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Is LinkedIn a Job Board—Mystery Solved
LinkedIn started in 2003 as a networking platform intended for business purposes. It was a fantastic place to connect with other professionals, share ideas and opinions regarding developments in their fields of expertise, and create career opportunities.
From the beginning, the point of creating a LinkedIn account was to present your professional achievements. Users shared their qualifications, business highlights, and skills. These profiles have become an essential tool for jobseeking and headhunting. The platform became much more than a networking website. LinkedIn revolutionized recruiting. It hosts numerous job listings and is a go-to app for jobseekers, despite various other established job boards.
Still, the question remains—is LinkedIn a job board or a social network? Workello explains what LinkedIn is and why it’s crucial in the employer/employee interaction.
How Is LinkedIn Similar to a Job Board?
LinkedIn has many similarities to a standard job board as it offers:
- A resume database
- An opportunity to post vacancies
- A robust hiring platform
LinkedIn’s Resume Database
LinkedIn has over 750 million profiles, all functioning as online resumes searchable by various parameters, which makes the platform similar to a classic job board.
The website takes the filtering option seriously and lets employers fine-tune their candidate search. Among other options, you can filter the results according to:
- People
- Jobs
- Content
- Events
- Companies
There is also the Advanced search function you can use in the People tab and set different parameters to get more relevant results and reach the people you want.
LinkedIn allows you to look for remote candidates, freelancers, and jobseekers interested in part-time and full-time employment.
LinkedIn Job Posting Possibilities
You can post a job opening on your company page and share the link to the original ad in your feed. Even though it’s a pretty basic option, it can reach many candidates, especially considering the sharing opportunities.
You can also use LinkedIn’s advertising tool and post a proper job ad on the platform’s job board. The website allows free job postings and offers additional promotions.
Here’s what you get with each option:
| Free Job Ad Posting | Job Ad Promotion |
|---|---|
| Your ad is visible to your connections and appears in search results Only one ad can be active at a time | You can reach a broader, more targeted audience Your ad will appear in search results Candidate-matching algorithm displays your ad to qualified candidates and those searching for similar positions Job ad promotion functions on a pay-per-click basis, and you can set a budget for your post Mobile alerts are sent to suitable candidates You will receive notifications when a candidate who matches your requirements applies |
A Robust Hiring Platform
LinkedIn offers different solutions designed to meet your hiring needs. Besides candidate matching, you can also:
- Use applicant management tools that let you filter and manage applicants
- Integrate your applicant tracking system
- Use LinkedIn’s Video Intro feature to invite applicants to answer a few questions in a two-minute video
- Create a multimedia company page where you can share your story and values and present your company culture to attract the right candidates
- Take advantage of branding opportunities and raise awareness about your brand
What Makes LinkedIn a Networking Site?
LinkedIn offers many possibilities that regular job boards do and often exceeds them. It also retains its social media properties and lives up to the Professional Network epithet because:
- Users can connect with other people
- Professional users utilize LinkedIn as a CRM
Create an Account and Connect With Others
Like other social media, LinkedIn lets you:
- Create a profile
- Connect with other professionals
- Establish new connections
- Share your news and content in your feed
- Comment on, repost, and like posts
New features also allow you to ask questions and create polls to increase engagement. You can create a community around common interests and share news and updates in real-time.
LinkedIn functions as any other social media channel. The only difference is that it focuses on professional relationships.
Use LinkedIn as a Mini-CRM
When you meet a new business connection, you can find them on LinkedIn and use their profile as a virtual business card. The best part is that users can continually update their contact details, current positions, etc., and you will get notified of any changes in real-time.
No job board offers such features. It’s also important to remember that not everyone on LinkedIn is a jobseeker. Some joined the network to make connections and develop potential projects.
Is LinkedIn a Job Board or Social Media? The Final Verdict
LinkedIn became a place where recruiters started looking for talent and approaching promising candidates, so the platform decided to capitalize on that.
In March 2008, they introduced LinkedIn Recruiter. People still create and update their profiles to attract headhunters, but recruiters have got the chance to set up a paid profile and access the entire database.
