At its core, every website or social media platform has been built for a specific purpose. For example, LinkedIn started as a platform for professional networking but has turned into a job-search network. Today, it has a membership of 810MM users across 200 countries. Furthermore, it has over 20 million jobs posted globally by 2.8MM recruiters. However, LinkedIn may not be the best tool in the upcoming Web 3 revolution despite its added benefits.
Given that social media has become a phenomenon in Web 2.0, the future will undoubtedly change with the personalization of the internet with Web 3.0. Like the COVID-19 pandemic brought around a revolution of how we work, recruitment will also be getting its much-awaited new-do that helps remote work become the more prevailing norm of professionals. So does that mean your job search will get easier or more difficult? It's time to find out!
Until today, most of us are still using and conversing with Web 2.0, wherein social media platforms play the most prominent role in recruitment. However, with the arrival of Web 3.0, the game is set to change since the entire internet will be personalized for each individual.
Until now, LinkedIn was helping in secondary level recruiting by providing access to a talent pool that is not actively looking for work but is open to new opportunities for the right employers. However, with Web 3.0, you get the following benefits:
In 2022, it is a highly debatable statement that you can get by without a LinkedIn profile. However, there are two sides to a coin. The reasons that you do need a LinkedIn profile are:
However, some have not benefited from any of these metrics. For these people, having a LinkedIn profile is not as important. The reasons for not needing a LinkedIn profile are:
While most individuals prefer to create an account, many still choose to strike the middle ground by creating a profile and not using or maintaining it.
With Web 2.0, LinkedIn saw its biggest boom with its revenue growing by 37% YoY, acquisition by Microsoft, and user base growth to a staggering figure of 810MM. However, with the introduction of Web 3.0, LinkedIn is starting to see a slowdown. The following are the ways it was effective with Web 2.0:
The internal job board of LinkedIn has become one of the go-to mediums to stay updated about the job market trends, vacancies, and success stories. It gave way for recruiters to get in touch with job seekers, but nothing more than that.
With the introduction of LinkedIn learning, most first-time learners and freshers started to enroll in courses. However, the courses were pretty introductory, and few innovative ways to upskill.
With Web 2.0, LinkedIn was limited to working only as a networking platform or a social media platform for professionals. There were no other functionalities that it offered.
SEO has become a critical factor in ranking on Google. LinkedIn profiles are automatically optimized for the profile holder's name to be discoverable on Google.
The majority of the websites and experiences online are currently running Web 2.0. However, to stay relevant to the users, they need to be upgraded to Web 3.0. To do that, you would require a significant investment of time and resources in the following areas:
All of the above endeavors can skyrocket the costs with little to no ROI in terms of engagement. This is because upgrades in the architecture result in downtime and can cause the customers to leave the website altogether. And even after the changes go live, heavier elements on the Web can cause the page load time to increase, further aggravating the website's bounce rate.
However, all is not lost as ML and AI is slowly finding their way into the underlying algorithms of most platforms. That being said, the looming risk of privacy and personal data access also increases since personalization needs access to the user's contact details, browsing history, and even personal details.
At its core, Web 3.0 is made for making the entire Web experience more interactive, value-adding, sensitive, and personalized to cater to the changing norms of the industry. Many new companies have already started their migration to the Web 3.0 experience. However, there are still many that have to adopt it. Especially those in the field of recruitment. The following is how Web 3.0 will affect the employment industry in the future:
The Great Resignation in the U.S.A. was just one instance where people left their older jobs due to the culture and values of the company. Most of these were a build-up of many years where employers constantly exploited jobseekers for more work on lesser wages.
Web 3.0 is about giving a more inclusive and supportive environment to work in the organization. People also want more autonomy in their personal and professional lives, which is the aim of Web 3.0. So, overall, it promotes an employee-centric environment.
Often confused with the gig economy, the freelance economy gives the employee more control about what work they do and when they do it. Instead of having a single linear employer for multiple projects, people can work with various organizations.
Furthermore, it allows the user to control the kind of work they want to undertake and when they want to do it. Owing to Web 3.0, freelancers can earn stablecoins, tokens, or blockchain currencies as part of their remuneration, which opens up the arena to new possibilities.
Many organizations dub change “restructuring,” which is often about lay-offs to reduce costs and increase gross margins for the management and BOD. However, with Web 3.0, collaboration is a vital part of the process, which spreads across the organization on all levels.
Instead of lay-offs and people losing their jobs, it allows them to improve, adapt to newer processes to become more valuable assets, and grow professionally.
With Web 3.0, the older model of linear study and then work at a given point in time can rest. Instead, the newer model that many companies have started to adopt is learn-to-rich or learn-and-earn programs. In these, learners are given incentives, tokens, or grants to learn new skills.
To take it further, many companies are adopting this method to encourage these learners to teach others about their skills. This helps educational organizations to grow their user base with better retention and garner new users at the same time.
So, Web 3.0 is not about reducing your chances of recruitment but about increasing them. It provides a fundamental change in how employment is done today and more value-adding to the user.
Despite its apparent benefits, with the introduction of Web 3.0, LinkedIn will lose its dominance as the best source to get jobs. The Web 3.0 framework will utilize tools like Intelligent search engines, semantic forums, virtual labs, and other decentralized resources to provide customized results.
So, accepting Web 3.0 as the next revolution of the Web is ideal; the faster, the better, as early adopters will get some added benefits like the early adopters of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
