Chris Eldridge started his headhunting career sending candidates’ CVs to potential employers by fax machine.
The UK boss of recruitment giant Robert Walters recalls how hiring consultants in the 1990s would stick tape over CVs to hide candidates’ telephone numbers and address details before faxing to avoid businesses hiring talent without paying placement fees.
“Could you imagine that?”, the 51-year-old recruitment chief says.
How times have changed. LinkedIn has now made it easier than ever for employers, recruiters and job seekers to approach one another – with or without sticky tape.
Industry sources say that this now gives LinkedIn an “iron grip” on Britain’s recruiters, who rely heavily on the tech platform’s 1bn users, of which 30m are based in the UK.
Recruiters are now paying thousands of pounds in subscription fees to unlock LinkedIn’s suite of AI-enhanced advertising and hiring tools, which they hope can provide an edge in filling clients roles in return for fees.
For recruiters, the rewards can be lucrative: anywhere between 20pc to 30pc of the candidate’s first-year salary in their new role.
For LinkedIn, the prize is far larger. Last year, the social media platform increased premium subscribers by 25pc, bringing in $1.7bn (£1.3bn) for the Microsoft-owned business.
However, its growing dominance of the £42bn UK recruitment industry is rapidly changing the landscape.
James O’Dowd, the founder and managing partner of headhunter Patrick Morgan, warns that there is “complete over-reliance” on LinkedIn within the industry.
“Ninety-five per cent of recruiters now are using LinkedIn solely,” he says, “Without LinkedIn, a lot of them would really struggle.”
Anyone with a laptop or phone can set up a recruitment agency from their spare bedroom or kitchen table using LinkedIn’s network.
But O’Dowd adds: “The problem with that is now there’s a real lack of that differentiation. A lot of executives just get bombarded through LinkedIn with approaches and they’re very difficult to differentiate between them all.”
He argues that this is piling pressure on Britain’s biggest recruitment businesses, whose advantage traditionally relied on their internal databases and institutional relationships.
In a sign of the shifting sands in the industry, London’s largest agencies Hays, PageGroup and Robert Walters are continuing to battle a slowdown in the global hiring market.
The companies last week each told investors that there had been no improvement in the job market, resulting in weaker profits and further job cuts.