my case, a Realtor endorsing OOP skills. Go figure!
gergles 13y ago
> But the question for everyone else is, why are employers > (who pay to access the database) and job seekers (who > pay for database positioning) playing along while > LinkedIn sells everyone out with this game of payola? There is no "payola" in searching the database. Job seekers aren't paying for database positioning, they are paying only to be at the top of the list of "here are people who applied for your job". This is mentioned by Corcodilos in his article then immediately handwaved away as if it doesn't matter, but this point completely changes the thrust of his argument. You don't show up at the top of search results no matter what kind of account you have; your payment or lack thereof does not manipulate organic search results. It only puts you at the top of a list of people who applied for jobs using the "Apply for jobs" function. The value for the free account-holder and for the recruiter is still intact.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  But it's all about perception - LinkedIn has got perceptibly more slimy, less about connecting, and it has now started taking money for rankings. If the sign on the brothel door says our women will give head for cash but they have to love you to screw, do you think anyone will believe it? Admittedly like all walled gardens, there is no business model - the value lies in the network and any and all attempts to monetize that are called taxation. We only accept that from one place
- raverbashing 13y ago
  This I don't pay for this "featured job seeker" thing, havne't gotten in the way. It may backfire since some people may filter the paying candidates as 'ads'
zcarter 13y ago
The problem comes down to trust and incentives. The "promoted" job board model leads to a middle man agent ("agent" in the Economics sense) with asymmetric information who is incentivized to give poor advice. LinkedIn wants you to trust their matching algorithm, but then goes behind your back and supplants the best matches with whoever the highest bidder happens to be. Instead of benefiting when their customers get value from their service (successful placements), LinkedIn is profiting from desperation and frustration (the more unsatisfied costs - "free" grade users, the more potential paying customers), and simultaneously making the search process more difficult for all parties involved. LinkedIn's position in the job search marketplace is as a monopolist provider of up-to-date candidate information, a valuable side effect of their primary virtue: being the winner take all social network for the corporate world. Rent-seeking behavior from monopoly providers with asymmetric information should surprise no one. Rent-seeking behavior leading to angry market participants should surprise no one.
- Sven7 13y ago
  Rent-seeking in silicon valley isn't spoken about enough. Rent seeking has and will always be around, but is it increasing? When we are talking about rankings and matching algo's in the hands of monopolies be it Google, Facebook, YouTube et al its a great mystery to me why the advertising industry trusts them so much.
seiji 13y ago
New headline game: if a headline suggests linkedin or facebook or google may be doing something a little bad, they're actually doing something five times worse.
willcole 13y ago
Disclaimer: I work on a competing job board site at Stack Overflow Careers 2.0 LinkedIn (as opposed to CareerBuilder apparently) isn't really cheating anyone. They're charging for a stupid feature to make a quick buck off of naive or desperate candidates. I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order. At least (apparently) they aren't biasing search results in their recruiter platform. We've taken the route of only charging employers for access to advertise jobs and company pages on Stack Overflow, and search profiles of developers on Careers 2.0 (no crappy contingency recruiters allowed). Not only do we not want to charge candidates, I don't exactly know what we'd be charging them for that would help clear the market more efficiently.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  > I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order. It helps them get through the human keyword filter in HR faster, which (theoretically) makes them more likely to get an interview. Even many "good" companies have issues with poor HR filter functions, and on top of that a majority of the jobs seem to be with "bad" companies. I agree, though, that its set up to prey on the naive and desperate. Those for whom any job is better than no job, or simply think this is how "the game" is supposed to be played.
polarix 13y ago
No problems with the main thrust of the article, but the conclusion that "America's jobs crisis needs to be looked at as a failure of employers and job boards to ensure an accurate and fair employment process" is laughable. The problems with the re-employment engine are multifold, and not trivially reducible to a single sentence. An interesting, and more nuanced take on the issue from a very different angle, which at least starts to grasp the enormity of the problem: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_antifaq/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_a...
