Tag: LinkedIn

The post was deleted following uproar

A Deloitte employee has been dismissed after writing a LinkedIn post in which he praised Adolf Hitler’s “charismatic qualities” and suggested that professionals could learn from him. Neerabh Mehrotra, an Associate Director in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory department, shared a “Friday Inspiration” post in which he referenced a book called “The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler” by historian Laurence Rees. However, Mehrotra misinterpreted the book’s context.

In his post, Mehrotra lauded Hitler’s traits as a “charismatic visionary” and a “massive action taker.” He listed characteristics such as being a magnetic speaker, extremely confident, and highly intellectual. Shockingly, he concluded the post with the phrase “Heil Hitler!” accompanied by a black and white image of Nazi party members performing the Sieg Heil salute in front of Hitler. The post was swiftly deleted following backlash.

Mehrotra later issued an apology, claiming that he had no intention to hurt anyone’s feelings but admitted to the need for greater care in his wording. He emphasised that his views were personal and unrelated to his race, religion, country, or current and past affiliations with organisations.

Deloitte has confirmed that Mehrotra is no longer employed with the company. A spokesperson stated that his social media views were inconsistent with the firm’s shared values and violated internal policies.

While this incident raises questions about appropriate social media conduct, particularly for employees, it should be evident to all that praising Adolf Hitler is wholly inappropriate. Katie Johnston, a Senior Associate at law firm Lewis Silkin, advises caution when using personal social media accounts. She highlights the potential for disciplinary action or even dismissal if an employer deems a post inappropriate or damaging to their reputation. Employers are more likely to succeed in justifying lawful dismissal if the employee’s public account is connected to the employer in some way.

To prevent such issues, Johnston suggests implementing a comprehensive social media policy that clearly outlines acceptable boundaries for staff use, including personal use outside of working hours. A well-defined policy can provide examples of posts that cross the line and indicate that misuse of social media may lead to immediate dismissal for gross misconduct.

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LinkedIn issued a cease-and-desist letter to hiQ in 2017

LinkedIn has announced a win in a six-year lawsuit against hiQ Labs Inc., a now dormant company that had scraped LinkedIn data.

hiQ, which was founded in 2012, went dormant by 2019 after being unable to find further investors and the loss of major clients, according to court records.

hiQ’s products included “Keeper,” designed to analyze and predict the retention risks for the employees of a given employer and indicate which employees were at greatest risk of being recruited away, according to court documents. hiQ’s other product, “Skill Mapper,” aggregated and summarized the skills possessed by an employer’s workforce by analyzing all of the skills employees listed in their LinkedIn profiles, including from previous roles.

In its operations, hiQ attempted to reverse engineer LinkedIn’s systems to avoid detection by simulating human site-access behaviors, according to court documents. hiQ also hired independent contractors known as “turkers” to conduct quality assurance while logged in to LinkedIn by viewing and confirming hiQ customers’ employees’ identities manually. When LinkedIn’s defenses restricted the turkers’ real accounts, hiQ instructed them to create fake ones.

LinkedIn issued a cease-and-desist letter to hiQ in 2017.

Sara Wight, VP, Legal-litigation, Competition and Enforcement at LinkedIn, wrote in a post. “The court ruled that LinkedIn’s user agreement unambiguously prohibits scraping and the unauthorized use of scraped data as well as fake accounts, affirming LinkedIn’s legal positions against hiQ for the past six years. The court also found that hiQ knew for years that its actions violated our user agreement, and that LinkedIn is entitled to move forward with its claim that hiQ violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”

 

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Revenue for Microsoft as a whole rose 12% year-over-year to $51.9 billion

According to Microsoft Corp., LinkedIn revenue rose 29% in constant currency in the fiscal fourth quarter ended June 30, up 26% on a reported basis to $768 million. However, LinkedIn’s growth was lower than expected as revenue from its marketing solutions advertising business was impacted by a slowdown in advertising spend according to CFO Amy Hood.

LinkedIn’s year-over-year revenue growth in the upcoming first quarter is not forecast to match the fourth quarter’s growth.

Hood made further comment: “For LinkedIn, we expect continued strong engagement on the platform, although results will be impacted by the slowdown in advertising spend and hiring, resulting in low to mid-teens rev growth.”

However, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella noted engagement on LinkedIn remains strong.

Nadella said: “We once again saw record engagement among the more than 850 million members, a testament to how mission-critical the platform is to connect job seekers with jobs, learners with skills and marketeers with buyers.”

