UPDATE! What LinkedIn's New Commercial Use Restriction Means for Me

UPDATE: On Saturday, I reached out to several people I know at LinkedIn and connected with a few new people--and had a very quick and thoughtful response to this concern. Please scroll the the bottom of this post for the update.

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL POST: I had heard about LinkedIn's new restriction on the number of searches people can run on the site, but for some reason, I didn't think I would be affected by it. I am a very heavy LinkedIn user and proponent--and have been called a LinkedIn "evangelist" because I have introduced so many people to it--but I do not use LinkedIn for commercial reasons, at least I didn't think so. Also, it sounded like the limits were really meant for recruiters who are trying to find candidates for jobs, who might be doing a hundred searches a day or more. I suppose it makes sense to have a restriction, for instance, on third-party staffing firms that are earning a commission on their placements. Also, the limit sounded like it would be pretty high. Well, I was wrong.

Just yesterday, I hit the limit. (And by the way, I didn't see any "progress bar" to warn me I was getting there.)

Why does it matter? This new limit has serious ramifications for people like me, who are using LinkedIn specifically for non-profit, educational purposes. Let me explain.

When I use LinkedIn, I am almost always doing one of two things:

1. Sitting in front of a student--or often, a room full of students--explaining how to used the Advanced Search feature of LinkedIn to find alumni of their school so they can find mentors, arrange informational interviews, and conduct research about the skills needed in their future careers. Sometimes, I will help them identify target future employers; I will show them how to leverage groups, etc. I also show them, in detail, how to use Boolean search to identify people in extremely specific niche fields so they can find out which employers are likely to hire them, or how to find alumni who have made similar career transitions (for example, equity researchers who became hospital administrators and are also alumni of our school). I have spoken on the national and international level about how students and career services professionals can use LinkedIn for student-alumni engagement. I probably see at least 5 students per day, and use LinkedIn in just about every counseling session; I probably show students 3-4 searches each, so I'd guess I might run up to 25 or 30 searches per day, max.

This, to me, is a very clearly nonprofit and educational purpose--NOT a commercial use. In fact, I am only helping the LinkedIn company by encouraging many, many new users to leverage the site.

But now, I can't do that. My search results are limited to only the first 3 hits when I'm sitting in front of a student. My students will see that LinkedIn is limited. The students will fear they have to spend $30+ per month or more to make the site work. It looks like I'm selling something to them--which I am not. I can no longer truly demonstrate the value of LinkedIn to thousands of students, unless I pay for the commercial use fees.

2. I am looking to connect to recruiters who would be interested in recruiting my students for jobs. Again, I don't make a commission on the jobs students get, obviously. I don't have a quota to meet for job placements... my school doesn't receive funding based on the jobs students get. If anything, the university incurs a cost to help students get jobs, by having to pay for career services staff and resources. Gainful employment is part of what students expect to gain from their education. There is no actual commercial relationship between the university and the employer here. I am just trying to help my students get jobs. Again, a non-commercial use.

So, why don't I ask my school to pay for my account to be upgraded? Well, I probably could. But it would cost:

• $576 PER YEAR for "business plus"
• $1,199 per year for "recruiter lite" or
• $799 for "sales navigator"

I don't know if LinkedIn is aware of this, but university career services offices typically do not have lots of extra cash lying around. This is especially true of career services offices at schools that are focused on public health, public affairs, social work, nonprofit management; or community colleges, state-funded/public schools etc. The above fees are NOT chump change for us; they could be a significant part of a yearly budget, one we have not planned for (according to NACE, for smaller colleges, the average career services operating budget is about $14,400 per year, meaning "recruiter lite" would cost over 8% of their entire yearly budget). The fees will also have a serious disparate impact on schools with the most limited budgets--schools which are also often serving the students who might need the most help finding jobs, like community colleges. Similarly, this commercial use restriction will impact those working in other workforce development organizations, like organizations helping people with disabilities or people who are unemployed to find jobs. We can no longer as easily find the recruiters who will hire our students or clients.

I'd like to prevail on the senior leaders of LinkedIn.com to consider creating a fee waiver application process to create a free option for the commercial use restriction, for individuals working in nonprofit organizations or educational institutions who are obviously using LinkedIn for a non-commercial use. LinkedIn already offers various options and resources for nonprofits and universities. Why not offer a special waiver for career services professionals so we can actually use LinkedIn to help students and others find employment?

THE UPDATE:

I wrote this post on Sat., Feb. 21, and sent it to several people I'm connected with who work at LinkedIn. By Sunday, I had already heard from 2 people at LinkedIn, and by Tuesday evening, I had heard from 4 senior-level people and was on the phone with the person in charge of the LinkedIn for Education program.

I have been truly impressed with the speed, professionalism, and thoughtfulness of the representatives I’ve spoken with at the LinkedIn company. They were very concerned and interested to learn about this “use case” and are currently in discussions internally to look at what possible solutions might be created. If there are any further updates, I’m sure they/I will pass them along. To make an entirely new program specifically for a relatively small population of LinkedIn users is a significant policy change for them and it might take them time to come to a resolution... however, I am satisfied that the concerns we have have been heard, loud and clear.

In the meantime, they shared several suggestions for working with the existing platform:

1. Note that the search limit will reset on a monthly basis, so the limitation will be lifted every month.
2. There are several search tools that are not impacted by the search limit, including linkedin.com/alumni, the Field of Study Explorer (https://www.linkedin.com/edu/fos), job postings, company pages etc., which can allow for many of the same advanced searches as the main search page.
3. You can request a free upgrade for one month.
4. You can ask a student to log in to his/her account while in a session with you, and walk through the search terms with them.
5. If there is additional feedback to share with LinkedIn, they are glad to hear it directly by clicking the Feedback link on the bottom of most LinkedIn pages.

Hopefully, the above options will be helpful to most people working in career services and we can provide additional feedback using the Feedback mechanism for the company. I am looking forward to hearing about future developments, and I am mainly glad that they have listened to this concern.