LinkedIn has grown to become the biggest threat to headhunters.

Absrtact: Andrew Hill Wen, author of the FT's March 2013 website, Andrewshire that LinkedIn has grown to be the biggest threat to headhunters, and that traditional headhunters could suffer devastating blows. The article sparked a huge controversy, followed by Silicon Valley veteran

Andrew Andrew Hill, a March 2013 ft website writer, Wen that LinkedIn has grown to be the biggest threat to headhunters, and that traditional headhunters could suffer devastating blows. The article caused great controversy, followed by Silicon Valley senior HR and talent recruitment experts, electric vehicle company Tesla Motors senior talent Advisor Qi wrote the text to refute this view: In a business ecological network system, talent, headhunting and enterprise are interdependent and mutually necessary components, indispensable. The development of Internet technology will not subvert the headhunting industry, it will only help headhunting consultants to better achieve this goal.

At the same time, job hunting network CEO Dako Bin published Weibo refuted the absurdity of subversion: 1, headhunting is a professional service is not only information interaction, of course, only rely on information to live headhunting will die; 2, job seekers need professional referral and analysis guidance, but also to negotiate salary, the internet is uncertain; 3, the Human society of China, meet the phone more directly, The internet can only be a tool. As the founder of the domestic mobile recruitment innovator, I was also repeatedly asked: from the recruitment site, to social networking talent Exchange platform, to the search company's mobile client, its evolution of the core essence of what? My point of view is slightly different from the Zhang Dai two-bit: with the introduction of new Internet technologies and business models, Be overturned is not headhunting, but a headhunting company, just as the self-employed and not by the electricity business subversion, they just moved to Taobao to play. The process of recruiting industry informatization is actually a process of business model evolution, in short, the headhunting industry is turning from Enterprise recruitment outsourcing to enterprise recruiting crowdsourcing.

Or crowdsourcing? Has the package penetrated into the recruiting industry? Is it alarmist or is it a certainty? To answer the question, we need to revisit the history of the rise of crowdsourcing, and examine a number of crowdsourcing cases. Then we can try to answer: is the rise of the crowdsourcing really irresistible? Crowdsourcing meets the key needs of those enterprises? is the arrival of the tide of the pack like an angel coming or is it like being bewitched by the devil?

Gartner Technical Trend Curve (click to view larger image)

In the Gartner Curve released last year, Gartner, one of the most famous consulting firms in the United States, lists technology trends that are at the peak of the global development, including mobile web apps (applications), social profiling (Social Analytics), large data, Cloud BPM, database Platform as service (DB Platform as a service, or Dbpaas), also includes crowdsourcing (crowdsourcing).

The term "crowdsourcing" was officially published in the 2006 issue of Wired Magazine's June, when Jeff Howe, editor of the magazine, first elaborated on the concept of crowdsourcing: a new business model in which companies use the Internet to distribute jobs, discover ideas or solve technical problems. Then Eric von Hippel, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, offered theoretical support. He pointed out that an enterprise survey showed that in the profit growth of contemporary enterprises, technology innovation factor accounted for 40%, resource factor accounted for 20%, per capita capital increase factor accounted for 15%, the factor of scale economy accounted for 13%, the increase of labor quality accounted for 12%. In the past, economies of scale and the increase in per capita capital were thought to be the masters of profit creation. But at present, they are both the sum of only 28%, and the innovation and the improvement of the quality of the workers accounted for 52%! This is the world economy we face, this is the state of our competitors business.

Crowdsourcing formally, after a few years (2006-so far), crowdsourcing, like a wave, sweeping many industries, and praise. See examples:

The first implementation of the crowdsourcing "Innovation Center" InnoCentive website was founded in 2001 by the pharmaceutical manufacturers Lilly company funding, has now become a chemical and biological field of important research and development supply and demand network platform. "Innovation Center" has gathered more than 90,000 scientific research personnel, including Boeing, DuPont and Procter and Gamble world-renowned multinational companies, Procter and Gamble Company is "Innovation Center" one of the earliest enterprise users. The company introduced the "Innovation Center" model, the company's external innovation ratio from the original 15% to 50%, research and development capacity increased by 60%. Bao-gu currently has more than 9,000 research and development staff, and the perimeter network research and development staff reached 1.5 million people.

Then Wikipedia's birth was the first of the most lethal and sophisticated non-commercial crowdsourcing known as Internet content. As of January 2012, the English version of Wikipedia has created 3.85 million entries, with more than 21 million entries in the world's 282 languages, with more than 32 million registered users and more than 1.2 billion editor-in-chief. Wikipedia ranks fifth on the top 50 websites in the world and is the only one that is run by a non-profit organization. Compared to other commercial sites, Wikipedia has a monthly average of 19 billion page views, while its operating budget costs far less than other sites.