Revenue for Microsoft as a whole rose 12% year-over-year to $51.9 billion. In constant currency, the increase was 16%.

CNBC reported revenue fell short of guidance and was the slowest revenue growth since 2020.

Microsoft also noted it had employee severance expenses of $113 million in the quarter, excluding Russia. Separately, the company had scaled down its operations in Russia and recorded operating expenses of $126 million related to bad debt expense, asset impairments and severance.

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Effective communication with candidates can improve the hiring process

Skills and worker shortages are issues businesses continue to face but establishing effective communication during the recruitment process is a sure-fire way to increase recruiting efficiency.

In the US and many other parts of the world, employers are struggling to fill vacant positions. According to statistics from the National Association of Business (NABE), nearly half of American companies are short on workers.

Experts believe that communication apps can improve the hiring experience for recruiters and applicants. Unfortunately, many companies do not use communication apps in recruiting workers.

Globally, recruiting the right workers is now a herculean task for many employers. While some companies complain of receiving few applications, others say those who apply lack the requisite skills for the job.

The Importance of Effective Communication During the Hiring Process

Industry research has revealed that candidates preferred it when recruiters employ better communication during the application process. The most common communication channels for recruiters include phone calls, emails and text chats.

TALiNT International has put together a list of reasons highlighting why communication is important during the hiring process. Make your candidate feel like they belong, and chances are they won’t renege on offers or ghost you.

Benefits of effective communication during the hiring process include:

  • Saves time for the hiring teams and the candidates
  • Brings transparency into the hiring process
  • Gives positive experience to all the candidates
  • Prevents unnecessary communication between recruiters and candidates
  • Keep recruiters informed about job openings

Following on from benefits of solid communication. TALiNT International has compiled a list of the top communication apps that will help TA teams overcome communication issues that are inherent in recruiting process.

LinkedIn Recruiter

The LinkedIn Recruiter app enables companies to find the right candidates in record time. The app has communication features that let you contact candidates and schedule interviews through LinkedIn’s Inmail.

WhatsApp Business

The WhatsApp Business app provides a secure messaging channel for businesses to recruit candidates.

TextRecruit

TextRecruit is a text messaging-based app available on iOS, Android, Desktop, and web apps. TextRecruit has changed the way people communicate about job opportunities. The app allows recruiters to attract candidates, engage with existing talent and report on all recruiters to candidate text conversations.

TextUs

TextUs is another text messaging service provider that businesses can use to engage in real-time conversation with candidates.

JobAdder

The JobAdder app has agency panel management platforms that facilitate communication between recruiters and applicants. It also has a candidate matching tools that streamline the recruitment process and track the activities of the applicants.

Workable

The workable app, which operates on iOS and Android, helps companies of all sizes to hire at scale. The app enables hiring teams to collaborate in gathering feedback, assessing applicants and deciding on the best candidates. Workable has features that let you engage in bulk communication with candidates. Hiring teams can also create a structured interview process and schedule repetitive recruiting tasks and communication with candidates. This ensures that candidates have the same recruitment experience and go through the same evaluation for consistency.

 

Photo courtesy of Canva.com

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Recognised individuality is a key benefit for workers

According to research by LinkedIn, 86% of employers are planning to offer their staff flexible working opportunities and because of this, leaders are focussing on ensuring their workforce feels included, regardless of their work location. The research also revealed that, between September 2020 and September 2021, there has been an increase of 97% in remote jobs being advertised on the platform.

The study of more than 250 C-level executives in the UK revealed that as businesses look to offer hybrid (56%) and remote working (10%), leaders say their biggest concerns are that employees feel that working from home may result in their missing out on promotions or career decisions (35%) and that proximity bias may arise where leaders/ people favour employees who they regularly see (32%).

Out of sight, out of mind – Employees are concerned

A study of over 1,000 workers in the UK found that nearly half (44%) of workers believe that people who choose to work from the office are more likely to be favoured by bosses or senior management. Nearly 39% say that working from home may negatively impact their career because they get less in-person time with their superiors. A third of workers believe that being in the office is ultimately better for career progression.

Adam Hawkins, Head of Search & Staffing, EMEA, at LinkedIn, said: “It’s imperative that proximity bias doesn’t become an issue that impacts people’s careers. Ensuring everyone feels included at work, regardless of their location, is crucial to not only attracting and retaining great talent, but also creating cultures where people can truly thrive. Leaders must work closely with HR teams to facilitate the appropriate training and guidelines to ensure career progression is centred around performance, and not location.”

