LinkedIn or LinkedOut?

If a Recruitment Consultant invites you to connect with them on LinkedIn, do you accept, ignore or report as spam ??

We put this question to all the candidates we spoke with over a two week period, and the results were:   
64.5% Yes
8.5% No
27% Yes but…….(only if I already know them, can see they have a value proposition etc)

So it seems more than a third of people polled have become wary of connecting with recruiters. So what’s driving a significant proportion of people to want to switch off from the social in social networking?

Obviously LinkedIn is a well recognised tool for recruitment, since its creation in 2003 the platform has seen the majority of its revenue, outside of display advertising on-site, coming from the recruitment industry.

There’s no doubt it’s made researching and mapping target companies a much easier exercise for headhunters. However making things easier and accessible to everyone isn’t without its perils. It seems almost every week we read a new story or hear from candidates of lazy recruitment practice coming from companies just after a quick buck, or even onsite recruiters spamming anyone with in-mails just because they seem to have the right keywords.

Equally, as the risk of the platform to employers becomes more understood, are employers going to attempt to restrict who has access, what you put on there and how you use what was originally meant to be a professional social network site?

Look at the recent case Flexman vs BG Group (http://bit.ly/xgS5zG) , where Mr Flexman got into hot water with his employer over ticking the ‘career opportunities’ box and putting information into his profile they deemed to be of a confidential nature. Even though, according to Mr Flexman, the information he published was provided in the public domain by BG Group themselves in their public annual reports.

Although we can appreciate any information of a sensitive nature should not be published publically, can an employer really tell you you’re not allowed to publically announce you’re interested in hearing about new opportunities? And would disciplining someone who’s made the decision to look for a new employer in the first place just put the final nail in the coffin and drive them out?

 So has the platform become a glorified online CV database? If LinkedIn continues to focus mainly on releasing recruitment based tools and propositions, employers put their employees through disciplinary for having non-sanctioned profiles, and recruiters blanket canvassing continues, are we going to see a growing proportion of people switching off to the social aspects of social networking? 

Gemma Skillett

Naturally we are watching this closely.