The voice of suspicion: Wikipedia has so far not commercialized, but relies on the enthusiasm of many participants to support it-both in its content and in its operating capital. Wikipedia co-founder Wales clarified that Wikipedia is not a crowdsourcing model that lures free labor, and that users enjoy the pleasure of contributing content.

More cases:

Public package map Waze. In 2012, a total of 36 million users used the Waze application to navigate, traveling 9.66 billion km and sharing 90 million user reports. In 2012, map editors from 110 countries, a total of 65,000, made 500 million edits to the map and updated 1.7 million map information that had changed. Data show that nearly 70% of the map problems detected by the system were solved within one months, and almost all the problems identified by the user could be dealt with within a week. As early as 2011, Waze received a total of 30 million dollars in investment from Kleiner and Li Ka-shing's Victoria Harbour investment.

Weddar: Social crowdsourcing weather report applications. The idea behind the app is simple: I want to know what the weather is like in a place, I'm more inclined to believe the locals ' real reports, and I can get in touch with people who report weather conditions to better prepare for clothes in advance. Users can log on to the app using their own Twitter or Facebook account. Then choose a weather condition that you think is appropriate (the application provides varying degrees of choice from heat to death to freezing to death), in addition to other descriptions such as clouds, rain, wind, etc. The weather conditions reported by everyone are displayed on the map in a cloud icon, and the weather condition only indicates the weather information within a few miles of its radius to make it more reliable. In addition, if you want to know more detailed information or want to contact the speaker, you can also click on the cloud icon to view specific information.

Tongal is a video advertising crowdsourcing platform that links businesses to writers, directors, actors, social media experts, and other content creators. In this video advertisement crowdsourcing platform, the big brand puts forward "the innovation demand", the community member uses their innovation advertisement idea to carry on the competition, the winner may obtain the Bounty, the big brand has harvested a very innovative advertisement. The cost of this process is low, it is the previous advertising photography model can not match. At present, there are customers, Lego, McDonald's and other enterprises settled in Tongal. Tongal a 15 million dollar venture in a private equity firm.

TOP10, a london-based start-up company, is making a full online real-time top 10 ranking platform by analyzing the mass of social data. People always want to refer to the list of information, TOP10 is a way to make use of resource-rich and low-cost public resources, the use of crowdsourcing methods to make the list production simple and fast. To see the TOP10 rankings, users first create their own list of rankings. After that, TOP10 will provide the appropriate category rankings according to the user's theme selection. The rankings are based on data from other users.

Gigwalk's temporary mission crowdsourcing platform completed a 6 million dollar a round of financing in October 12. Starting in 2011, Microsoft assembled 100,000 people in 35 cities through Gigwalk, providing it with 3D panoramic images of merchants and restaurants, incorporating the Bing map data.

Australia Melbourne website 99designs. The 99designs role is a middleman between a client company and a graphic designer. On the website, from the customer's web design, logo design and packaging design projects as a "competition" displayed on the Web page, designers do not need to apply for the project in advance, only to the customized works for customers directly submitted to the site, you can participate in the competition, the company decided to win the work. The company claims that more than three years into the line, has successfully accepted 48,000 graphic design projects, customers include some well-known brands such as Adidas, disco network (DISH receptacle) and hundreds of small enterprises. Revenue has exceeded 12 million dollars, the company maintained a 10% rapid growth monthly, and opened an office in San Francisco, responsible for business development and marketing. The critical point: the idea that designers compete for a prize with thousands of other designers through a "contest" is a "huge gamble". 99designs is the same thing as Wal-Mart. This is a "time and energy invested, but no income security" work.

Getty images A picture of the "911" terrorist attack. This website collects many photos and authorizes others to use them.

iStockPhoto was originally a free picture sharing and Exchange site, each picture price only between 1 dollars to 5 U.S. dollars (size, pixel very large picture price is not more than 40 U.S. dollars). It offers so cheap a picture that it fully benefits from the contributions of its 22,000 amateur photographers, whose photos are paid dozens of cents each time they are used. iStockPhoto and other similar crowdsourcing pictures have once caused panic among large professional photo pictures. In February 2006, Getty Pictures (Getty Images), which accounted for 30% of global market share, bought istockphoto at a price of $50 million. The monthly growth rate of istockphoto income reached 14% per cent, and the number of images purchased in 2006 reached 10 million times--several times the number of expensive professional pictures sold by Getty. iStockPhoto's big customers not only have a lot of small design companies, but also large companies and institutions such as IBM, United Way. The voice of criticism: Professional photographer Harmel "digital cameras can make it easy to realize that you've taken a bad picture, but it takes talent, sweat, and years of devotion to leave behind a masterpiece." iStockPhoto does create a good atmosphere for people to understand photography, but it also creates a system for exploiting contributors ... Is it that the democratic forces of the market are working, or are they letting some people raise their pockets by exploiting the public?