richardjordan 13y ago
I think the broader principle of this post is solid. It's one that I've been thinking a lot as a friend asked me to advise his dating-site startup. I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking. With dating/jobhunting if you create a supremely efficient market place that finds the match almost immediately your customers go away. They don't need your service any more. It behooves you to increase the inefficiency of your marketplace to deliver almost-matches that keep people interested and paying, but not quite good enough to make them leave. Perhaps you could argue that a job board is different because employers are repeat finders and will come back again and again - the adultfriendfinder approach, people who keep getting laid keep paying. Either way they're tough businesses to make money on AND deliver a great service. LinkedIn does a ton of other things of course, to monetize, and isn't just a job board. But that just raises questions about some of their other practises of holding your own data hostage - which seems to be a key business model for social network monetization at the moment, and that's a whole other question.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking. For job hunting (but probably not dating), its at least conceivable that you can structure the charge model to one where one or the other party (or both) is paying for success in making a match (basically, that's what lots of non-web-based employment "matchmaking" services of various kinds do), so that you can, in fact, align customer satisfaction with profit maximization.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    Another approach is to do something like take a cut of the first year's salary or difference between the first year's salary and what the jobhunter was previously getting. That conditions success not only on making a match but on making a good match, as you get paid virtually nothing if an employee gets hired but then gets fired 2 weeks later. Many recruiting firms take this approach.
kvcrawford 13y ago
I hate LinkedIn. The pay walls and forced semi-hidden profiles are insanely annoying. I wish I had the resources to build a competitor centered around openness and UX. It should monetize on really strong programmatic job matching, driven by the improved data from reducing all the UX friction. Somebody, please accept the challenge.
- rgbrgb 13y ago
  What resources would you need?
  - kvcrawford 13y ago
    I suppose if I were to undertake it, all I would need is time (i.e., some savings) to produce a rough first version. To really build it, the help of other engineers on the back-end, especially to implement job matching algorithms. I'm mostly into UI. Getting users would be a whole other challenge. I can see the web/tech crowd adopting something for its superior UX, but then you're up against Github, which provides far more utilitarian value and accomplishes a bit of the professional social networking in one fell swoop. When it comes to everybody else, I think that business partnerships, marketing, and sales are key. That's more help needed. I think it's totally viable, I'm just not in the position to do it. I hope somebody is.
- benburton 13y ago
  TheLadders has been claiming that the data-driven matching approach is their mission for the past few years, but unfortunately they still seem to want to put everything behind a paywall.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rastered 13y ago
Charging the applicant for a monthly premium listing service does nothing to help companies find good employees, though I think a small change could make it beneficial to both parties. Offer "premium" application placement on a per application basis instead of monthly. This would provide a signal to the employer that the applicant is particularly interested in this listing and not just spamming resumes. It would provide a similar signal to a customized cover letter, but the employer can see the signal without the necessary investment of time to read a cover letter.
lrei 13y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
rmason 13y ago
I run a user group and network a lot with other developers. I noticed that in the past two years all the elite developers that I knew, the top half of one percent, were pulling their profiles from LinkedIn. Have to laugh because companies looking for the proverbial 'rockstar developer' are increasingly never going to find them on LinkedIn.
stokedmartin 13y ago
And they keep extending their footprint (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20568679/linkedin-expands-offices-into-sunnyvale http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20568679/linkedin-expands-offi...). Sigh!
jokoon 13y ago
I wish the internet could actually solve high unemployment.
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
Dear PBS: I don't want to localize my PBS experience. I just want to read the article. :P

