Will LinkedIn’s New Recruiting Tool Replace Job Boards?

Keep that recruiting software tuned into LinkedIn. The online professional network is about to get better for recruiters, job seekers, and – yes – even employed professionals not looking for a new job.

LinkedIn’s new tool, which is scheduled to launch in just a few months, is called “Talent Pipeline.” It’s an add-on to LinkedIn Recruiter, which is already one of the best online recruiting tools out there. Supposedly, companies will also be able to use Talent Pipeline as a free-standing program, but I have a hard time imagining anyone using it that isn’t already using Recruiter.

With one of the largest databases of working professionals or passive candidates, this new tool could seriously displace job boards.  Instead of job seekers chasing jobs, LinkedIn will make it easier for recruiters and staffing professionals to find and engage the select few qualified candidates they are most interested in.  No more looking for a diamond in the rough as recruiters and staffing professional will now be able to sort through a field of diamonds and transfer the best candidates to their own staffing or recruiting software for nurturing.

Here are the Talent Pipeline highlights:

  • One Stop Shop. Leads from virtually any source will be culled, organized, and updated in one place. The recruiter, of course, gets to set the search and organizational parameters. The program will also enable you to develop one profile from many sources, so data from John Smith’s company won’t be separate from the data drawn from his LinkedIn profile.
  • Easy Sharing. Despite their penchant for competition, independent recruiters know that sharing information is the lifeblood of their work. Recruiting companies and recruiting teams also benefit from well-developed internal information networks. Talent Pipeline promises to provide easy-to-use-and-customize sharing platforms.
  • Intuitive Interface. From the demos I’ve seen, the profiles are full of crucial information but still easy to read, even at a glance. And the program as a whole seems to be fairly easy to pick up. No doubt, LinkedIn (and others) will release a bunch of free training videos when the new service comes online.

I can imagine some recruiters saying, “But I already do all that via LinkedIn and other recruiting software.” That may be true, but I’ll bet that it takes a lot of time and effort to get the important data from two, three, or more different programs. Like a lot of great software, Talent Pipeline promises nothing terribly new in terms of outcome, but a much easier way to achieve that outcome. (Need an example? Look no further than Microsoft Word. Almost everything I produce with Word could be done with a typewriter, editing pen, and some basic graphics tools – or three different programs. Word simply makes it a lot easier to get the product I want.)

Maybe I’m excited about Talent Pipeline because I’m a staffing software geek. But I’ll bet that, in just a few years, recruiters around the country (and world) will wonder how they got along without it – kind of like word processing programs today.

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