A visit by a senior LinkedIn software engineer to Monroe Consulting Group Indonesia has demonstrated the increasing synergy between the business-oriented social networking service and the recruitment industry, as well as the wider implications for executive job seekers.
Tina Nugraheni, the head of Monroe Indonesia’s specialised Technology Recruitment Division, said a presentation delivered by LinkedIn Senior Software Engineer Enrico Tanuwidjaja was the latest such visit by an Indonesia-born, Silicon Valley-based executive making waves in the international information technology (IT) sector. Herman Widjaja, engineering manager with Google, visited Monroe’s offices last month.
“LinkedIn is a good tool for the recruitment industry but our discussion was much more wide ranging,” Tina said. “Areas Enrico discussed included his perception of the culture within the developers’ community and multinational tech-based companies in Silicon Valley.”
She said Enrico was also interested to hear about Monroe’s new marketing campaign, #ExpertsFindingExperts, as well as the recruitment company’s active attempts to encourage as many overseas-educated Indonesians to return home to help drive economic growth in their home country, particularly in the IT, digital and E-commerce sectors.
She said another area of interest was the relationship between LinkedIn and recruitment companies such as Monroe.
Andrew Hairs, group managing director of Monroe, said one of the primary reasons recruitment companies emerged so strongly was because traditional human resources (HR) executives had a broad range of responsibilities and could only allocate a comparatively small proportion of their time to recruitment.
“The strength of recruitment companies is 100 percent focused on recruitment, so it’s that personal touch,” Andrew said. “You’re not just sending your CV to a company where it might be overlooked. If you talk to us, we will explain the process, we will send your CV to the company, we will follow that up with the company, we will prep you for the interviews, we will hold your hand and guide you through the recruitment process to give you a better chance of success.”
Mr Hairs said that LinkedIn had moved away from its aims of replacing or providing an alternative to the recruitment industry to working more closely with it. “LinkedIn now derives a lot of its income from recruitment agencies who are now probably their number one source of revenue.” he said. “Yet at the same time retain its excellent networking capabilities and other features.”
Mr Hairs said that LinkedIn, recently sold to Microsoft for US$26.2 billion, was one of the tools recruiters used to source talent.
He said that it was important to remember that one of the main reasons Monroe was approached by leading multinational and national companies in the emerging Asia markets, including Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, was that many senior executives were not listed on LinkedIn.
“A leading recruitment company like Monroe has its own extensive online databases, which contain much more detailed information, for example,” Mr Hairs said. “But where we earn our money is our ability to take the best of the database information and then go out to the market to find people who aren’t on the database and secure them for our clients. And this includes ensuring that the candidate is a good fit for the company culture and doesn’t have unrealistic salary expectations.”