The belonging crisis

Similarly, research undertaken by Connectr, an HR tech platform, reveals that the pandemic has upended employees’ priorities with emotional support and a sense of belonging moving right to the top of the list of important workplace benefits.

Almost a quarter of workers now believe that having their individuality recognised is also important. This has more than doubled since February 2020. Other things employees are looking for in employers since the pandemic include being proud of the company they work for, having their opinions listened to, and being part of a supportive and inclusive team.

Millennials and Gen Z employees were found to be the driving force behind these trends.

Will Akerman, Founder and Managing Director at Connectr, commented: “The growing belonging crisis amongst British employees is going largely unnoticed, with many employers still failing to recognise the importance of building a sense of inclusion. In fact, the belonging crisis is 10 times bigger and twice as important than is being realised. If this isn’t addressed quickly, UK businesses are set to face a huge resourcing challenge which could be catastrophic for many who are still coping with financial impact of the pandemic.”

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Hiring teams find better ways to keep candidates engaged 

JobAdder, the global recruitment software provider has released a new integration with LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect (RSC) to improve hiring workflows, time to hire and the candidate experience – at a time when the war of talent is raging.  

The integration provides a seamless process for recruiters and candidates that connects users to the RSC platform and JobAdder without switching platforms.  

This functionality adds to JobAdder’s offering. It allows recruiters to find quality candidates quickly, know instantly which candidates from LinkedIn are already in their JobAdder account and engaged with, see all In Mail messages from both platforms in one place and cross-reference data from both sources. 

Rob Brodie, Head of Corporate Sales at JobAdder believes this new integration will speed up hiring processes at a crucial time for employers. He said: “With skills shortages rife, hiring managers need real time information quickly in order to fill resourcing needs and keep applicants engaged. The challenge for many is that information is often hosted in numerous locations – with communication going out via emails, LinkedIn, company applicant tracking systems and much more. By integrating LinkedIn RSC, we can help save recruiters time in shortlisting candidates, aid the nurturing of a database of high-quality candidates, maximise efficiency across hiring processes and enable hiring teams to continue using the tools they already value, all in one place. This not only improves efficiencies for employers, but also enables hirers to get to the best talent quickly – a critical benefit given the limited availability of top skills at the moment.” 

Adam Gregory, Senior Director, Talent and Learning Solutions at LinkedIn said: “We are delighted with the JobAdder integration into LinkedIn Recruiter. Businesses are looking to fill roles as quickly and effectively as possible, and this integration provides recruiters better visibility across the entire candidate process in a single view and can reduce placement time.” 

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Collaboration and communication are key skills  

According to new research from LinkedIn, 87% of UK business leaders stated that young workers have been plagued by a “developmental dip” because of long periods of time working from home during the pandemic.  

250 C-level executives in the UK (from companies with 1,000 employees and more and with an annual turnover of £250+ million) who were surveyed for the study, found that almost 30% of business leaders feel that onboarding from home has been a challenge for young employees. A further 42% of leaders believe that young people’s ability to build meaningful relationships with colleagues while working remotely has been difficult. 

Out of practice  

A complementary survey of young professionals showed that they agree. 69% of young people (aged 16 – 34) believe their professional learning experience has been impacted by the pandemic. More than half of those asked to return to offices feel their ability to make conversation at work has suffered, and 71% say they’ve forgotten how to conduct themselves in an office environment. 84% of young workers ultimately feel “out of practice” when it comes to office life, especially when it comes to giving presentations (29%) and speaking to customers and/ or clients (34%).  

Missing out 

Business leaders say the key development experiences that young people have missed out on during the pandemic include learning by “osmosis” from being around more experienced colleagues (36%), developing their essential soft skills (36%), and building professional networks (37%).  

Skills to succeed 

Business leaders believe that for hybrid working to be a success, collaboration (59%) and communication (57%) are the two most important skills employees need. Nearly half (49%) of leaders say working closely with experienced team members is the best way for young people to catch up and build these soft skills.  

Janine Chamberlin, UK Country Manager at LinkedIn, said:  It’s positive to see leaders recognise the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on young people as they consider their future workplace policies. To help young people develop the skills they need to succeed, companies must understand where the skills gaps are, introduce mentoring schemes and bolster learning experiences that cater for a hybrid workforce to help younger workers get back on track.”

Photo courtesy of Canva.com

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Demand for recruiters is rising exponentially across the UK and Europe, according to new data from LinkedIn, which had 6.8 times more recruiter roles on its platform in June 2021 than the same time last year.

