LinkedIn forgot to serve its “users”, and missed the opportunity to be a great professional community
Without a LinkedIn profile you don’t exist and you don’t have a career.
Your HR department probably has several LinkedIn recruiter licenses to find great candidates. You may even have asked your team to mine their networks for great candidates. For hiring managers, LinkedIn provides inspiration to specify the right job title or to describe the role. LinkedIn Recruiter appears to be serving companies well.
For many sales teams, LinkedIn has replaced the rolodex from over a decade ago. You may need some third-party add-ons to find the right email or phone number. The majority of the LinkedIn connect requests I receive turn into sales pitches. The introductory message “Hi, your profile looks interesting. I am looking to expand my professional network”, is quickly followed up with a sales pitch about the product or service the person is offering. It is as if I dropped of my business card at all the booths of a conference and told each salesperson, please contact me.
In the process of providing a great product for recruiters and account managers, LinkedIn forgot about the people volunteering their personal data. The saying “If you are not paying for it, you are the product” is more than ever true. Where is the value it offers me?
LinkedIn Groups often turns into a sales channel with a stream of press releases, or with news updates crossposted on Twitter and Facebook. I am sure we all have seen the Boston Dynamics robots jump and dance across all social media multiple times over. (Spot and Atlas are really cool nevertheless!)
LinkedIn experimented with a personal relationship manager (PRM) product. You could keep notes per contact, and schedule follow-up reminders. It was a really useful idea. It came and went away, pushing me to explore alternative Personal Relationship Managers: Ryze, Etch.ai or Followup.cc.
Peer-to-peer Career Advice was launched and is since no longer available either.
Slideshare used to be hot, but now feels on life support. It is no longer linked from main page. Instead, the $29.99/mo LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda) is promoted.
I understand LinkedIn is a for profit business and not a community service. I don’t mind paying for a great product. For example, after enjoying (free) Medium articles for a while, I signed up and became a member to enjoy the full set of articles.
Microsoft and LinkedIn are missing an opportunity to create a great professional community. My advice would be to invest in offering a great free (and premium) product to those who share their personal information.
For example, in addition to making student resumes available to recruiters, also provide a low friction path for those students to connect with a company or ask a question from more experienced people. I can see integrations with Calendly or features from Handshake or Doorways benefit students. To the more experienced, put the skill listings to good use, so one can more easily find a knowledgeable person to answer a question. Stackoverflow meets Skills. It doesn’t have to be just about technical topics, advise on the software skills can benefit many managers. Blind meets Skills. Perhaps a professional bookclub feature or a mentoring program with a free and premium option.
Start by making great services free. Continue making money with the services targeting companies: recruiting, sales and corporate training.