Are LinkedIn and Facebook Merging?

Good morning Recruiters of New Zealand.  A quick and early one from me today as I’m off to Nelson with Sean for my 40th for some reflective beach walks and perhaps a little bit of sampling of the local refreshments.

It’s a welcome break.  My head’s slightly frazzled from putting together a long-list for a senior role in Auckland that I’m working on at the moment.  A lot of phone calls and even more LinkedIn messages.  No doubt a number of you reading this have heard from me too (and I must say how edifying it was to get such positive feedback from everyone, well almost everyone, even if not interested in a move just yet).

But the new LinkedIn messaging centre hasn’t helped things.  Does anyone else have this new-look area?  You know when you click on the little envelope symbol to check messages?  Or am I one of the “lucky few” to receive this form of digital lab testing?

It looks like the image above.  Well kind of.  Clearly without the child-like scribblings which is my hasty attempt to protect the confidentiality of the conversations (Brian won’t mind though, we’re talking about catching up for a beer in Vancouver if you must know).  LinkedIn suggest they have “made some improvements” with this new look area and I suppose it does look better, but that’s like saying a pig looks better with lipstick on it.

The trouble for me is the functionality on my desktop.  Whenever I click into this new area, it shakes and gyrates around like a palsied pensioner on a pogo stick.  Well it does in Chrome anyway.  I just tried in Firefox and it’s nice and sedated, which makes it all a far better experience.

It does look better but it means you can’t add things like subject lines anymore, which for a LinkedIn headhunt is a bit like a call from a “No Caller ID” on your mobile and surely more likely to get ignored.  It also looks a lot more like Facebook Messenger, which is probably by design, as those two social media goliaths move inexorably closer to just merging and forming a complete platform for both professional and personal dealings. It’ll happen, trust me.

Speaking of which, I was surprised, and then scandalised, to get a Facebook friend request form one of our local real estate agents recently.  She might want to share her favourite spring recipe ideas with me, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she actually wants to sell my house to someone for way too much money and make a massive bonus.  How dare she.

But then I realised that many, many recruiters behave in exactly the same way, but just on LinkedIn instead of Facebook. And seeing as they’re becoming one and the same I decided to be scandalised no more, and just pressed “Delete Request” and got on with my day.  Sorry Susan.

Happy Friday everyone.  If you need me I’m in Nelson.