In Its Acquisition of Careerify, LinkedIn Chases Big Data

Once again, LinkedIn has made an acquisition to grow its big data recruiting business. This time it’s Careerify that has been absorbed.
“Big data” is a general term for very large and complex data sets that can be subjected to predictive analytics, or other methods, to mine value from it. In the case of LinkedIn, this “value” is information about how employers and employees can link up at the speed of the digital age.
The announcement was made this morning on LinkedIn by Careerify Founder and CEO, Harpaul Sambhi. Careerify was founded during the Great Recession with the bold mission “to eradicate unemployment globally while making our clients more profitable and strategic,” writes Sambhi.
Careerify worked towards its mission by developing a “referral solution that looked at open jobs within an organization and scanned its employees’ connections on social networks in real-time to pinpoint the perfect candidate,” writes Sambhi.
Related Story: 3 reasons that prove your business needs to utilize big data
According to Tech Crunch, Careerify solved a common problem: “... when job openings come up at your office, and you get that email asking if you have anyone to refer as a potential candidate, you may be too busy to answer, or just unable to think of anyone suitable. The software from Careerify essentially automates that process …”
In his statement, Sambhi suggests that it joined LinkedIn to better fulfill its original mission: “We decided to join LinkedIn due to what we lacked – massive scale. More than 30,000 companies across the globe leverage LinkedIn for recruitment, and with more than 347 million members, LinkedIn offers an opportunity to make a much larger impact on job seeking and hiring.”
Tech Crunch posits that for LinkedIn, it was Careerify’s data it was after: “The referral software developed by Careerify fits right into LinkedIn’s bigger strategy as a business, which parses and crunches data that people input into their profiles (or is otherwise associated with them) to come up with synergies with other users, potential jobs and other professional connections.”
Related Story: LinkedIn for the Next Generation