The research from LinkedIn highlights several talent acquisition trends in the recruitment sector that are making it more difficult for staffing and talent solutions firms to find the quality and quantity of consultants they need. It found, for example, that fewer are hiring from outside the industry than in previous years so ‘they’re increasingly competing for the same narrow set of candidates’.

It found that the number hired from previous recruiting roles has almost doubled from 33% in 2020 to 59% in 2021, attributing this in part to redundancies last year and a preference in hiring those who need less training. “The current hiring pace makes it more challenging to hire outside of recruiting because it takes time to bring newbies up-to-speed with recruiting-specific hard skills,” said Erin Scruggs, LinkedIn’s senior director of talent acquisition.

Of those that are sourced from outside recruitment, the top roles were HR (35%) and sales (12%), including account managers, project managers, and customer service representatives.

Looking at incentives and key motivators for recruitment talent, the research found that work-life balance, compensation, and company culture were still most important, but job security increased to 21% as a priority followed by purposeful mission (up 19%), having influence over tasks and priorities (up 11%) and challenging work (up 9%).

“It’s positive to see that demand for recruiter roles is growing, a trend that we’re seeing around the world, and that demand has now surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the UK,” said Adam Hawkins, Head of Search and Staffing EMEA at LinkedIn. “After a particularly tough year, it’s perhaps unsurprising that job security is high on the priority list when recruiters consider new roles.”

With specialist consultants in such high demand, many of those made redundant or furloughed in 2020 have been tempted to start their own business. So are we likely to see a surge in staffing firms like the 46% spike in 2018 after nearly 8,500 new recruitment start-ups were registered at Companies House?

“A raft of talent tech solutions can help start-ups punch above their weight and it’s interesting to note from LinkedIn’s research that more want greater influence over their work, and perhaps more autonomy after a year and a half of working remotely,” said Alex Evans, Programme Director of TALiNT Partners and head of the PointSix network. “However, job security has increased as a priority for recruitment talent and work / life balance is hard to achieve as a startup founder. The best staffing and talent solutions firms to work for recognised by our TIARA programme this year have all invested in training, technology, brand and management to attract and retain recruiters – and prevent key people from becoming competitors.”

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Lucy Tarrant, managing director & solicitor of Cognitive Law

Pretty much every recruitment company I act for encourages its consultants to use social media to promote their business. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn; consultants seek out and make new contacts and connections as a fundamental part of their business activity on a daily basis. LinkedIn has even developed its Recruiter tool to capitalise on the way consultants now do business.

But what about if your consultant leaves? What happens post employment to all those LinkedIn contacts? Who owns what and what you can do to protect what you own?

When an employee leaves your company, LinkedIn could be a huge potential threat to you as your ex-employee can notify all their contacts at the same time of their new position, just by updating their profile. It would simply appear on their contacts’ LinkedIn news feed. There is no better or more immediate way for an ex-employee to simultaneously notify all their contacts of their new role, which could well be in direct competition with you.

Before the world of social media and networking sites such as LinkedIn existed, the position regarding ownership of a company’s contacts and databases was fairly straightforward. On the whole materials created during the course of employment were of a confidential nature and deemed to be the employer’s proprietary information. However, when it comes to contacts made via social media the position has not been so clear cut.

As with other social medial services, when an individual opens a LinkedIn account it requires them to enter into a contract with LinkedIn agreeing not to transfer ownership to any other person and to keep the password confidential. Your employee will therefore own the LinkedIn account and is not permitted to give ownership to you as their employer. The question is not therefore who owns the account, that’s clear – it’s your employee, but who owns the contacts. Are the contacts obtained during employment classed as confidential information owned by the employer? Or are they owned by the employee because it’s their account?

The first case in the UK to bring to the fore the risk of appropriation of company confidential information via online networking sites was Hays Specialist Recruitment (Holdings) Ltd and Ions [2008].

Ions was employed by Hays from 2001 to 2007, when he left to set up his own rival agency. He was suspected of using confidential information concerning clients and contacts copied during his employment from the social networking site, LinkedIn and breaching restrictive covenants in his contact of employment. Hays inspected Ions’ email account once he had left and found evidence that he had invited two of Hays’ clients to join his LinkedIn network and they had well-founded suspicions that there were more.

