About 14 of my corporate recruiting peers and I gathered at LinkedIn’s offices in Mountain View, California last week. It was one of the more focused and well-thought out customer advisory sessions I’ve attended.
A few disclosures: a) my company is a paying customer of LinkedIn’s Recruiter b) This session required me signing a NDA, which affects what I can disclose.
Things were kicked off Thursday evening with a dinner at the Lion & Compass Restaurant. A good ice breaker as most of the guests barely knew each other except maybe in passing at other events. Beyond the name and company we all had to disclose one thing that wasn’t on your profile. Of course if your profile is at a 100% and you’ve engaged their partner applications, it could be a bit more challenging (hint: tab over to your Facebook profile). I sat next to and had a lively chat with the head of LinkedIn’s marketing team, Patrick Crane.
Friday was jam packed with product presentations from LinkedIn staff and feedback sessions with the recruiters. We weren’t, as you’d suspect, a shy group. If you didn’t know, LinkedIn has three staffing-related components: 1) Jobs, their position posting product, 2) Recruiter, a project-based sourcing and communication tool and 3) Corporate Services, their employment branding, custom corporate profiles and direct marketing capabilities. The day was broken up with lunch with LinkedIn’s new CEO, Jeff Weiner and a photo shoot, a pic of the entire group and one of yourself for your LinkedIn profile. Look, I’ll take any help I can get with my mug.
The biggest revelation for me wasn’t about the current problems LinkedIn is trying to solve (they are pretty grounded and eager for feedback), nor was it their future product offerings. It was Reid Hoffman’s retelling of his original plans for Recruiter. In building the first offering of LinkedIn, the easiest step for them was to build a virtual version of rolodex. Yet this didn’t answer/solve the foundational question, “How do we make the professional more productive?” Understanding that vetted talent, connected by trust-worthy means makes or breaks an organization, the first group of professionals LinkedIn “went after” was recruiters.
It’s interesting that for LinkedIn, Recruiter was never just a destination. It is a waypoint in their plan to make other professionals better at what they do as a community. So, keep your eye out not just for what they do with feedback, but look to see what they do for other kinds of people and how they associate and collaborate.
P.S. Thanks goes to Glen Cathy (@BooleanBlackBlt) who shot me his product questions during the gathering for LinkedIn product management folks to answer (I’m tracking it for you, Glen).
