Maureen S
5000+connects TopLinked.com Telephone Name Sourcer/MagicMethod Trainer-Names Generator
What other ill-thought-out changes has LI instituted?
Besides making it trickier to "bulk accept" invitations and now NOT ALLOWING Group Leaders to export their group's members any more/only being allowed to message them once a week, what else has happened in LI's most recent implementation?
LI, don't you get that you owe your own success partially to the hard work of your members? Folks who have the gumption to start a group and then maintain it fall part and parcel into this group. I won't even GO TO the plight of the early members who have spent zillions of hours of their own time inputting content to your site making it more interesting/accessible/appealing to other potential members only to have you change the rules, constantly and in mid-stream? Don't you get that this is a member driven site and you are driving away some very creative minds that have contributed to your success?
What part of this exactly don't you get?
Clarification added 8 months ago:
Or don't you care?
Clarification added 8 months ago:
Kim, what is/are your time/efforts worth? The point I am really tense about is that we put our time/effort into this site under one set of "terms" and then those "terms" change indiscriminately. It doesn't feel"fair." It seems to me the "terms" that are in place when we agree to become a member of a site/implement certain applications on it should be the terms in which you are allowed to operate under moving forward. It takes two to make a contract, one to break it and a judge and jury to decide what's right/wrong.
Clarification added 8 months ago:
TH, March 26 MagicMethod Phone Sourcing Class Discussion on this issue:
http://tinyurl.com/dahy85
Good Answers (1)
Irina S
Executive and Technical Recruiter, Grand Master Sourcer Irina@braingainrecruiting.com http://twitter.com/braingain
Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
For me LI remains a much better source of professional networking than Facebook. (I like Twitter but it's not really LI's competitor.) LI typically brings a mix of good and bad when they change the rules and it's up to us to take advantage of the changes and find workarounds. I think it's good to be challenged. (Of course if LinkedIn gave us heads up about upcoming changes and respected the user's input that would have made them invaluable. Unfortunately it's not the reality.)
The relatively recent group functionality and the introduction of the job posts on groups give us a lot of room to network successfully.
Also, it's true that the public profiles have been indexed by search engines and we will not have any limits per day there. With the nicely increased Google snippets we have an opportunity for looking for profiles on Google, quite often without even needing to go to the profiles for assessment. (I wonder if LI will dislike the last part.)
As for having to create more profiles on LinkedIn, I just had a thought that they in fact may want more profiles on their site...
More Answers (21)
Bryan C W
Technical Marketing & Sales Consultant; Open to consider an Executive position.
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (582), Customer Service (19), Education and Schools (10), Job Search (10), Staffing and Recruiting (9), Professional Networking (9), Business Development (8), Manufacturing (7), Internet Marketing (6), Small Business (6), Resume Writing (5), Project Management (5), Exporting/Importing (4), Ethics (4), Web Development (4), Business Insurance (3), Facilities Management (3), Criminal Law (3), Contracts (3), Public Relations (3), Sales Techniques (3), Change Management (3), Databases (3), Software Development (3), Wireless (3), Purchasing (2), Mentoring (2), Event Marketing and Promotions (2), Accounting (2), Government Contracts (2), Government Policy (2), Personnel Policies (2), Employment and Labor Law (2), Lead Generation (2), Business Analytics (2), Corporate Governance (2), Supply Chain Management (2), Business Plans (2), Starting Up (2), Energy and Development (2), Blogging (2), E-Commerce (2), Enterprise Software (2), Telecommunications (2), Commercial Real Estate (1), Regulation and Compliance (1), Air Travel (1), Business Dining and Entertainment (1), Hotels (1), Travel Tools (1), Certification and Licenses (1), Occupational Training (1), Budgeting (1), Economics (1), Mergers and Acquisitions (1), Compensation and Benefits (1), International Law (1), Internationalization and Localization (1), Offshoring and Outsourcing (1), Corporate Law (1), Tax Law (1), Advertising (1), Events Marketing (1), Graphic Design (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Search Marketing (1), Writing and Editing (1), Labor Relations (1), Organizational Development (1), Planning (1), Commodity Markets (1), Currency Markets (1), Equity Markets (1), Non-profit Management (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Retirement and Estate Planning (1), Wealth Management (1), Branding (1), Market Research and Definition (1), Engineering (1), Career Management (1), Communication and Public Speaking (1), Franchising (1), Green Products (1), Biotech (1)
My guess is that they are in an ivory tower and don't follow Q&A at all...
MaryJo D
Human Resources Manager - U.S. Operations
Best Answers in: Ethics (3), Using LinkedIn (2), Business Dining and Entertainment (1), Mentoring (1), Communication and Public Speaking (1)
I've never liked that I can't delete messages and this new feature of showing people's "expert" answers status (many times, a ginormous listing!) is pretty lame as well.