Today, LinkedIn offers various recruiting solutions like posting job ads and targeting, prioritizing, and managing qualified applicants, which placed the platform among job posting juggernauts like Indeed, Monster, and Glassdoor.
If we had to answer the question of whether LinkedIn is a job board or a social network, we would probably say it is both or neither. In reality, LinkedIn is a hybrid that has become synonymous with social recruiting. For recruiters and jobseekers, it is a job board and a candidate database. For everyone else, it’s a professional networking site.
Job Boards and Social Networking Sites—The Difference
Social networks and job boards are different despite sharing a few qualities. The primary difference is their purpose. While job boards are intended to connect jobseekers and employers, social networking sites connect people enabling them to create online communities based on their shared interests or needs. LinkedIn went a step further and combined the two.
When it comes to jobseeking and headhunting, here are some differences between social media recruiting and job boards:
| Feature | Social Media Recruiting | Job Boards |
|---|---|---|
| Active or passive candidates | Lets employers reach passive candidates | Only a few job boards let employers contact candidates who are not actively looking for a job, but because thousands of active jobseekers visit these websites every day, standard job boards can be more effective and give immediate results |
| Branding | Enables better company branding, increases brand awareness, and helps employers share their company values | Some job boards allow company branding and let employers create a customized profile, but the possibilities are not as elaborate as on social media |
| Candidate matching | Does a better job at attracting candidates matching the hiring company’s culture | Mostly focus on filtering candidates with a specific skill set and experience |
| Diversity | Enhances diversity hiring by showing your vacancy to the most diverse audience | Many job boards focus on a particular niche, while some are only suitable for mid and high-level positions |
| Referral options | Leverages peer networks to encourage referrals | No referral options |
| Popularity | The LinkedIn job board is a popular place to look for candidates and new professional opportunities, but other social media sites aren’t | Still the most popular job ad posting websites and places where candidates look for employment |
| Pricing | Free to use, but placing job ads can cost a lot if you want them to be highly visible | Can bring more value for money |
Is LinkedIn More Important Than Job Boards?
LinkedIn is not more important than job boards and vice versa. Serious jobseekers will probably use both, and so should you.
For instance, Indeed has a massive database of job postings and attracts lots of jobseekers precisely because it’s one of the most established job boards online.
With hundreds of millions of users, LinkedIn can get your ad in front of fantastic candidates who may not be using a particular job board or actively looking for a job. It is the largest professional network, so it would be a mistake not to use it when headhunting.
Hiring Is Hard—No Matter Where You Look for Candidates
Placing your job ad on LinkedIn and other paid or free job boards will bring you more candidates than you can handle efficiently. Testing every candidate to evaluate their expertise and mindset can be challenging.
Research shows that pre-hire assessments reveal much more than applicants’ resumes and interviews combined. A well-designed test can show how well a candidate will perform if you decide to take them on.
Alex from Slingshot Content and Gaetano from Nextiva are only two of the marketing experts who have benefited from pre-hire assessments. It helped them identify and hire top talent in the marketing industry.
Alex (Founder @ Slingshot Content)
Gaetano (Head of Growth @ Nextiva)
Make Hiring Easier With Workello
Hiring employees is a time-consuming and costly endeavor. You must assess hundreds of resumes and portfolios, test dozens of promising applicants, and hold several rounds of interviews. You also need to compare notes and consult with colleagues to ensure you pick the best candidate.
The process may be challenging, but it must be done. Thankfully, there is a way to streamline it.
Workello lets you automate every step of your hiring protocol. You can move applicants through your hiring funnel with a single click and send automated emails and pre-hire assessments to better predict how each candidate would perform on the job.
Here’s how Workello can help you hire the top 1% of candidates in any field and at any price point:
- View all candidate applications in the same place—your unique Workello dashboard
- Send pre-hire assessments developed by subject matter experts to promising candidates with a single click
- Interview the candidates with the best scores
- Hire a candidate who is a perfect fit for your organization
The best part is—everything’s pre-configured, so you can set up an automated hiring funnel with Workello in 3 minutes and start assessing candidates today!
Start your Workello free trial and discover a faster, easier, data-driven way to hire top talent.