162 points by uladzislau 13y ago

etler 13y ago

Worst case scenario seems to be that you're advertising to potential employers that you're having trouble finding a job... That doesn't seem like a good thing to point out...

WestCoastJustin 13y ago

Age and skills seem to be a factor. The people in the video are 40+, with many doing marketing/sales. The HN community, based off the what is your age? poll [1], suggests the majority here are between 21-35, so we probably are not experiencing their problem. Second, networking is a major factor, if the software keyword system is really the issue, you need to find ways around the system, email your old co-workers, etc. This is why it is important to keep learning, as tech evolves, and to put your self out there, through quality work. One thing did bother me a little, is pride a factor here? There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them, because they felt it was below them, or they were over qualified. If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better? ▁▁▂▇█▅▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ | | 21 35 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 ps. I created the bar graph via https://github.com/holman/spark https://github.com/holman/spark

ngoel36 13y ago
I'm just impressed with your ascii bar graph!
- echohack 13y ago
  https://github.com/holman/spark https://github.com/holman/spark You'll like this then.
samspenc 13y ago
+1 just for the ASCII graph!
danielweber 13y ago
Taking a lower-paid job can reduce your salary once you get back to your primary field. Workers have legitimate reasons to treat wages as sticky.
- kamjam 13y ago
  Not to mention the boredom factor. But I have known people to take a job just cos they need the money, and also been refused a job because they were over-qualified and the employer knew they would just leave once they got a better job. It's a two way thing.
- bobbles 13y ago
  How can that happen? It's not like your new employer will know what you were making at the last job, and even so why should that matter?
  - tieTYT 13y ago
    They ask. Are you just supposed to lie or refuse to answer?
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      Refuse to answer. It's none of their business, and nobody can compel you to answer a question.
      - themodelplumber 13y ago
        "I don't have to answer that." They can't compel you to answer, but good luck landing that job.
        WestCoastJustin 13y ago
        I have a hard time believing that if the employer is in desperate need, and a potential employee has the skills, they cannot come to an agreement, especially if you make it in for an interview. This does not make sense. Someone is not motivated enough.
dev1n 13y ago
If you are in the red, with zero money coming in, isn't anything better than nothing, at least as a gap till you find something better? I'm not sure I would call it pride. Some won't apply to jobs if they feel it is below them because the general consensus among employers is that if a better job comes along that this person is more qualified for, they will quit that "lower" job. source: my Econ professor
- Amadou 13y ago
  Yep, but the smart people just dumb down their resume. Resumes are marketing tools, they should be tailored for the job no matter the "level." I'm not saying lie, I'm just saying put in the truth that will get you hired and leave out the truth that will stop you from being hired.
  - pc86 13y ago
    Lying on a resume is a terrible decision (don't say that to michaelochurch!), but nobody expects a resume to be the whole truth. I've seen people get fired because they lied about a degree, or said they were a Senior ___________ when they were not, but I've never seen or even heard of someone getting fired because they left a job off of a resume.
redschell 13y ago
It seems like some people actually take pride in their technical ignorance. They boast to coworkers how unfamiliar they are with CRM platforms and lead generators, and they laugh at the notion of using very basic coding skills to script some of their more monotonous job functions. It's disheartening. They must know that, regardless of age, it's adapt or die, but they're so damn stubborn. Does anyone know of a Coursera for older, working professionals that have begun to fall behind in their skill development? I know that Coursera and other learning platforms are not necessarily designed for young people, but I'm sure the academic design/nature of it turns a lot of professionals off. Might be an interesting startup idea (though I'm sure someone's already on it).
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
There was a good HN discussion when spark was first released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3237478 Several people ported it to other languages. Here was my humble effort: https://gist.github.com/quandyfactory/1368953 https://gist.github.com/quandyfactory/1368953
rbanffy 13y ago
> There were lower level job, but many did not want to take them There is an interesting twist to this story. Last time I was looking for a job, I applied for a position the recruiter saw as a downgrade from my then current one. It was a very cool company that does very cool things, but no amount of talking convinced her I would not stay with them or that I would voluntarily get myself a pay cut in order to work for them and that money is not my primary motivator. Hackers may be a weird bunch, but recruiters are not much behind.

henrik_w 13y ago

I never understood the "Job Seeker Premium" badge. It just makes you look desperate in my mind.

richardjordan 13y ago
right - like a candidate anti-pattern - this person so lacks confidence in their abilities that they're trying to game the system to get attention (unfair probably but I'd be shocked if that wasn't the perception of many employers)

no-opinion 13y ago

I'm a student at a bush league school that doesn't have many connections to my field. Would it be in my interests to make a LinkedIn account for internship purposes?

