Well, we all know that job advertising on LinkedIn is for most of us, far from free. With a lack of a volume discount that is the industry standard in within job board, LinkedIn actually priced themselves far too high. For that reason, the number of job advertisements sold in Europe was always really symbolic. It was always just a handful US multinationals with jobs in Ireland advertised.
LinkedIn decided to give away free job advertisement to recruiters. They know the ‘First Time Free, Pay Later’ model only too well. Remember, for a number of years, LinkedIn was 100% free to anyone. Only in the last couple years they brought in the paid LinkedIn Recruiter product, than all the different paid types of the accounts as well. The move I personally really never liked – the paid account to the job hunters is now available on LinkedIn. I just never liked asking unemployed for cash, to help them find a job. Regardless if you call it unethical, or just super greedy, in my books it is just bad.
So how will the free job advertising on LinkedIn change the recruiters life?
If you did not get your free LinkedIn job advertising slot – ask for it. There is plenty of Irish LinkedIn staff fairly active on LinkedIn itself, so get connected, and ask for free slots.
When you publish your jobs on LinkedIn, and I will cover that topic later on it this LinkedIn series – How to publish a Job on LinkedIn? You will notice that only a certain jobs in Ireland can be filled via the LinkedIn. Do some research before – since publishing a wrong type of a job on LinkedIn is exactly the same as publishing a CEO job on Jobs.ie (a.k.a Nixers.ie).
But the real problem will actually happen if you do manage to hire via paid job advertisement on LinkedIn. You will want to advertise again – and the far too high advertising price by LinkedIn will stop you.
The only way for recruiters ‘Friendship’ with LinkedIn going forward is if LinkedIn gets a bit smarter and creates a super low cost entry level Recruiter package. To get recruiters used to pay a small nominal fee and upsell from there. The current jump from Free to Paid product for the recruiters is too high for LinkedIn’s product to be considered as a ‘Freemium’ offering.
Would you pay LinkedIn in the PPC model (clicks on your ads to jobs)? YES!
Would you pay LinkedIn in the PPA model (per CV received)? YES!
Aren’t those the super low cost, and tight budget control products? Didn’t that exactly built Google into the largest advertising agency (and platform) in the world in the shortest timeframe possible?
So here is an open letter:
Deal LinkedIn,
Stop taking money from job hunters, and get to business. Just implement the appropriate business model used by all eh market leaders in online advertising –Google and fast growing Facebook. We will all be far more interested to be placed in the control seat, and monitor our budgets in some PPC or PPA model than purchasing an unknown value – Job Slot Advertisement. Your current model is a showstopper. PPC model will be embraced instantly by far larger number of potential customers (recruiters and employers), so instant cash flow, and in the end will also bring in far higher revenue than your job slot or job credit advertising model.
Yours truly,
Irish Recruiter
irishrecruiter@gmail.com
Small note on the article of this article
To write successfully for the web you have to put something extremely catchy in the title. Most likely something that is not really ehm,… true. You need to make sure your title is so intriguing people will click on it to follow the link and land on your article. Hence the title of this article is:
Free Job Advertising by LinkedInAs opposed to what the article is really about:
LinkedIn Have sent a number of free job slot advertisements to a few recruiters in Ireland.
You are far likely to click on something like free job ads by a leading global recruitment social network – especially if you are a recruiter – which this article is for!