Vendor Tracks LinkedIn Profile Changes To Alert Client Employers (techtarget.com)

dcblogs shares a report from TechTarget: IT managers have long had the ability and right to monitor employee behavior on internal networks. Now, HR managers are getting similar capabilities thanks to cloud-based services -- but for tracking employee activity outside of their employer's network. A controversy and court fight is swelling over its potential impact on employee privacy. A San Francisco-based startup, hiQ Labs Inc., offers products based on its analysis of publicly available LinkedIn data. One is Keeper, which identifies employees at risk of being recruited away, and another is Skill Mapper, which analyzes employee skills. The profile data is collected by software bots. The clients of hiQ's service may learn whether a LinkedIn member is a flight risk thanks to an individual risk score: high (red), medium (yellow) or low (green), according to court papers. LinkedIn is in court fighting this, but so far it's losing. A federal judge recently took exception to the use of the CFAA in this case "to punish hiQ for accessing publicly available data." The judge warned such an interpretation "could profoundly impact open access to the internet."

Comments

This one isn't that hard

[computational super]

You could always, you know, just... not use LinkedIn.

Re:This one isn't that hard

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

^^^ This. (Or promoting a side business.)

I pretty much only touch LinkedIn when/if I want a new job. The recruiters are usually onto me like flies within 24 hours so I know they've got their alerts set.

Re:This one isn't that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never needed LinkedIn to get a job. The only thing LinkedIn has ever been useful for is getting spammed by LinkedIn.

If any potential employer requires you to have a LinkedIn account, you don't want to work for them anyways.

Re:This one isn't that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

If any potential employer requires you to have a LinkedIn account, you don't want to work for them anyways.

^^ This.

LinkedIn is like Facebook. It's there to scrape your data and make money by trafficking in it.

Just say no.

Re:This one isn't that hard

[bobbied]

You could always, you know, just... not use LinkedIn.

Excellent Advice... There is no good reason for it. Think of it as a quasi professional Facebook and trust what you read there with an even bigger grain of salt. There is little information there, certainly no information I'd trust.

I don't want to work for any employer who thinks checking my LinkedIn profile is even part of a background check anyway...

Re:This one isn't that hard

[hawguy]

It's really not necessary. I work in IT. I've had jobs with small 10 man shops up through 100K-employee giants. None of those jobs were obtained due to a LinkedIn profile, which I do not have and never had.

Don't be so quick to drink the coolaid or put all your eggs in one basket. People were getting jobs just fine before LinkedIn was a thing. Just like you don't require Facebook to talk to your friends, you don't need LinkedIn to get a job.

Depends where you live and how easy it is to find a job. I've never gotten a job directly through LinkedIn myself, but I have a good network and lots of opportunities where I live.

However, I've helped several former colleagues that live outside of my area get a job at my company through them contacting me about a job through LinkedIn (they all worked at the same company which was shutting down after their division was disbanded after an acquisition). At least one had sent a resume through the normal channels but it was lost in the noise.

It earned me over $10K in referral bonuses, so well worth the time to have a LinkedIn account and look at it periodically to screen out spam.

Re:This one isn't that hard

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's proven an invaluable way to find references an employee may not have chosen to list, and references who you may know personally and are more likely to give an honest evaluation of the employee's work. It can also be a way to gather information that an employer cannot legally ask for, such as medical information, marital status, age, or religion. That data may be illegal to discriminate with, but that doesn't make it less desirable for many companies hiring purposes. Medical expenses or medical history may be illegal to discriminate for, but that makes it no less valuable for controlling costs of medical insurance or medical leave for any company.

Re:This one isn't that hard

[knorthern knight]

> Did you just say, "It is illegal for a company to discriminate against
> certain things, but it is valuable for them to know it because
> they can save money if they DO discriminate against these things"?

What he probably meant was that a scummy, devious company would probably know that it's a bad idea to actually say that they checked your Facebook/LinkedIn/whatever account and you're "the wrong" race/religion/sexuality/whatever. Instead, they'll check for those things, find them, and send a letter saying, "Sorry you came in 10th place in their preliminary screening, which included a lot of highly qualified and experienced candidates".

Why linked in alone?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

With data consolidation all your public information can be collected and sold, for whatever reason.

Already credit reporting agencies do it.

Already all the arrest records and court filings are available for search

Already people are posting so much about their personal lives in twitter, facebook and other media.

Already companies are collecting tons of these information and collating them and are willing to sell them.

So far banks planning lend money and advertisers looking to find customers were the big customers. Corporate HR recruiting and retention is definitely in the market for info. Insurance fraud detectors, bail bondsman, debt collectors and alimoney deadbeat trackers all use these services to some degree or the other. Welcome to the brave new world, folks. Privacy is dead.

The words we use

[PopeRatzo]

"...may learn whether a LinkedIn member is a flight risk"

Get that? "Flight risk". So now we talk about workers in the same terms that we talk about fugitives or escaped slaves.