briandear 13y ago
It really depends on your field, however networking should never require money. Build your network with those in your target field. That will pay off far more than a paid LinkedIn account.
- weston 13y ago
  (S)he just asked about creating an account, not about paying LinkedIn. You can still create an account for free. Yes, that would most likely be a good idea... most recruiters and HR people check LinkedIn these days.
auctiontheory 13y ago
You should absolutely have a LinkedIn account and begin to build the network. Just don't PAY for your LinkedIn account.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  I feel like the "network" benefit of LinkedIn is close to zero. That is, when was the last time anyone said "I would like to talk to person X at Company Y. Oh, one of my friends is connected to person X. I'll ask that person for a warm introduction" Is anyone seeing or doing that?
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    Yes.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    I make intros like that once or twice a month. I'm generally happy to do so, because I only accept LinkedIn connection requests from people I know well enough to recommend.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

minouye 13y ago

I don't get why LinkedIn gets a free pass on a lot of the shady stuff it does. Case in point: if I have a free account, public details are hidden when browsing profiles and I'm told I need to "upgrade" my account to view them. Viewing the same profile in an incognito window reveals the "restricted" details. That seems like an ExpertsExchange level trick.

hga 13y ago
I'd assume that's for recruiters, and that what you see in the incognito window is to give them a taste (perhaps they have governors to limit how much can be found per unit of time). Not being that sort of recruiter I've only ever wanted to see that kind of thing to confirm if a particular "John Doe" is the one I'm thinking of before asking to connect to him, and personalizing the note takes care of that well enough. Otherwise I can see the profiles of people in my network just fine.
- minouye 13y ago
  I'm definitely not a recruiter and LinkedIn could easily extrapolate that from my resume. Say for example I just want to do some due diligence on a contractor (or business associate or company exec. or whatever). I don't want to connect, just see their qualifications, general background, etc. Logged in: http://media.tumblr.com/ba1105d066fd8c3acca2909898d5b603/tumblr_inline_mornk0uQvp1qz4rgp.png http://media.tumblr.com/ba1105d066fd8c3acca2909898d5b603/tum... Logged out: http://media.tumblr.com/17fe723913901fe9a1e0c0c53b6ba6e4/tumblr_inline_mornmejci71qz4rgp.png http://media.tumblr.com/17fe723913901fe9a1e0c0c53b6ba6e4/tum...
  - hga 13y ago
    Ah, I didn't mean to suggest you were a "recruiter", although the examples you gave could be part of the recruiting function, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for LinkedIn to want some money from your to do perform such due diligence. It would be interesting to see if they've got an account level for that sort of small scale thing.
ngoel36 13y ago

jt2190 13y ago

> But the question for everyone else is, why are employers > (who pay to access the database) and job seekers (who > pay for database positioning) playing along while > LinkedIn sells everyone out with this game of payola? > > And where does it leave LinkedIn users who just want to > meet one another to do business? While some of us are > working to help job seekers form appropriate, > substantive relationships that they can cultivate -- > and benefit from -- over time, LinkedIn keeps coming up > with silly products that cheapen the meaning of > networking and connecting with other people. I'm curious about this myself... Both employers and potential employees seem extremely hesitant to change their behavior. I can't help but feel that each side doesn't really want to deal with the other, and everyone is hiding behind websites and resumes, and sites like LinkedIn reap the rewards. There's probably some interesting social science here. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd love to hear about it. (edit: by "change behavior" I mean relying on the old system of: "you send me your resume, I'll put it in the trash." Supposedly 80-90% of jobs go unadvertised, and yet the vast majority "job search" by hurling resumes at the remaining 10-20%.)

deleted 13y ago
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w0rd-driven 13y ago

While the article focuses on LinkedIn, it could likely just be titled "Are Job Boards..." because the article mentions CareerBuilder and Monster. I know CB does it but wasn't paying attention to notice if Monster did. Something definitely feels slimy about the practice from a job seeker standpoint. Simply because I can't afford it, or place a high value on the cost I'm now at a disadvantage to another applicant. To borrow from another HN comment, it's akin to entering a cheat code while I'm just here normally playing the game. While I don't mind cheating in single player games, this is akin to wallhacking in a FPS. Having said that, I also don't mind it at all because if I get a job this way it proves I did so on my own merit and those that paid were complete suckers. There is definitely a sense of achievement that comes with that. I will always wonder how this came about though. How this became acceptable. I understand it's a business but creating unfair advantages in what amounts to some people's livelihood (in their mind at least) seems like playing with fire. There's also the very real threat that this is snake oil. Can anyone prove paying actually improves your chances? These companies could easily be charging for a "service" that only exists in name and actually does absolutely nothing behind the scenes.

