(2025-02-19) Procopio Hows Hiring Going Because Linkedin Made2 Billion On Subscriptions Last Year

Joe Procopio: How’s Hiring Going? Because LinkedIn Made $2 Billion On Subscriptions Last Year. LinkedIn’s social network might be hurting your hiring whether you use them or not*

the question I asked “Mike,” the CEO of a tech company whom I’ve known for just about the entirety of his tenure.

“Very funny,” he quipped in a way that made it clear my question wasn’t funny. “But we stopped using LinkedIn during the pandemic.”

One of the most overlooked issues with hiring — and there are a lot of them — is that we’re now hiring through a social network. And the evolution of the social network business model has resulted in prioritizing the quantity of connections over the quality of each.

If you’re looking for a job, the uselessness of a social network in finding a job is right there in your face. If you’re hiring, it’s also right in front of you.

LinkedIn could fix a lot of the hiring mess tomorrow.

What would happen to that subscription revenue if everyone on LinkedIn suddenly got a job they loved and thus the influencers no longer had any influence?

this is speculation from Mike, not me. He showed me examples, but the causes are his own. Here’s how Mike’s company’s jobs are flowing through a social network without posting jobs to that social network.

First of all, the obvious. A couple of his HR people have indeed been posting open positions to LinkedIn against Mike’s wishes, because “that’s what everybody does.” That opens the floodgates and takes down their ability to screen properly.

He believes “recruiters” are scraping his company’s career page and reposting similar positions on LinkedIn — and also elsewhere — under their own company (influencer) profile

Sometimes they inbound into his HR, selling the candidates they’ve harvested from this duplicitous process.

Mike has authorized, like a lot of tech companies, a lofty referral bonus for his employees if they bring in someone who gets hired and stays for at least six months.

Great idea, right? Guess what a handful of his employees are doing. They’re using LinkedIn, building up their own influence and networks, and then flooding HR with the resumes of people they barely or don’t even know.

The article also notes that LinkedIn’s CEO stated “We bet big on our investment in AI tools to help our subscribers accelerate how they connect to opportunity, and it’s paying off.”
“Paying off”… for whom?