Wednesday 16 January 2013

Are LinkedIn, Monster killing the recruitment industry?

Since the growth of LinkedIn, a social networking website for people in professional job positions, many have pegged the question: is the recruiting industry dead? As the employment pool grows and the job vacancies shrink, companies rely on recruitment.

Business Insider published an article last spring that discussed how the headhunting industry, otherwise known as recruitment, was dying. Through websites such as Monster,LinkedIn and Workopolis, companies can find top talents and workers can find the best positions that suit their skills for free.

Indeed, the Internet has forced industries to evolve, while also creating a scarcity in other fields. Before the days of LinkedIn, businesses had to pay headhunters to discover the ideal worker. Nowadays, as these websites offer free services, companies can simply do it themselves without paying an exorbitant fee.

“In November 2008, in one week’s time, I lost 50 job orders. Everything just shut down. I don’t think it ever really came back, or will ever come back,” said Andrea Sobel, a former headhunter for more than two decades, in an interview with the business publication. “I think companies, in the meantime, have pretty much figured out how to do it without agencies, because of the internet mainly.”

With the unemployment rate in the United States hovering just under eight percent and an enormous phalanx of workers seeking jobs, companies may resort to recruitment agency again in the future.

Canon Recruiting Group, a recruitment firm for senior banking, IT, medical, insurance and technical professionals, has, perhaps surprisingly, become one of the nation’s fastest growing companies. Founded in 1980 by Tim Grayem, the California-based business has been recognized as one of the top human resources companies in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and sales have grown 584 percent during a three-year period from 2009 to 2011.T

he award-winning company, which maintains 500+ employees, notes that it specializes in hard-to-find and hard-to-fill positions, something that LinkedIn may very well lack because it has, according to its own statistics, more than 200 million registered users in 200 nations and territories.

Aside from recruiting, it also offers staffing solutions, consulting services, such as outsourcing and mergers and acquisitions, and payroll functions – it claims to have never missed a payroll in the company’s history.

For those looking for work, its website consists of a job board that lists professional employment opportunities in the U.S., such as project manager, mortgage closer, government and conventional underwriters and mechanical engineer.

Perhaps a job board is easy to search on and navigate and there is a pool of talent waiting to be tapped, but there isn’t a personalized touch, a trait that recruiting agencies are known to specialize in. Even if budgets at firms are tight, utilizing recruiting experts may pay dividends in the future with an array of professional, experienced, talented and skilled employees to carry out the necessary tasks.

As ERE.net writes: “LinkedIn needs recruitment to survive. Despite views to the contrary, recruitment companies still contribute the lion’s share of its revenue. LinkedIn is undoubtedly negatively impacting parts of the recruitment services market. But it’s not the third-party agencies. It’s the job boards.”

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