PaulHoule 13y ago

Personally I don't pay for any premium services for LinkedIn but I can say that my LinkedIn profile consistently gets me quality calls from recruiters. In fact, it led me into a series of consistently better paying jobs quite quickly. I devoted consistent effort to building my LinkedIn network over time so I have a very large number of connections now. I get the sense that the system is underprovisioned for me, because the site is slow as hell, often I can't see the messages and invitations I've been sent until I've done several reloads. I actually would pay for a premium service that is overprovisioned for me and fast enough for me that I'd want to spend more time with it.

vladsanchez 13y ago

What really bothers me is the amount of 'bs' skills some of my coworkers state they have. It's an honor-based network being abused by some. It's also funny when non-SME (Subject Matter Experts) endorse SME skills. In my case, a Realtor endorsing OOP skills. Go figure!

gergles 13y ago

> But the question for everyone else is, why are employers > (who pay to access the database) and job seekers (who > pay for database positioning) playing along while > LinkedIn sells everyone out with this game of payola? There is no "payola" in searching the database. Job seekers aren't paying for database positioning, they are paying only to be at the top of the list of "here are people who applied for your job". This is mentioned by Corcodilos in his article then immediately handwaved away as if it doesn't matter, but this point completely changes the thrust of his argument. You don't show up at the top of search results no matter what kind of account you have; your payment or lack thereof does not manipulate organic search results. It only puts you at the top of a list of people who applied for jobs using the "Apply for jobs" function. The value for the free account-holder and for the recruiter is still intact.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
But it's all about perception - LinkedIn has got perceptibly more slimy, less about connecting, and it has now started taking money for rankings. If the sign on the brothel door says our women will give head for cash but they have to love you to screw, do you think anyone will believe it? Admittedly like all walled gardens, there is no business model - the value lies in the network and any and all attempts to monetize that are called taxation. We only accept that from one place
raverbashing 13y ago
This I don't pay for this "featured job seeker" thing, havne't gotten in the way. It may backfire since some people may filter the paying candidates as 'ads'

zcarter 13y ago

The problem comes down to trust and incentives. The "promoted" job board model leads to a middle man agent ("agent" in the Economics sense) with asymmetric information who is incentivized to give poor advice. LinkedIn wants you to trust their matching algorithm, but then goes behind your back and supplants the best matches with whoever the highest bidder happens to be. Instead of benefiting when their customers get value from their service (successful placements), LinkedIn is profiting from desperation and frustration (the more unsatisfied costs - "free" grade users, the more potential paying customers), and simultaneously making the search process more difficult for all parties involved. LinkedIn's position in the job search marketplace is as a monopolist provider of up-to-date candidate information, a valuable side effect of their primary virtue: being the winner take all social network for the corporate world. Rent-seeking behavior from monopoly providers with asymmetric information should surprise no one. Rent-seeking behavior leading to angry market participants should surprise no one.

Sven7 13y ago
Rent-seeking in silicon valley isn't spoken about enough. Rent seeking has and will always be around, but is it increasing? When we are talking about rankings and matching algo's in the hands of monopolies be it Google, Facebook, YouTube et al its a great mystery to me why the advertising industry trusts them so much.

seiji 13y ago

New headline game: if a headline suggests linkedin or facebook or google may be doing something a little bad, they're actually doing something five times worse.

willcole 13y ago

Disclaimer: I work on a competing job board site at Stack Overflow Careers 2.0 LinkedIn (as opposed to CareerBuilder apparently) isn't really cheating anyone. They're charging for a stupid feature to make a quick buck off of naive or desperate candidates. I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order. At least (apparently) they aren't biasing search results in their recruiter platform. We've taken the route of only charging employers for access to advertise jobs and company pages on Stack Overflow, and search profiles of developers on Careers 2.0 (no crappy contingency recruiters allowed). Not only do we not want to charge candidates, I don't exactly know what we'd be charging them for that would help clear the market more efficiently.

vonmoltke 13y ago
> I can't figure out how a feature like putting a resume on the top of a pile solves any problem to do with matching candidates with employers. Much less why good employers would care about this arbitrary order. It helps them get through the human keyword filter in HR faster, which (theoretically) makes them more likely to get an interview. Even many "good" companies have issues with poor HR filter functions, and on top of that a majority of the jobs seem to be with "bad" companies. I agree, though, that its set up to prey on the naive and desperate. Those for whom any job is better than no job, or simply think this is how "the game" is supposed to be played.

