Part of the 2018 ATC Live Series in Sydney, Tim Grogan from LinkedIn shares insights about Talent Solutions. He speaks to the future of AI technology and its capability to create synergy with other HR processes via the launch of new LinkedIn tools. Tim relays LinkedIn’s priority to add value to its members as the ever-changing data landscape continues to evolve.
Part of the 2018 ATC Live Series in Sydney, Tim Grogan from LinkedIn shares insights about Talent Solutions. He speaks to the future of AI technology and its capability to create synergy with other HR processes via the launch of new LinkedIn tools. Tim relays LinkedIn’s priority to add value to its members as the ever-changing data landscape continues to evolve.
Welcome to talking to people, talking people and technology in fact, podcast. My Name is David Guazzaratto. We're coming at you live in all senses of the word live from the ITC event here in Sydney. Live on the ATC Twitter. Say Hi.
Group:Hi.
David:I'm joined as always by my partner in crime. Jared Cameron. How are you, mate?
Jared:Thanks Dave. Yeah, really good. Actually, we're at tail end of day, so. Voice still working this time, which is great. Yeah, I've got. I've got a glass of water though this time. Tim, you won't know this, but I lost my voice a couple of weeks ago when we were at another conference.
Tim:I am pleased it's back. Although it depends on this guys, I might say I wish you lost it, but let's see.
David:Yeah, so a twitter, twitter people you can say the team is with us people on the podcast. Let me introduce you to Tim Grogan, who is part of the global enablement team, looking after talent solutions in Asia Pac for LinkedIn. Welcome Tim.
Tim:Thank you guys. Good to be here.
David:Awesome. It's great to have someone from LinkedIn obviously synonymous with anything to do with recruitment, so really looking forward to talking to you about what's happening in the world of LinkedIn, so you've just come off stage. The theme of this conference is about artificial intelligence and I understand that's kind of a direction that you really focused on now.
Tim:Yeah, I think it's obviously a very hot topic and everyone's really recruitments alternate about productivity and efficiency and it was interesting hearing one of the startup winners before I went on, his proposition was really about, hey, he really wants to give time back to recruit is because of the demands on the role. And so artificial intelligence is a natural opportunity to create that level of scale. Uh, yeah. And so we see, we see significant changes afoot and we're excited of how our technology can be underpinning to create more value for our customers.
David:Yeah. Awesome. So we know, we know LinkedIn. I mean I myself have been on LinkedIn since the prehistoric agents. The reason why I was on LinkedIn very early on, I do love the platform. I know it's got, it's got to be protagonists and its detractors, and as most of these things, everything doesn't in life. Um, but I've always been a big fan of LinkedIn. I've got on the, I was working at Peoplesoft, we were taken over by Oracle is a whole bunch of us peoplesoft as it went, oh, this is not quite right for us. Um, and at that stage this was the new platform that everyone was getting their profiles on and with the aim of someone tapping them on the shoulder for a great gig somewhere else. So that's kind of the, the early history is, is I knew it. So maybe if you could fast forward to 15 years or so now and tell us what is LinkedIn all about now? Particularly from a Talent Solutions perspective.
Tim:So it is fifteen years, spot on. We just celebrated our 15 year anniversary, so nice internal calendar there. You know, I think where LinkedIn first started to, where it's become, it's been a success story not just because of its member growth but because what it actually means, you know, our proposition of connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. You know, 15 years ago you would've thought, well, let's just help me get another job, but now the richness of the network, the value that people are putting into their personal profiles and their thought leadership or knowledge that they want to share is creating a hub of value, that we're seeing incredible membership growth.
David:It's a tremendous opportunity, I think, to in this modern modern world. I know obviously, um, yeah, you've, you've had a, the acquisition by Microsoft. So I'm obviously looking at a bigger play over time. I expect with that you've got the biggest database of people's information around their job and what they're into. So what are some of the ways you guys are using that data set now?
