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Linkedin had its 10 years anniversary yesterday - big congratulations to the company and all of its 225M members! From here you can find the great summary ofthe ten milestones that have helped shape the company’s 10 year historyand A Brief History of LinkedIn.

And this is how the site looked like 10 years ago:

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedins-first-profile-2013-5

In the middle of the celebration or actually just before it Linkedin had as well itsearnings call for Q1 this week announcing revenue of $325M and EPS of 0.45$.

“Q1 was a strong quarter for LinkedIn with member engagement and financial results reaching record levels,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. “We remained focused on delivering great products that increasingly make LinkedIn the essential daily resource for global professionals.”

But investors didn’t like the news and dropped the stock as the share is really richly valued and actually the speed of growth is declining compared to expectations. And at the same time Monster is beating the expectations… So what is going on here and is there a big picture to look at? Or should we even mention these two companies in the same article?

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We are so excited about this partnership and look forward to working together to expand these two great brands to be available for an even larger audience, reaching and connecting all parts of the world.

PS. Join our #truUS tour in May!

I am writing this on a plane from Shanghai to Beijing. Well it hasn’t even left yet, and it’s more than 1 hour after it should and we have already even eaten so I thought I better do something productive– e.g. write a blog post. Just to mention, it is domestic and cheap flight and I am one of the very few foreigners on the plane and everything is pretty much in Chinese only. So even though China is more open and Western and both of these old and huge cities are “like any other” big city in the world, China is still China (and unique country in the world). If you claim otherwise you probably don’t have much experience from it. As a disclaimer all the following are my experiences and opinions and not real facts by any means.

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You may wonder why I count obsessions towards best practice as unfortunate. The fundamental error in it is the position to be behind and adapt only when there is a viable proof of concept and most of the time even worse – proof of concept within the specific sector we are working in – so we are actually always late. I understand that it is not always good to be the first, but not the last either.

As a mindset this is one of those building blocks we have established that is holding us back and makes us to be more in the risk management and admin than function, which is seeking to add value to the business in different ways. Innovation, praised everywhere, doesn’t come from the best practice nor stand out talent attraction strategy. It is about constantly seeking next practice – continuous improvement and sometimes even radical thinking that can lead disruptive new ways of doing things not only better but in a totally different way.

Here is an example about that. We are at Joberate building a tool to automate part of the process in headhunting. The idea for this tool came from headhunters, but still they weren’t able to actually build it. Why is that – as they had all the knowledge? It is partly against their current business model – it is a bit disruptive – a new kid on the block – and could eventually partly challenge the existence – what those companies and people represent. It is not easy to accept that our identity is something we need to change – we only accept it when we have to and then it is usually already too late.

This is a constant problem. When I talk to people and encourage them for example to explore new channels for sourcing – that may sound like a really simple and small thing, but I constantly hear that we cannot use X yet, because it is still not that popular here or in our industry. It just makes me amazed by two reasons. First, there is very rarely any research done to back up this statement. Secondly, why does it have to be really popular before you start using something? Don’t you want to hire early adopters and tech savvy people for some roles? When things go mainstream, the competition gets higher that will often make it significantly harder and more expensive to get benefits out of it.

I think the essential problem is that we pretend to be in the game called “too busy” and focus to attend as many as possible time management courses and read tons of productivity guides. There are few rules in that game and one of the most popular ones is that I cannot try new and/or unproven things – because I am too busy. But I would advise you from time to time to stop and ask if we are too busy doing wrong things which as well keeps us to be way too busy. What is the loop we are repeating and box we are in? Is there a better way, is there something we could do differently – to play a bit with the new and exciting ideas.

Let the others follow as we go exploring first – and this time, get the benefits to our business!

Best,

Aki Kakko

You can find more information related  to Recruitby.net here or by watching the video below:

After the interview I have already started to test the system with our own recruitment cases and have to say that it is well designed and extremely easy to use.

If you wish to talk about your HR Tech company please let me know and let’s arrange the time for a chat.

Best,
Aki Kakko

Today I had a privilege to talk with Susanna Rantanen- HR professional and entrepreneur from Finland. Susanna is developing a platform for recruiters to match and meet talents beyond the skill matching, but let’s listen what it actually means, what is the stage of the company and plans for the upcoming year.