Kim S
Director of HR at Gemmy Industries Corp. - LION
Best Answers in: Compensation and Benefits (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Career Management (1)
OK, true, true. My guess the changes and restrictions have something to do with memory usage. Given that, it would make more sense to me to delete messages rather than archive them.
And remember...for several of us, this site may be driven by our activity on it and contributing information to it, but it's still free. It's difficult for me to complain about "free."
DAVE M
Exquisite wire names created at your party ★ Extraordinary lead generation for your trade show booth ★ WireNames.com
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (133), Business Development (8), Organizational Development (8), Education and Schools (7), Government Policy (6), Professional Networking (6), Energy and Development (6), Customer Service (5), Event Marketing and Promotions (5), Staffing and Recruiting (5), Advertising (5), Internet Marketing (5), Career Management (5), Small Business (5), Personnel Policies (4), Ethics (4), Computers and Software (4), Mentoring (3), Internationalization and Localization (3), Treaties, Agreements and Organizations (3), Lead Generation (3), Sales Techniques (3), Project Management (3), Business Plans (3), Green Business (3), Web Development (3), Facilities Management (2), Purchasing (2), Business Dining and Entertainment (2), Job Search (2), Conference Planning (2), Public Funding (2), Financial Regulation (2), Compensation and Benefits (2), Criminal Law (2), Property Law (2), Mobile Marketing (2), Search Marketing (2), Writing and Editing (2), Business Analytics (2), Philanthropy (2), Manufacturing (2), Communication and Public Speaking (2), Starting Up (2), Enterprise Software (2), Information Security (2), Wireless (2), Business Insurance (1), Regulation and Compliance (1), Air Travel (1), Freelancing and Contracting (1), Conference Venues (1), Accounting (1), Foreign Investment (1), Economics (1), Mergers and Acquisitions (1), Risk Management (1), Government Services (1), Health Care (1), Environmental Health (1), Work-life Balance (1), Exporting/Importing (1), Corporate Law (1), Finance and Securities Law (1), Direct Marketing (1), Events Marketing (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Corporate Governance (1), Change Management (1), Planning (1), Futures Markets (1), Non-profit Fundraising (1), Social Enterpreneurship (1), Inventory Management (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Supply Chain Management (1), Wealth Management (1), Distribution (1), Market Research and Definition (1), Professional Books and Resources (1), Green Products (1), Biotech (1), E-Commerce (1), Databases (1), Software Development (1)
It's free.
If LI forces us to pay for the service, most will leave...
It would be in their best interest to start communicating with us as opposed to going with the "secret society" shtick...
Jim W
Talent Acquisition Manager
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (20), Staffing and Recruiting (11), Education and Schools (2), Resume Writing (1), Conference Venues (1), Government Policy (1), Personnel Policies (1), Offshoring and Outsourcing (1), Internet Marketing (1), Writing and Editing (1), Ethics (1), Information Security (1)
Their applications are weak. The Blog Link doesn't work at all. And the others only appear when they want to.
Here is some info on a change that has not yet been rolled out. I found out the other day while speaking with a LI account representative that on 4/23, LI is changing the amount of profile views that will be allowed to free account members. As I understand, free users are allowed to click on and view up to 100 profiles a day. Effective 4/23, that number is going to be reduced to 60 profile views per month. I am curious as to what all of your thoughts are on this.
If the information that Steven Abate is passing along is remotely accurate, then this will cease to be a a useful site for many people. It sounds like they have found the www.headhunter.net playbook and are implementing gradual changes until the site usage changes significantly or they build a a sufficient revenue stream for an ipo type event in 2010.
The irony of all of the increase in costs and the decline in usability, is the fact that I have people to be much more likely to return a communication through Facebook rather than an inmail or a dreaded Introduction. I am wondering if the public profiles will also change?
Will this force recruiters to, gasp, call people once again?
Geri K
Kleeman Group - Search Consultant - Human Capital and Talent Management Solutions, Recruiter
Best Answers in: Resume Writing (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1)
Steven Abate said 60 a month? Could that be? I wonder what the price will be for more views.
From the User Agreement:
"LinkedIn may update, improve, discontinue and change at any time, at LinkedIn’s sole discretion"
I have heard that LI doesn't like recruiters but accepts them because they are pretty much the primary revenue source. All of their recent changes only affect sourcers and recruiters. There are few people out of their 30+ million users who view more than 60 profiles a month. If LI figures out how to replace the revenue from recruiters, the Pro accounts are going to be $2k per month.
Audrey C
Technical Recruiter at HCR Group, Inc.
Best Answers in: Business Development (2), Sales Techniques (1)
Wow, I won't go into all of the changes you mentioned, but the long list of "best answers in", is just weird. What does it prove?
I do wish I could accept invitations to connect the old way, it is a little more cumbersome now.