Tim:Yeah, well, I think, um, first of all, I think the, what, what stands out really uniquely about LinkedIn's proposition proposition is that, um, we're a members first organization and what that means is the integrity of how we think about member data is the number one priority. So whenever we think about, how do we enable our members to be better or how do we create a valuable solution, uh, in the way that we might connect our industry to our member, the lens that we always look at that through is who does this add value to our member? All right, and are we respecting the member and the integrity of the member and their profile? So that's a starting point because, and I say that because I don't like the word database because the database feels like it's something that you can pick up and give away and we've seen what happens when people get exposed to that more recently in the press know with facebook and the integrity that, you know, that that probably wasn't there at the start, but, but more generally, uh, what we're seeing, how we use were happening. There's two parts of that. First of all, we have, what we refer to a digital mission is really about how do we digitally map the economic graph. Yeah. And so how do we use that data in aggregate to sort of Map it? Remember, every company, every, every job, every skill to ultimately a enable intellectual property, working capital, human capital, uh, to actually lift the global economy up and now we're starting to use that on aggregate with governments is helping them make better decisions about what kind of skills do they need, what kind of cities, where his job's being despised, but whereas job growth so they can make better economic decisions, make better policies to enable a better world.
David:Interesting. Now I think it's a richness to those connections that something that I've certainly talked to my own experience and LinkedIn. One of the things that I really loved, I'm not sure how long ago, maybe about four or five years ago there was this social network analytics and I'm sure you can still get to it somewhere. It was LinkedIn labs that did it, created this beautiful chart like this of all the network connections that showed the nodes.
Tim:Yeah. And who knows what and it's a visual. So that's a visualization of your own personal network.
David:Yeah, it's fascinating.
Tim:It is fascinating, not just because, colorfully, it looks beautiful, but you can just see the crossover and the cross-connections.
Jared:It was pretty clever there wasn't it actually, and you can sort of see the nodes and you can see how that group over there interact with that group and they go, oh, I know that person who knows that person, who knows that person? Yeah.
Tim:Yeah, I think that's for me, just as a member, first and foremost, is that that's the thing I value of LinkedIn the most is that how many times you're talking to someone and all of the sudden just randomly find that that person knows someone and you're like, oh, I didn't realize we had that connection. Or digitally, now you can see that in a really fruitful why that doesn't help, that doesn't just help you grow professionally. That can also help you personally as well, depending on what it is that you want to do.
David:Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's, um, it enriches the conversations you can have. I do like the feature that I'm about to walk into a million prompts me about 15 minutes before and says, you're meeting with Tim Grogan, here's his profile.
Tim:Yeah, I know that's super powerful, but you ask the other question about how do we aggregate that data- add value? I shared that at a really a strategic level at a government level, but now we're really within talent solutions. What we're most excited about is our, our launch of our new insight solution and so we've recognized that for years our customers are like, how do you know if I had access to your data or if I was able to use that information, it would help me more effectively manage my stakeholders or help me help my internal customers understand the complexity of the problem we're dealing with. You know, it's a supply and demand challenge and know what everyone sees it outside of talent acquisition and so the launch of this new product is actually putting this aggregated data in the hands of our customers to have much more detailed, thoughtful conversations to help the hiring manager understand the reality of their role and the complexity and the strategies that they want to implement.
Jared:It's funny how a few years ago the conversations in these conferences were always about how do you get your time to hire down and how do you recruit faster and like the conversation been very much about saying how do you really find the right talent and how do you actually match them well to your organization and how do you check that they've got good cultural alignment and, and a lot of what this year has been about and how do you use artificial intelligence to drive that for, you, you know? So I guess, I guess your, your, your, your LinkedIn is recognizing that there is a bit of a market shift there and maybe people are starting to solve the process problems and they starting to look for the more complex challenges and yeah.
Tim:Yeah, I think, I think if you look at when LinkedIn came to Australia as an example, 2010, the proposition for a long time was around passive recruiting and how we helped communicate more effectively to that, that group who weren't actively looking for a role. We think passive recruiting now is table stakes. We think it still plays a role, but we think it's a, it's a net neutral because it's a more active way that people are now actually where we see the the growth in in, in enabling the organizations to be more effective is how did I use that rich data and how do we create more productivity in our solutions using the benefit of our data and artificial intelligence to actually help them be more productive, find that efficiency and and interpret that signal, whether it be about how our candidates are making decisions. You think about data. We have identity data about who you are. We have the intent data, which is the actions that you make towards what jobs you might be looking at, and then you have that affinity data, which is how you're engaging with content, how you're engaging with information, what you're sharing. That gives us a rich profile into that professional that's not possible anywhere else. Then we compliment that with, we've got this campaign started, this company insights, so we bring all that together in a really valuable way.