You can find more information related  to Heebo.me here or by watching the video below:

There will be many more similar kind of interviews coming up this year so if you wish to talk about your HR Tech company please let me know and let’s arrange the time for a chat.

Best,
Aki Kakko

Anyhow there were a lot of buts in that feedback stating that “yes, but not in our industry” or “not in the roles we need in our organization” or just “works in theory but not in practice”. These are all quite interesting statements as it seems to appear everywhere I go and almost whatever is the topic if it is not mainstream – especially this is a pattern that repeats in #tru unconferences where the participants actively participate in the discussions during the event and give their local insights to the topics elaborated by the track leaders. I think that it is related to firstly our need to feel somehow unique and special in what we do and secondly our laziness and wish to somehow protect us from the need for change by creating excuses and outsourcing the responsibility to someone else. By stating that something as such makes sense, but just doesn’t apply in our organization you kind of wash nicely your hands without looking too stupid – or you may at least think so. Test practice is  the new best practice and every organization that wish to stay relevant in the future in this all the time changing economy needs to adapt R&D to every part of their business not only for product development – including HR.

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This post doesn’t really have one clear theme and it is more like a collection of thoughts that have emerged in my mind in the last weeks while traveling around the world to different HR and recruitment events and sharing ideas with the brightest minds in our industry – thanks to all of you for the discussions!

Currently there is a lot of talk around the topics like:

• culture branding
• hiring for the company rather than for the exact position
• new ways of working; projects, crowds, swarms, freelancing…
• how important the cultural fit is in the hiring process etc.

Everyone understands how important this all is but still when we look at the typical hiring process or how the organizations actually work this discussion doesn’t really correlate at all. I mean after you take that nice talk away and look at it deeper, I would say that at the moment this talk is cheap and there is not much actually happening. When we go back from the conferences or unconferences we tend to still repeat the same broken patterns – so maybe at least part of this discussion is just a hype? Share your thoughts, below are few of mine.

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I read this article written by Lance Haun from ERE “Five Reasons To Think Differently About Sources Of Hire” which inspired me to think more about my view on the topic and to write it down. This post is more related to what we do in Joberate, which is reaching out to the passive talents through the niche channels. Hopefully with this post I will manage to open some new ideas to this old topic and discussion.

What has changed?

Read More…

TruHelsinki Showcase Event 3 September, Helsinki Finland: Presenting and organising
TruHelsinki 4 & 5 September, Helsinki Finland: Track Leader and organiser
Monster Buzz 13 September, London: Attended
mRecruitingcamp 2012 14 September, Atlanta GA: Missed
Dreamforce 18 -21 September, San Francisco: Missed
Nordic Business Forum 20 & 21 September, Jyväskylä Finland: Attended
#TechRec12 25 September, London: Missed
Talent Sourcing Strategies – The Power to Hire Employees Direct 25 September, Amsterdam: Attended

— Upcoming: updated 30th of September
TruBaltics 4 October, Vilnius Lithuania: Track Leader and organiser
HRevolution 2012 7 October, Chicago IL: Attending
HR Technology 8 – 10 October, Chicago IL: Attending
LinkedIn Talent Connect 10 – 12 October, Las Vegas: Attending
TruMontreal 16 October, Montreal: Attending
TruNola 18 October, New Orleans LA: Attending
TruLondon6 22-23 October, London: Track Leader
Linkedin Talent Connect Europe 23 October, London: Not confirmed
Talent Strategy Summit 24 October, Bublin: Attending
HR Tech Europe 2012 25-26 October, Amsterdam: Attending
TruDubai 1 November, Dubai: Track Leader and organiser
TruCapeTown 6 November, Cape Town South Africa: Attending
TruJohannesburg 8 November, Johannesburg: Attending
HRO Forum Europe 13-15 November, Bublin: Attending
TruZurich 14th November, Zurich: Track Leader
TruAmsterdam 22 November, Amsterdam: Attending
HR Event Beijing 24 November, Beijing China: Keynote Speaker
TruSingapore 28 November, Singapore: Track Leader and organiser
TruHongKong 30 November, Hong Kong: Track Leader and organiser
Recruitment Re-Invented: Social & Mobile Go Mainstream 4-5 December, Attending
TruAustralia, December, Melbourn & Sydney: Not confirmed
TruNewZealand, December, Wellington: Not confirmed