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Are LinkedIn and Facebook Merging?

By August 27, 2015One Comment

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?

LinkedIn Message Centre

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.

Susan Isles FB

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.

Jonathan Rice

Director of New Zealand rec-to-rec firm Rice & Co, co-founder of freelance recruiter platform JOYN, and people-centric technology firm superHUMAN Software. Recruitment innovator, agitator and frustrated idealist, father of two, husband of one, and lover of all things Arsenal and crafty beer.

One Comment

  • Julian says:

    I experienced something similar to you and your real estate agent when a client of mine took me by surprise yesterday by saying they liked my updated Facebook profile photo. I’m connected to them on Linked In but not Facebook. Obviously a connection between the two somewhere?