David:Yeah, that's interesting. I look, oh I'm going to call it an elephant in the room, in terms of, um, potential threats to that model. And um, the big, the biggest one of all is google, right? Yeah. And obviously in the last 12 months they've credited job algorithm and made it more intuitive to be able to do job search and I think they're starting to even put a rudimentary ATS, ATS behind it for small business. What, where do you see the threat from someone like Google who ostensibly has this dataset on just about everything we could possibly do? Yeah. Versus I guess how LinkedIn play that.
Tim:Yeah. So I think what's really interesting when you look at our Google hire and you look at LinkedIn, so two things, it's the call out. First of all, the amount of search for jobs from Google to LinkedIn actually historically has been very low, right? So there's a lot of other players who actually had anchored their algorithms and their searching really deeply into google to try to drive traffic to their platforms. LinkedIn didn't go after that place. As soon as we heard what Google is doing, we were almost the first knocking on the door going happy days because we've got our 20 million jobs now within the LinkedIn platform, right? How do we digitally align that to what Google's trying to do in aggregate so we can actually drive more with it, we can benefit more deeply from it because we think it's going to draw more people into our LinkedIn Platform. I thought it was the, ATS. I mean, uh, they're not the only, ATS in the game. In fact if anything we have just launched a new, we call it recruiter connect and we actually think there's an incredible opportunity where we can take ATS data and this is with the, with the ATS on board with this. And this is with the company on board with this, but it makes it, it's a gateway that connects your, ATS data and overlays it into your recruiter data. So all of a sudden you can look at your searching and your talent pools within recruiter and you can see who are the people that are already in your, ATS, that you might've had an engagement with. And we think that's going to enhance the experience for our recruitment partners. So, so we're partnering and we see its is an incredible partner for us.
David:Yeah. Right. Cool. Yeah. The um, I think, just another extension of that, I like to, I can sort of see that this vision of the future where we will not so much have our employee profiles owned by the company we were working for, that we actually put them around and we plugged them into whatever HR platform that you're using. Data will be added to that from our time with that organization. We unplug it and we put it somewhere else. Um, I've always thought that LinkedIn has a natural advantage to become that kind of proprietary employee profile that then can be walked around and plugged in.
Tim:Well, I think the two things there, I think first of all the profile is the individuals. It's your personal profile. It's, it's actually not the proprietary all the company. It's your choice to represent yourself and manage your own digital profile. Uh, the point you raised though is an interesting one is this is no doubt that there are companies seeing huge value in the way that they internally their internet is so difficult or they're, they're, you know, a workday or the HRS system, it's so difficult to keep that data up to date that there is this real synergy of how do we use LinkedIn data because it might even be more up to date than some of our own historical systems.
David:Why would you want to update it and LinkedIn and then have to go and accompany system and do the same as that element as well as basic kind of level two.
Tim:Yeah. And so, I mean, I don't know, I'm not glued into what the future may stand and I don't know what the kind of our gateways are in between HRS and LinkedIn today, but I do see that more and more people are asking for this type of service.
David:Yes. Well some of it comes down. I'll start sharing now you guys, I'll finish this thread and then I'll give you an opportunity to talk. I'm on, I'm an LinkedIn fanboy. I've called it out. The extension that is, that is the validation of your LinkedIn profile and this is something that's been debated a lot. Yeah. You know, is is a paper CV or an online CV, a more validated representation than the LinkedIn profile, because obviously everyone on LinkedIn is inflating everything they do, you know, to make them look better than they are. And we've all got photos from 15 years ago, so we looked younger.
Jared:Well, not all of us. Just some of us.
Tim:Yeah, well, it's been a long discussed point. I'll share my view on this. So, so I think actually the reality is, you think about it yourself, it's easy to inflate your own CV because it's your own word sort of document that no one really sees except for the recruiter. Right? Whereas your LinkedIn profile, you go in and if I was to go in and just say, hi, I'm interviewing with someone, I, I'm just going to call myself the CEO of A-Pac as an example. Well that immediately sends to a lot of people and it becomes discredited very quickly and also in the public. And my own personal, brand is damaged very quickly. Even now I'm trying to elevate myself for an opportunity so we actually think there's more transparency in how people are managing the reality of who they are and what they do.
