There used to be a line of funny spoofs of this line, such as:

I’m pink, therefore I’m spam.
I’m zinc, therefore I’m a pram
etc etc

I certainly don’t underestimate LinkedIn. I’m full of admiration of what they have achieved and how they are changing our industry. At the same time, it is worth remembering that many people use LinkedIn for many other things than just recruitment and that there are other players in the market with higher recruitment revenues.

I also agree with you that revenue is as important as a metric as candidates are. Only together can one understand the full picture and the direction a company is traveling in.

One thing… You say “In calculating the Top 5, I’ve included LinkedIn based on its total traffic. HRxAnalysts, however, estimates that only 5% of LinkedIn’s visits are done in a job seeking capacity.”

Yikes! It sounds like you may be underestimating the power (threat?) of LinkedIn. 5% of traffic may be jobseeking traffic. But what percentage is candidate seeking? And anyway surely it’s better to consider top 5 brands by revenue rather than traffic… What proportion of LinkedIn’s revenue is job related?

Just think it’s always safer to over-estimate a competitor than to under-estimate one!

Each player in the recruitment process has their own motivations, but none can be as true as that of a jobseeker. Job boards offer a service to help candidates, but really as a means to selling more advertising space. Recruitment agencies portray themselves as being on the side of job seekers, but are invoicing employers, so owe their loyalties elsewhere. Commercial entities must always make commercial decisions, but let’s not pretend they’re made in the interests of candidates. Lastly, employers do have a sincere motivation to portray themselves well, in order to attract the candidates who best suits their needs. However, at the beginning of the recruitment process, employers have no emotional investment in any one candidate, as they are not yet part of the organisation. This is of course and necessary to the process of comparing and deciding upon peoples’ worth and value.

In an environment where the direction of travel is from the candidate, through all the various intermediaries, toward the employer and the job itself, it is vital for all key decisions to be made whilst facing in that direction.

If Google had set out to build the most comprehensive, effective and profitable advertising system the world has ever seen, would they have convinced anyone that their motivation was to deliver the most relevant search result for users? If Twitter had launched with banner ads, sign-up fees, newsletters, and promoted tweets, would we have seen it as genuinely useful? If LinkedIn had launched itself as a worldwide job board from the very beginning, would any employer have encouraged their HR department to add comprehensive lists of all their staff to it? I rather think not.

Human beings, and maybe especially those looking for help, are able to detect when they are part of a process that suits the intentions and pockets of others. They know when they are being manipulated for profit. Done properly, and openly, they won’t usually object, but they can always smell it. Fair exchange, is no robbery, so when offered a genuinely useful service, they won’t mind that someone somewhere is making a profit. I still recall that every job board, up until a few years ago, mentioned in their marketing spiel that their service was entirely “free” to candidates. This unnecessary claim simply made candidates suspicious of being offered something for nothing. A more honest approach would be to stress that a job board needed and valued candidates, rather than was “doing them a favour”. Again, it’s essential to speak to the “audience of one” throughout all communications. No candidate wants to feel that they are merely a tiny part of the huddled masses; one of many pebbles on a beach. This isn’t because candidates are special, it’s because they are individual, and the internet ably enables all job boards to treat them as such.

Think about it. I am one candidate, applying for one job. Why do I need to know that “all candidates will be selected …yada yada yada…”? I am unhappy to be so obviously dealt with, alongside many others. I am mature enough to deal with a rejection, so long as it is prompt, and addresses my individual application. When I apply for a job, I’d like it to be dealt with by the employer, and not feel as if I am being parcelled up, along with others, and moved to another intermediary to be dealt with. I would like it made clear to me, that by adding my CV to your database, you will then sell access to it to anyone who pays for the privilege. I would really appreciate it if job boards had a common set of standards, which apply to all, so I know what to expect, without reading every single page of every job board’s terms of service.

In the dotcom boom of 2001, the phrase “if you build it, they will come” was often (and wrongly) used. That was evidently not true. However, if you build a product that addresses the commercial needs of everyone before those of the consumer (your key ingredient), they will stay away in droves. If your commodity is people, and people have feelings, then your business will only work at all, if it works from their perspective.