Vendor Watch: Linkedin juggernaut rolls on

It is difficult to ignore the progress of an operation with 41 million members. Linkedin is growing in strength by the day. Already, some 700,962  Australians have a profile on Linkedin (Type country:”Australia”). Impressive numbers by any count.

However what worked in Linkedin’s favour is the wholehearted adoption by recruiters.  Boolean Blackbelt calculated that 5% of LinkedIn users in the US are recruiters.  That’s roughly 1 in 20 Linkedin members. Using a similar methodology for Australia (I used the following search string – country:”australia” ctitle:”recruiter OR recruitment OR recruiting OR Sourcer OR Talent”) close to 6,000 recruiters are present on LinkedIn. It’s not clear how exactly recruiters in Australia use Linkedin, but their high number on the site seems to suggest a rousing endorsement of the product.

In addition, the recently launched Linkedin blog looks like an attempt to deepen relationship with the recruitment community. Linkedin’s Talent advantage offers an impressive range of solutions to recruit staff.  It is hard to predict the future directions Linkedin will take, but it sure looks like it is going to be around for a long time. The question is, does Linkedin threatens or assist your operation?