About three years ago a wrote a post with the above title on the Digital Recruiting blog. You can read it here. Just to give some context, at the time LinkedIn had only just hit 1 million members in the UK and it was nowhere near as well known as it is today! Lots of people have also said the same thing with this excellent post from Hung Lee being just one example of this kind of thinking
I’ve just spotted this post on Mashable a part of which I’ve pasted in below
LinkedIn will launch a button for employers’ websites called “Apply With LinkedIn” that allows job candidates to submit their LinkedIn profiles as resumes, according to a report.
Twitter and Google have both launched new buttons this week, and now it seems LinkedIn will also introduce a new way for third-party sites to integrate its services as well.
A “source briefed on the feature” told GigaOm that the new feature, which will be displayed alongside job descriptions on partner sites, will launch later this month.
Aside from making it easier for candidates to apply for jobs, the plugin uses applicants’ data to automatically sort candidates for the employer. If a company wants more than a LinkedIn profile to vet candidates, it can use additional questions from a template (i.e. Are you willing to relocate?), add customized questions or request a cover letter. Submissions can be sent to an email address, a URL or JavaScript callback.
So definitely time to reopen the debate, what do people think? Will it catch on? Will recruiters be prepared to move with the technology or do old habits just not die? Will this effect the way people write their LinkedIn profiles and in so doing reduce its power as a non recruitment networking tool? What does this mean for Job Boards?
So many questions and I’m sure lots of opinions to go with them. There is one thing I’m sure of though, if it happens as reported this is a very significant move!
Hi Matt. A very through provoking post.
An interesting thing happened to me RE my LinkedIn profile. A short while ago I recorded a brief training video on my blog RE how to use LinkedIn Resume builder (ok I admit, I had just procured Camtasia and was desperate to give it a test drive. This seemed liked a good subject to try it out on at the time).
The problem I had was this. I was about to update my profile to match my CV in order to demonstrate what a LinkedIn resume built from your profile would look like in full effect. Like many I joined LinkedIn a while ago and in terms of profile entered the briefest of details for each of my roles. Now. I’m actually in full time employment and a lot of my colleagues and business leaders are connections. A thought went through my head -”What will people think if I start drastically updating my profile with CV-esque details and qualities.” Maybe it’s more of a reflection of myself but I had images of peers at work thinking,” Aye aye. That’s Mr Phillips is getting ready for a move then”. I then thought about the knock-on effects and other repercussions that could possibly ensue and thought sod it. The profiles fine as it is. It will do for the purposes of my demo. (a slight case of paranoia anyone?)
You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this. The problem I see with LinkedIn Resume is with people in a similar position to myself. There must be many others in full time employment who would be nervous and weary of updating their profile (to a CV worthy extent anyway) through fear of getting ”caught out” by their existing organisation and having to answer to some potentially awkward questions should they be raised.
So, in answer to your question of will recruiters be open to adopting this new technology? In my opinion, as with most things, it’s a case of supply and demand. In this case I see issues with adoption from current LI members’ in existing employment and hence the supply of candidates comfortable updating their profile to such an extent they’re able to submit their details in this format.
To some extent I hope it does take off. For similar “big brother” reasons the less scrupulous candidates out there may be less inclined to BS on their CV through fear of knowing an existing or previous employer will see it and expose them as, let’s say, “exaggerators of the truth” (oh I’m a cynical git aren’t I)
What do others think, feel or know?
It raises more questions than answers. I’ll admit to being skeptic of LI’s “gizmo of the week” approach but this has real potential to be a game changer. I’d love to see how they’re going to integrate this with existing ATS systems? If they going to partner with existing job boards? Whats the costing model? And a whole load of other answers needed before anyone can make a fair judgement on it. That said, huge potential.
I believe this to be a great idea, and logical evolution for LinkedIn. I’ve spoken for some time now about ways in which Linkedin can make gradual progress in the recruitment sector, and do so by increments, so as not to rock the boat too greatly.
So far, employers have had no serious objections to their staff having full public profiles on LI, and now for their own companies to be mapped in 3 dimensions too.
However, I do feel this frog could reach boiling point soon, if LI make any sudden moves.
“Apply via Linkedin” is a tool that could be used in many ways, including mobile applications, employer’s websites etc. However, a LI profile cannot contain all the detail you would expect in a CV. Details like “I am responsible for a team of 12 sales engineers, and exceeded my department’s target of £8m in revenue for 2010 by 32%.”
