The social network, now under the wing of Microsoft, continues to acquire startups, and expand its offering.

Why build it if you can buy it? Founded in 2002 LinkedIn, the world’s largest business networking site has acquired a total of 21 companies in its assent to eminence. A number which includes three acquisitions since becoming a subsidiary of Microsoft in June of 2016; with the latest prize, Glint – an employee management platform – announced on Monday.

With almost 600 million users to date, LinkedIn has made no secret of wanting to expand their reach into phases of the employee lifecycle beyond hiring, and Glint is one more acquisition, in a long line of acquisitions, that will help them do just that. CRM and employee education are two examples of areas where LinkedIn is hoping to engage companies and boost profits, and now, with Glint, employee engagement is likely to be the third.

Since its launch in 2013, Glint has raised $80 million in the past two years and, in the latest valuation, was estimated to be worth $220 million. Microsoft, however, was willing to shell out almost twice that amount purchasing the startup for $400 million reports CNBC.

Glint’s mission is to help organizations, and managers, turn employee feedback into actionable results through surveys and data collection. Basically, it helps employers understand if their workers are happy, and in the current economy where tech talent is scarce and flighty, that’s actually vital information to know.

LinkedIn itself was a former Glint customer, naming the platform as a “top startup” for the last two years. The VP of talent solution, careers, and learning for LinkedIn, Daniel Shapero, says of the merger, “I’m so excited for the potential of what we can do together. We believe that Glint has uncovered a modern HR best practice that every company should do: Regularly gather employee feedback on work, culture, and leadership, and give leaders the tools they need to translate those insights into action.”

Glint will continue to operate as a salient entity under the leadership of the current CEO and founder, Jim Barnet, and no disruption in service to current customers is expected during the integration, which is estimated to take between 12-18 months.

On the heels of the Glint news, LinkedIn also announced that it will double down on what it’s known for – recruiting! With a total rebuild of it’s recruiting suite which will include “Talent H” an ATS for small-to-medium-size businesses as well as sourcing tools with diversity insights. A strong message to rising competitors like ZipRecruiter and Facebook that LinkedIn isn’t afraid to innovate, and a 130 percent spike in profits reported at the end of its fiscal year in June means they have the money to do it too.

“We’re not operating under the same rules as before,” John Jersin, LinkedIn’s VP of Talent Solutions admitted in a recent interview. “Candidates can be found online, and the process is more agile [than it used to be]. So we are evolving our product roadmap to [match] the talent ecosystem.”

Image via LinkedIn.

Monster’s “state of recruiting” survey finds competition for candidates is taking its toll on practitioners. Here’s what managers can do about it.

The rate of Americans leaving their jobs voluntarily reached a 17 year high this spring, just as unemployment hit an 18 year low. Economists and policymakers see these numbers as a measure of job-market confidence, and expect accelerated wage growth through the rest of 2018. All great news, but, for recruiters, a tight labor market makes for steep competition, especially for tech talent: the number of unfilled job openings is the highest it’s been in 17 years. Computer programmers can expect a million unfilled positions by 2020.

“Today’s strong economy is increasing the overall demand for talent, so recruiters are under tremendous pressure,” said Bob Melk, Chief Commercial Officer, Monster. In the company’s latest recruiting survey of more than 400 practitioners this August, 62 percent report their jobs being more difficult than the previous year, and 67 percent say the difficulty exceeds that of five years ago.

“[All this] underscores the need for an integrated recruitment strategy spanning the entire candidate lifecycle,” Melk says. “For recruiting to be effective in 2018 and beyond, it must go beyond traditional methods. A multi-solution approach – combining marketing, digital, and analytics – is critical in moving recruitment stress to recruitment success.”

Yet despite these concentrated efforts, the results aren’t what they used to be, with an average 44 percent of candidates being passed off to hiring managers, a 10 full percentage points short of the desired 54.

If you think about it, the above solutions are just different ways to advertise; important, but not a complete strategy in itself. It’s time to lay the foundation for longterm TA success, and the general consensus is that it will take new skills, and, for many, new tools to better recruit in a tight talent pool.

So what are the three action items to begin achieving these hiring goals?

1. Start marketing: Only 36 percent of recruiters surveyed reported using employer branding strategies, this despite the fact that 67 percent said they needed to understand Marketing to be successful.
2. Balance the scales between digital and human: Sixty-four percent of recruiters say they lack the tools to make their job smoother and another 51 percent say that a lot of the tech they do have actually makes it harder to connect with humans.
3. Learn to analyze your data: Fifty percent of recruiters report feeling anxious about time management and 67 feel they need to be analytics experts to begin tracking important metrics.

The proliferation of human capital management solutions in the last five years has given HR high hopes of becoming a strategic business-function, like marketing did the early 2000s. The tools to attract, select, and hire the right candidates are out there. Recruiters just need to convince the boardroom to invest in them.