Re:The words we use

[CanHasDIY]

"...may learn whether a LinkedIn member is a flight risk"

Get that? "Flight risk". So now we talk about workers in the same terms that we talk about fugitives or escaped slaves.

Whaddayamean, "now?"

As far as I can recall as an employee, especially in big corporations, we've always been talked about like chattel.

Re:The words we use

[Dutch Gun]

Fine with me. I want my employers to think they might lose me to another company that offers better salary, benefits, and projects. Employers have always tried to persuade me from leaving when I found a better job. I need to learn what changes I need to make to my LinkedIn profile so it triggers warning bells, so I can hopefully get better salary increases without jumping to a new company. Well, assuming I actually worked for someone else. It doesn't matter for the self-employed.

I've never understood why people are concerned about using LinkedIn. I use it myself without any real concerns. To me, there are two primary reasons for its existence. First, it's a convenient way for me to keep my professional contacts up to date. Second, it's a way to keep my resume online in a place recruiters know where to find it.

Privacy doesn't really enter into this equation. Go ahead, corporations and head-hunters, data-mine the crap out of my information if you want to. I know that data is valuable to you, and I figure that's a fair trade for the benefits it gives me. That's why it's there in a public place, for all the world to find. LinkedIn, of course, gets their tights in a wad because others are slurping up the public data they're hosting, but it doesn't really affect me at all.

Translation

[thomn8r]

LinkedIn is bitching because other companies are slurping - for free - the personal information that LinkedIn collects - for free.

No need for HiQ or LinkedIn

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Like many companies, the one I work for monitors their employees' internet usage. One thing they track is employees hitting job listing sites during work hours. No linkedIn or HiQ or anyone else involved. How hard can it be?

In fact, it's a well-known trick in my company: if you want a quick raise, hit those sites regularly at lunch time, even if you're happy with your job and your salary. Do that for a while, and HR eventually calls you to propose you a better pay package - as if they magically knew you're not completely happy with your current conditions. I've had two pay raises that way, without lifting a finger :)

Re:No need for HiQ or LinkedIn

[MMC Monster]

Like many companies, the one I work for monitors their employees' internet usage. One thing they track is employees hitting job listing sites during work hours. No linkedIn or HiQ or anyone else involved. How hard can it be?

In fact, it's a well-known trick in my company: if you want a quick raise, hit those sites regularly at lunch time, even if you're happy with your job and your salary. Do that for a while, and HR eventually calls you to propose you a better pay package - as if they magically knew you're not completely happy with your current conditions. I've had two pay raises that way, without lifting a finger :)

Interesting.

A friend of mine told me that their employer blocked access to the job sites at the router level, forcing people to use their phone minutes. When he complained to IT, the IT guy told him it was a service to the employees so that management wouldn't bother them because they were looking for other jobs.

Rare outbreak of common sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

...to punish hiQ for accessing publicly available data." The judge warned such an interpretation "could profoundly impact open access to the internet."

Huh. This judge actually thought about it before doing something idiotic involving the internet. If you can get to something just by pointing your browser (or curl!) there, then it's publicly published and you can't expect someone else not to see it just because that might be at odds with your business model.

If you don't want your data to show up on LinkedIn, don't put it there. If you do want it, then go ahead, but don't complain when people see what you put online for the world to see. That's the whole point of the web.

Good for Employees?

[Jfetjunky]

I mean, unless you work for a soul-less corporation who will preemptively can you because you are a "flight risk", how's this bad for employees? If you truly are a good performer or marketable, sounds like this will just make companies step up if they want to keep you around (if they choose to use it, which they obviously don't have to).

Re:Good for Employees?

[ISoldat53]

I used to encourage the people in my group to maintain a current CV. Of course, that was when the company was taking a nose dive.

Re:Good for Employees?

[bobbied]

It's a fools errand to try and keep an employee who has started looking for other work, even if they seem irreplaceable. There is little the employer can do to stop the move. Chances are employees who are looking to leave, will, regardless of what you do. Best you can do is assist the employee with a smooth transition and hopefully get them to honestly tell you why they are making the choice to leave.

It's also a bad idea for an employee to make ANY obvious moves about their desire to leave. Don't tell anybody that would put it in the rumor mill either. Be professional and give notice... NEVER burn the bridge. It's a small world.

Re:Good for Employees?

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's usable as a meta-analysis of various insider corporate information. As middle and upper management update their resumes before a corporate layoff or merger is announced, it can also indicate which levels of a company have been informed of the upcoming changes in personnel.

Re:Good for Employees?

[datavirtue]

Also, if one of your solid people leave they can suck away a few others or the others just don't like working there anymore because that person was holding shit together on a social and operational level.

How to prevent my data being used against me

[jtalle]

I just closed my LinkedIn account, because of this article.