This kind of detail would have to be left for a secondary CV, later in the application process. LI profiles have many advantages, but would necessarily be a little circumspect in specifics.
Conversely, how about an “Apply with Jobsite” button, or Totaljobs or Monster? Why wouldn’t employers take advantage of these companies technologies?
Nice to see LinkedIn’s progression in this way – but let’s not get carried away by any `death of the CV` malarkey.
LinkedIn is actively used and updated by still such a small proportion of existing profiles, let alone people generally – that this merely makes a ripple of difference on the richter scale of the global hiring processes.
It’ll be just another way – but my clients will still want CVs, readable content and a simple decision making process.
CVs may evolve in content and connectivity, but will never die.
I’m hugely enthusiastic and pro development of the CV as we know it and this button may be seemingly insignificant now but in the longer term it is indeed another notch to up the worth and value of social profiles and common integration.
Certainly an apply for a job button would be highly beneficial other than making it easy to apply for a job (especially via mobile), it allows a common standard in submission formats and API’s as well as any de-duplication processes. A recruiter may still re process that profile submitted by a button and turn it back into a CV before sending on if the workflow is such. Filtering responses as part of the application process are useful if they ask the right questions but I do get a little nervous of anything externally automated in terms of ranking. Hopefully this algorithm robot will be a little better than LinkedIn’s engine that matches profiles to jobs currently – but as further take up increases then it may also serve to get more people to start to build their profiles content more correctly perhaps. Indeed the former iProfile central CV concept should have some credit for the metamorphosis from CV to LinkedIn Profile but that’s another story.
At the moment and into the near future the CV [or dynamic Profile as it may become] will have the same job which is to reach out and be the tall poppy and may even include video, work examples etc – but really we want the call to action to be an interview request and only meeting itself will so far will and satisfy clients – although I think it will be possible in time to be fully cyber! .. well at least for the freelance/contact market.
Of course in cyber land, these CV’s are tag clouds which are inbound attracting the right audience, hirers, jobs etc so the correct profile is not requiring to be sent anywhere using a button. A recipient of a button induced application is also likely to visit the online ‘live’ profile in any event so as to get a more dynamic feel as indeed many do now on receipt of a static CV.
Perhaps the new future CV is really the actual recommendation itself as hirers are more likely to be trusty of those CV ‘profiles’ that come with recommendations from their own known networks? Actually good recruiters have, will and do build excellent submission cases including references and actually talk to clients over the phone highlighting these positive attributes (rather than merely just sending as a CV on its own).
However the profile owner (candidate) whilst even in passive mode is going to become more savvy at building up their profile cases themselves and recruiters will have to learn to work, mingle, converse and connect with such people profiles before they become ‘actively looking’ if they are to offer any value at all or even if they are to be part of bridging the recruitment loop in future at all!
The LinkedIn profile may remain in the most part a business networking tool for the majority of passives but many individuals will also be actively building their profile ready for a future move and recruitment. Better tools are required from LinkedIn to enable the profile owner to manage both the recruitment part and networking part and no doubt better controls for unwanted approaches, inbound traffic, perhaps spam or/and from recruiters trying to use Linkedin as a search only basis as they might do their own static disparate databases.
Jobboards are trying to find ways to keep recruiters paying and posting jobs and accept en mass CV response many of which the recruiter had last week and the week before. But increasingly recruiters digital strategy [including the in-house recruiter] is more about inbound attraction of less but better quality and albeit still very minute, some recruiters are beginning to understand the online engagement part and certainly active candidates will have a better experience with some conversation back into the recruitment process.
Cost and time to hire are always important indicators of course and many recruiters do not know this even now with existing processes – so there is much room for improvements here and the future represents an opportunity for more connected ROI in relation to ATS. Certainly most outside ATS including anything LinkedIn may offer, may not fully work for recruiters as there are disconnects to recruiters internal systems and other channels.
Agree – lots of questions but in time these will be answered when they become hindsight which is now sooner than we think. Long live the Profile!