Glenn G
glenn at arbita.net 15K+direct 19MMtotal LION LIONS TopLinked.com; VP Arbita ACES (formerly JobMachine) of Arbita .net
Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (1)
We all feel some frustration over this, as well as the change to limit the maximum number of individual connections around 30,000 discussed on Shally's blog. The recruiting community is LinkedIn's largest income source, so keep lobbying your contacts at LinkedIn to express dissatisfaction over changes you dislike. However, the trend is more functionality for those with paid accounts (esp. the Corporate Recruiter tier where you can view all 37 million profiles, lots of InMails & saved searches/alerts, Reference searches, sourcing project results folder sharing, etc.).
@John Turnberg: I don't think they'll ever cancel Public Profiles. They drive a lot of new user traffic to LinkedIn which leads to members and advertising eyeballs. Those profiles need to remain relatively keyword-rich in order to be effective. So, ironically, I think we'll see more people turning to the Google and Yahoo hacks to find public LinkedIn profiles (where you can view up to 1,000 results per search) rather than searching within LinkedIn itself.
Links:
Groups are a great discussion platform and great for networking. However they are being killed to death by spam and that in turn is making Linkedin a giant classified ads page. I run a group with about 1,100 members, sad to know I cant create an external newsletter for them. Most importantly I spend a lot of time/effort cleaning it up and moderating it.
There are also a vast number of repetitive groups, with no easy way of merging them, that would be a great functionality to have, rather than they taking away some contact functionality.
Rupert Neil B
Investment Management Consultant, Emerging Markets, GCC/Middle East; Sub-Continent & CIS.
I do agree with the lack of explanation from LI, I think that is part of the psyche of a developer. They know what they have done and assume we have their levels of expertise, plus awareness!
Bulk acceptance of invitations is still possible, using drop down menu at top of inbox!
Blog does link through, but to check yours is viewable you need to "view my profile" from left hand menu!
Groups are very good, but how tiresome to do a multiple news article posting, only allowed one by one, with a daily limit of 20!
You CAN still bulk accept, albeit a bit more tricky.
Go to Inbox
Click on the down arrow next to "received"
Click on "invitations".
You can now bulk select and hit "accept" at the bottom of the page.
To me being able to message a group "only" once per week is a good thing. I don't need to be contacted more than that.
As a group manager, I was expecting LI to eventually take away some of the free features that we currently or previously have used. What was not expected was that we were not going to get some sort of notice. As far as the limited profile views, all I can say is wow. Thanks LI for reducing the value of your service.
Joe L
Senior Recruiting Specialist | Technology | Banking | Healthcare | Insurance
Instead of seizing benefits, LI should look for better ways how the member can benefit from LinkedIn. Add new features, Power search and other cool stuff.
Clarification added 8 months ago:
Ah I forgot something
free users will create fake profiles to unlock the reduced profiles view per day and Thus LI is going to be a den of fake profiles
Jonathan D
Professional Networking & Social Recruiting Strategist| LinkedIn Trainer | Career Site Optimizer
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (3), Job Search (1)
I created a quick video to show people the Inbox Changes, and where to find the Bulk Invitations feature.
Links:
This is a sheer unscrupulous act from them. They are shooting themselves on their foot.There are enough platforms for professionals like BrightFuse from CareerBuilder .It's way better and user friendly than LI...
Clarification added 8 months ago:
@ Joe Limboo: "Ah I forgot something
free users will create fake profiles to unlock the reduced profiles view per day and Thus LI is going to be a den of fake profiles"
That's a nice thought Joe. The moment they introduced 50 groups restriction per user, I created my 2nd profile and 3rd one for official use .Just outsmart them and wait for them to come up with the next stupid stuff..
Joan D
COMSYS IT Staffing & Managed Solutions
Best Answers in: Direct Marketing (1), Internet Marketing (1)
There are a lot of places they could save space; mainly in letting us delete old invitations that never got accepted and that count against the PAID subscribers limit to number of invites. I've been asking for a way to do this for a while. Additionally old messages. Why keep all these OLD items on the site? The other is to let the site be a little self-governing like it is on Craig'sList - allow someone to flag an advertiser rather than take away group invites - just let the groups flag the spam ad placements. I pay for the basic level of membership and expect the T's & C's to remain as I paid for during the term of my contract. Oh, any yes we'll have to call people again as Recruiters - who ever stopped?! It's just easier to figure out who to call '-)
Nancy Robin G
Certified Human Resources Professional providing HR advisory and management services. hrexpert@rocketmail.com
I have conflicting thoughts on this--on one hand one can't help how one feels having put so much time and work into something. On the other hand, change should always be expected; even though one invests time and effort into something, the bottom line is life isn't fair and everything changes. It is best to be prepared and ready for change--if you can't prevent it, embrace it, and go with the flow.
