Layoffs, hybrid work, the move from Twitter…could LinkedIn benefit?

Is the wave of layoffs facing the tech sector an opportunity for LinkedIn? The CNN article published on Sunday, January 8th is amazing. It should be noted that the “information technologies and services” sector is the most represented in the professional social network and constitutes the largest base of its users (about 11% of subscribers in 2017).

In a battered tech sector, the numbers cited by LinkedIn are out of place. According to the US research firm Sensor Tower, the mobile application of the professional social network, which today has 875 million subscribers, was downloaded 58.4 million times worldwide in Google Play and Apple stores in 2022, which means an increase of 10% compared to the previous year. According to results published by Microsoft at the end of October, the company’s revenue would also increase by 17% year-on-year in 2022.

Includes pandemic and economic crisis

According to Syracuse University associate professor and social media expert Jennifer Grygiel, who spoke to CNN, the surge in LinkedIn usage is thought to be partly due to the pandemic: “Social distancing had to be done, we were in quarantine and people were working remotely, so there was a change in real life networking opportunities.”

But this may also be due to the increase in job searches. According to the company, the number of “open for work” posts on LinkedIn increased by 22% in November compared to the same period a year ago.

LinkedIn also says that it saw a steady increase in the connection rate of its users in 2022 compared to 2021, indicating that they are more active on the platform. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even said “record commitment“joined”acceleration of growth, especially in international markets”During the conference to announce the October results.

That’s right, with the recent thousands of layoffs, users had even more reason to use the increasingly popular platform to search for jobs and create professional communities. Xiaomi said it wanted to cut its workforce by 10% in December, Meta laid off 13% of its employees, Amazon and Salesforce announced massive restructuring plans earlier this year, as did HP, which plans to cut 4,000 to 6,000 jobs. 2025…

A global crisis for Twitter

The opportunity for LinkedIn also lies in the decline of Twitter, which continues to slide since Elon Musk took control. According to a Standard Media Index (SMI) report published in November 2022, Twitter’s ad spending fell 46% year-over-year.

SMI also found that marketers who had booked ads on the platform for the last two months of 2022 eventually backed out of their commitments. The platform has also been criticized for becoming a possible haven for its most extreme users and for the rise of spam. In the absence of an obvious and easy-to-use alternative (no offense to Mastodon), LinkedIn therefore has a card to play.

Major career concerns

Yet according to Jennifer Grygiel, “it’s likely that many people in the media or academia are looking for a place other than Twitter to build and connect with professional communities..” A group of former Twitter employees created a spreadsheet listing the company’s layoffs and hires that use LinkedIn to facilitate recruiting and enrollment.

Another group built a system to match job seekers with recruiting professionals willing to provide volunteer resume and interview assistance services.

“Chaos creates opportunity”

“While we can’t guarantee where or when your next opportunity will come, we can offer advice, so you’re ready to take advantage of it when it comes.Darnell Gilet, a former chief technical officer at Twitter, helped coordinate the effort, he said in a LinkedIn post.

“Chaos creates opportunity for someone, right? People are getting laid off and this recession is coming… Who could have more growth opportunities out there than a career-focused platform like LinkedIn? It makes perfect sense“, he claimed.