Cool work
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Some excellent comments here. This trend has been going on for a very long time now, albeit pretty slowly. The concept of a living online professional profile as far as I’m concerned is guaranteed to become the norm. I see any decent platform for this happily allowing a viewer to print their own personal version of this CV to suit their needs (prefer education first? Easy! Only want to see most recent 3 jobs? No probs). There are many such platforms around now – LinkedIn being the most visible, but also VisualCV, InnovateCV, and of course iProfile.. Do a search for “online CV” or “online resume” and you can see how many services are on offer.. Of course always a problem here is integration between systems in a world where a candidate’s details can often go through 5 or 6 different platforms before ending up with the hiring manager. Yes there’s HR-XML, but at least in the UK I’ve not seen much take-up of this. There’s also HResume as a standard (created in part by Madgex, supported by LinkedIn), but it’s still far from a Universal standard. So what ends up happening is that the universal CV document in either Word or PDF form, is often the “portable data store” for the candidate, which then gets imported into systems via CV parsers.
The only other thing we have anywhere near to any standard now is LinkedIn, purely because of the size of their user base – this is enabling them to push the “apply via LinkedIn” in a way that does indeed make people talk about the death of the CV. I think it’s a very smart move for them to be pushing ever further into the recruitment process, to spread their functionality further into other sites and the web in general, in much the same way that Facebook are doing with their Likes, API and now comments. One site can disappear with ease, like MySpace. A site with hundreds of thousands of other sites hard wired to it doesn’t disappear so easily as people are giving you part of their audiences, and also have a vested interest in your continuing.
Anyway – I think the Evolution of the CV is inevitable.
One major difficult I find with LinkedIn as that platform though is highlighted very well by the first comment above by Ben. That is that LinkedIn is NOT purely a CV platform. It’s also a business networking site. A profile for one is absolutely NOT exactly the same as a profile for the other. This is going to have to be something LinkedIn overcomes if they truly are going to be the “online CV/professional profile” service of choice.
I put all my thoughts on this one into a blog post quite a while back – please have a read:
http://bit.ly/9QWWVJ
I couldn’t “resist” this one, so here are some quick thoughts.
When talking about the death of the CV, is like talking the death of a video recorder. Is it dead? No is my answer. It has just evolved. Things that die are things that are no longer needed. A video recorder, a DVD burner or even Camtasia, serve exactly the same purpose, the need to capture, save and distribute some sort of data. This is exactly what a tape or floppy disk did years ago… (I still have a fully functional Amstrad with 200 games in tapes! They work superbly even with 64KB memory…)
A CV is one of the tools, mediums or “things” (look at the new schema specifications for CVs) that are used to find a job. Unless you win the lottery, join a monks cult that need no money and are fed with spiritual food, then you need a job to live. To find a job you need a CV. This can be in a traditional format (Doc, PDF) or as a social profile like LinkedIn or anything else that allows you to promote yourself.
As long as the necessary information to allow you find a job exist, then a “CV” in any format will still exist. If current infrastructure (ATS, websites, Online CVs) is not able to capture the necessary information to allow a candidate find a job or an HR manager to effectively filter potential employees then the question is simple: Which of the two should change (evolve); the CV or the infrastructure?
Or which of the two would/should die? So far the CV has survived through evolution. But some crappy old infrastructure has died (no it didn’t evolve, it died).
This is the beauty of the new platforms. They force things to evolve. LinkedIn made CVs funkier, richer in information. It has definitely transformed the recruitment industry as we know it but has not killed the CV.
Thanks Sotos and yes you’re right binary dead or alive arguments don’t always allow us to see the full picture. I do believe that the CV will evolve and hopefully it will move on from being the blunt instrument of hiring that it currently is!
The suggested “Apply With LinkedIn” button could move Linked towards a more recognized method of applying to opportunities and take some of the market share from sites like workopolis (if they haven’t already) 5 years ago I thought workopolis was the best website out there, this year I find I’m spotting more jobs and getting more response to my linkedin profile.
Matt, thanks for a great post and a great debate. I wish I’d found it sooner. You might be interested in http://www.curv.me [disclosure: I'm the founder].
We’re building it specifically to overcome the issues raised here. A business networking tool (LI) is different to a CV, and while LI will undoubtedly see success in the job application field (purely because of their massive reach) job seekers, HR managers and Recruiters will save valuable time using a product like curv.me – a product that is being built for this specific purpose.
Phase 1 (Job Seekers product) is almost complete and you can register your interest on the site to get early access. Phase 2 (Recruiter/HR product) will launch later in the year.
Regards
Shaun
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