polarix 13y ago

No problems with the main thrust of the article, but the conclusion that "America's jobs crisis needs to be looked at as a failure of employers and job boards to ensure an accurate and fair employment process" is laughable. The problems with the re-employment engine are multifold, and not trivially reducible to a single sentence. An interesting, and more nuanced take on the issue from a very different angle, which at least starts to grasp the enormity of the problem: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_antifaq/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_a...

richardjordan 13y ago

I think the broader principle of this post is solid. It's one that I've been thinking a lot as a friend asked me to advise his dating-site startup. I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking. With dating/jobhunting if you create a supremely efficient market place that finds the match almost immediately your customers go away. They don't need your service any more. It behooves you to increase the inefficiency of your marketplace to deliver almost-matches that keep people interested and paying, but not quite good enough to make them leave. Perhaps you could argue that a job board is different because employers are repeat finders and will come back again and again - the adultfriendfinder approach, people who keep getting laid keep paying. Either way they're tough businesses to make money on AND deliver a great service. LinkedIn does a ton of other things of course, to monetize, and isn't just a job board. But that just raises questions about some of their other practises of holding your own data hostage - which seems to be a key business model for social network monetization at the moment, and that's a whole other question.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> I don't like the space for one major reason (and job hunting is isomorphic with dating): to optimize making money you have to fail to deliver on the expectations of those for whom you're matchmaking. For job hunting (but probably not dating), its at least conceivable that you can structure the charge model to one where one or the other party (or both) is paying for success in making a match (basically, that's what lots of non-web-based employment "matchmaking" services of various kinds do), so that you can, in fact, align customer satisfaction with profit maximization.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Another approach is to do something like take a cut of the first year's salary or difference between the first year's salary and what the jobhunter was previously getting. That conditions success not only on making a match but on making a good match, as you get paid virtually nothing if an employee gets hired but then gets fired 2 weeks later. Many recruiting firms take this approach.

kvcrawford 13y ago

I hate LinkedIn. The pay walls and forced semi-hidden profiles are insanely annoying. I wish I had the resources to build a competitor centered around openness and UX. It should monetize on really strong programmatic job matching, driven by the improved data from reducing all the UX friction. Somebody, please accept the challenge.

rgbrgb 13y ago
What resources would you need?
- kvcrawford 13y ago
  I suppose if I were to undertake it, all I would need is time (i.e., some savings) to produce a rough first version. To really build it, the help of other engineers on the back-end, especially to implement job matching algorithms. I'm mostly into UI. Getting users would be a whole other challenge. I can see the web/tech crowd adopting something for its superior UX, but then you're up against Github, which provides far more utilitarian value and accomplishes a bit of the professional social networking in one fell swoop. When it comes to everybody else, I think that business partnerships, marketing, and sales are key. That's more help needed. I think it's totally viable, I'm just not in the position to do it. I hope somebody is.
benburton 13y ago
TheLadders has been claiming that the data-driven matching approach is their mission for the past few years, but unfortunately they still seem to want to put everything behind a paywall.

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rastered 13y ago

Charging the applicant for a monthly premium listing service does nothing to help companies find good employees, though I think a small change could make it beneficial to both parties. Offer "premium" application placement on a per application basis instead of monthly. This would provide a signal to the employer that the applicant is particularly interested in this listing and not just spamming resumes. It would provide a similar signal to a customized cover letter, but the employer can see the signal without the necessary investment of time to read a cover letter.

lrei 13y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

rmason 13y ago

I run a user group and network a lot with other developers. I noticed that in the past two years all the elite developers that I knew, the top half of one percent, were pulling their profiles from LinkedIn. Have to laugh because companies looking for the proverbial 'rockstar developer' are increasingly never going to find them on LinkedIn.

stokedmartin 13y ago

And they keep extending their footprint (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20568679/linkedin-expands-offices-into-sunnyvale http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20568679/linkedin-expands-offi...). Sigh!

jokoon 13y ago

I wish the internet could actually solve high unemployment.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

Dear PBS: I don't want to localize my PBS experience. I just want to read the article. :P