Jared:Maybe maybe something like blockchain. There's going to be the thing that solves it in the longterm because you know, you might actually have an indisputable record that says you were the CEO and that organization that's been verified by that organization. Yeah. You know,
Tim:And I think it's very early dice that a where we're at with that new technology, but certainly you know, our, our, our high level conference, our pals, the powers that be are looking at everything and seeing how we add value to our member.
David:I'm sure there's a bunch of geeky guys tinkering around with that stuff at the moment in their LinkedIn labs.
Tim:Absolutely.
David:The Star Wars figurines next to the desk
Tim:Benefiting from their side investments in new currencies.
Jared:It's funny though, it's funny you're asking before about taking your, your profile with you, you know, in some regards. Facebook solved that from a login perspective. So you can go to any application pretty much now and use your Facebook profile to login. So it's kind of the reverse of that where you're working in an organization, you've completed a lot of learning. Maybe you've got some awards, spin a certain number of years of tenure doing certain things and leadership development programs. Sure you want to, you want to take that with you, right? You wanna, you wanna be able to plug that into your profile. Some of us are better than others at perhaps, making LinkedIn aware of that, but I could certainly see a see a time when that should be something that you shouldn't have to think about. It should link them, should just know that you did those things, you know or shouldn't. You should have the choice of making LinkedIn know that you did those things.
Tim:You know, the good point there is I think you know, on, on your CV, it's just a, it's words that represent your experience, but you can digitally tell that story now with videos or pdfs.
Jared:You can add actual things that say, here's something I did and here's something I produced. And you can create your own portfolio can you. You absolutely. Yeah. Interesting.
David:Yeah, I really see that strategy of that member driven. I think you've done another, it's been a bit of a revamp of that lightly. I think it's been a reaction to, to video coming in and Instagram playing Twitter, you know, um, uh, I like the way that we're now able to use LinkedIn and in a broader context and align our personal brands. It used to be literally a survey online, nowadays, you as a person, as a human, as much that probably reflects, and this is, I think the point I'm, I'm interested in exploring here is that that's a reflection of the evolution of work as well, that we are much more entwined between our personal life and our work life. Yeah. It's an evolution of the platform accordingly.
Tim:I don't know this, but is it now that, you know, maybe your job's wouldn't really historically spoken about as much, you know, it was like work is work and my personal weekends in my own, but now people defined themselves so much about their career. We've got a different workforce, we've got different, ya know, modern day parenting as a career is really critical and so therefore, yeah, it's almost a brand. Your brand is both your brand is both. The expectation is to do both. We're all working harder than ever before. Trying to manage both. Um, yeah know I think your digital profile, you who you are is an important part of that.
David:Yeah, so we are sort of running against the clock here. So perhaps if we can sort of encapsulate this and giving opportunity to just tell us, um, what do you, what are the sort of key things that you are seeing that a differentiating LinkedIn from perhaps other platforms or other solutions that support recruiters and talent professionals?
Tim:Yeah, I think that a couple of things there. I think we're in a constant of evolvement. If you think about physical from a member experience, the platform is continuously investing and adapting and changing and you see that, you feel that, what it looked like a year ago is different from how the experience that I and the end, the value of that content. And at the same time we're really recognizing our segments and our, our career. So someone who's a career job seeker, what does that experience look like and how do we create a better experience for them and the products are constantly evolving to enable that person to achieve that, that opportunity. And then when you look at our, um, our monetization strategy for talent solutions and the investment we're making in those products and uh, we're, we're, we're probably seeing the most, I think exciting roadmap for the future that have probably have seen, I think since we first launched recruiter onto the market and that's because the maturity of artificial intelligence has got to a point that this incredible amount of data that we've amassed over 15 years now backed by these machine learning AI can really transform the experiences and what the products can do in a way that I think we'll continue to see huge growth for our organization.
David:Yeah, that's fascinating. Good to have the ability to spend time with you on that. Um, as I said, fanboys, LinkedIn, looking forward to seeing what the evolution take shape.
Jared:Yeah. Maybe next year. You never know. We might be livestreaming on LinkedIn live.
David:I hope so. Yeah.
Tim:I would like to see that we'll, let's build your profile guys. C'mon. Let's go.
Jared:As soon as. As soon as it's up, we'll be using it.
David:Thanks for your time Tim, we'll see ya folks.