Hays sought an order from the High Court for pre-action disclosure of Ions’ entire database of, and communications with, business contacts made whilst employed by Hays. They claimed that this information was confidential. In response, and in relation to contacts he had made on LinkedIn, Ions argued that once the contact had accepted his invitation on LinkedIn it ceased to be confidential. The Court rejected this argument and ordered Ions to disclose all his LinkedIn business contacts as requested by Hays, plus all emails sent or received through his LinkedIn account from Hay’s computer network. The view taken by the Court was that even if the contacts were uploaded with the consent of Hays, such authorisation was likely to be limited for the purposes of employment.

In this case the law made a clear distinction between ownership of an account such as LinkedIn and ownership of the information within the account, the latter of which was retained by Hays.

Another similar and more recent case, albeit outside of recruitment, is Whitmar Publications Ltd v Gamage, Wright, Crawley and Earth Island Publishing Ltd [2013]. This looks not just at contacts made on LinkedIn but at Groups too.

The Defendants Gamage, Wright and Crawley left Whitmar Publications to pursue their own business – Earth Island Publishing Limited. In its case against them, Whitmar alleged that the individual Defendants had taken steps to compete against the company while still employed by it. Whitmar alleged that they had misused Whitmar’s confidential information, its database rights and breached their terms of employment. Within that confidential information fell LinkedIn Groups which had been managed by one or more of the individual Defendants.

In relation to the LinkedIn Groups, Whitmar claimed that whilst they had been managed by Wright on behalf of Whitmar during her employment, the Defendants had used the Groups for the benefit of their competing business (Earth Island) while still employed by Whitmar. Whitmar sought an order from the High Court for an interim injunction to prevent the Defendants from using, exploiting or divulging to any third party any of the information contained in these LinkedIn Groups.

The Court agreed that Whitmar had a strong case that the individual Defendants had been actively competing against Whitmar while still employed by it, in breach of the terms of their employment.  Further, the Court rejected Wright’s claim that the LinkedIn Groups were personal to her and merely a hobby. Wright was responsible for dealing with the LinkedIn Groups as part of her employment duties at Whitmar. The groups were operated for Whitmar’s benefit and promoted its business, as evidenced by the fact that Wright had used Whitmar’s computers to carry out her work on the LinkedIn Groups. The Court also agreed that information contained within the LinkedIn Groups appeared to have been used as the source of the email addresses used to publicize an Earth Island launch event.

Ultimately, the court granted an order requiring the Defendants to facilitate the exclusive access, management and control of the LinkedIn Groups to Whitmar. It ordered the Defendants not to access or do anything that would prevent Whitmar from accessing the Groups. The order prevented the Defendants from using, exploiting or divulging to any third party any of the information contained in the Groups. So we can see that the contents of Groups created by employees on LinkedIn during employment also amount to confidential information belonging to the employer.

The cases above demonstrate that as different online networks become more and more important to certain businesses, employers should make it clear to employees which LinkedIn and other social network resources, blogs and online forums are operated by the employees solely in the course of their employment; and to what extent the information in such accounts belongs to the employer, in contrast to what remains personally owned by the employee.

So what can you do to prevent your recruitment company from suffering like Hays or Whitmar? We have established that the law states that private contact information gained during the course of employment can constitute confidential information belonging to the employer, as opposed to general contact details available from the public domain cannot.

The best form of protection for an employer is to have clear provisions in its employment contracts and a Social Media Policy. Recruitment companies need to make it clear how their consultants should use such online tools in the course of their employment and implement clear policies that set out precisely what data they retain as their own property and confidential information.

Other provisions in the consultants’ employment contracts and the company’s Social Media Policy should include that all new LinkedIn contacts’ details will be uploaded to the company’s client database, that contacts made during the course of employment constitute Confidential Information belonging to the company, that the consultant must delete all LinkedIn contacts made as a result of their duties when they leave the company and that LinkedIn contacts cannot be used for the purpose of competing with the company. Those provisions can be reinforced in Job Descriptions that also state that an employee is to establish LinkedIn connections for the employer’s benefit.

Obviously none of this is fool proof and the cynics amongst you will recognise that even if all the provisions in the world are artfully crafted into employment contracts and handbooks there will always be a consultant who will flout them and run off with that data. That can’t be stopped. Unfortunately that will always be within human nature. What you can do though is make it a lot harder for the errant consultant to do that and a lot easier for you to stop them.

Cognitive Law’s solicitors fully utilise their wealth of experience gained working within the recruitment industry, and are well placed to assist if you think your Social Media Policy or Confidential Information provisions in your employment contracts require shoring up.

Cognitive Law T 0333 400 4499  lucy.tarrant@cognitivelaw.co.uk

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