Gospotcheck is an application that allows brand makers to create tasks, consumers perform tasks, and get paid. For the brand is very important information: my product is not placed in the right position, the number of places, how much price. Brand makers can create these tasks on Gospotcheck. The task of the implementation of the crowdsourcing model, mainly consumer groups, such as I need to go to the supermarket today, I can see if there is a task to do, if there is a task, I can take photos of the way to feedback to Gospotcheck. Why would the user be willing to perform these tasks? The gaming model (gamification) played a crucial role, and the brand chamber paid the users because it was clearly more costly for them to arrange for other people to get the information. Finally, Gospotcheck will pass on their own analysis platform to the acquisition of data real-time transfer to the brand business. Gospotcheck CEO Matt Talbot says the biggest challenge in the running process is how to manage the data effectively-linking the product to the consumer and the vendor correctly. After accumulating the data, Gospotcheck can also pack it up and sell it to research institutions that consume behavioral trends.

Wireless (threadless) T-shirts in Chicago, USA, use crowdsourcing to design new T-shirts. The company's Web site receives hundreds designs from amateur or professional artists every week. Then they put the design on the site and let the user grade. 4 to 6 of the highest-scoring T-shirts are designed to be made every week, but whether they can be produced or not, the company receives enough bookings-only a certain number of T-shirts will be formally discharged into the production line. The wireless T-shirts are awarded the highest-scoring designer medals and 2000 dollar bonuses each week. The wireless t-shirt also prints the designer's name on the logo of each t-shirt. Wireless T-shirts Save the cost of hiring a designer, and it only produces products that get enough points and reservations.

Marketocracy, a community of financial services, with 60,000 online stock traders, tracking the top 100 stocks and providing an investment strategy, has a 11-quarter index over standard Poole in the past 17 quarters.

Other cases from the scale of the enterprise:

Amazon's crowdsourcing mission platform, mechanical Turk, is one of the most mature crowdsourcing models. Mechanical Turk is mainly used to trade "labor". The task submitter can initiate a task on the platform, inviting individual users to participate in the completion and paying for small amounts of compensation. For example, ask a personal user to choose the best match for a business or fill out a simple questionnaire. Then he will pay for his Amazon account. Amazon describes such services as "artificial artificial intelligence".

The translation center of Twitter. Twitter has long supported translations based on crowdsourcing technology, providing a platform for volunteering other language services. With nearly five months of development in crowdsourcing technology, the new Catalan and Ukrainian languages have been added today, and Twitter has reached 30.

Japan's characteristic furniture maker has no Muji (Muji). Through its community website muji.net, no printing products from the vast number of consumers to collect a variety of novel, avantgarde product ideas, the participation of consumers more than 500,000 people. Then no printing products let the site members of the various design ratings, of which the highest score of the idea was given to the company's professional designers, by their creative into reality. No printing products through the booking list to test market acceptance, rather than traditional focus groups, market research and other methods. The strategy of Muji is very simple, as long as the receipt of 300 booking form, the product immediately into production.

Ikea: By hosting the "Gifted Design" contest to attract customers to the design of the multimedia Home program, the winners will receive a 2500 euro reward, whose work will be put into production and market.

The Tate of Britain (Tate Britain), with 1500-2000 years of rich artwork, allows visitors to write a description of the exhibits themselves, the selected will be made into a label on display next to the artwork.

Look at the case from China:

Headhunting is the innovator of the mobile internet age crowdsourcing recruitment. It uses the enterprise reward recruitment way, in many network platforms (including proprietary mobile applications, micro-letter, micro-blog, cooperative website) to release a reward position, encourage users to recommend or apply for a recommendation. Products on the line five months, has achieved millions of renminbi revenue and completed the first round of tens of millions of levels of financing. Criticism of The voice: headhunting is a highly specialized industry, everyone headhunting "game" of the operating process can not produce a real effective recommendation, even if a large amount of recommendations, a large amount of talent screening is also impossible to complete the task.

Easy to use the car. It's a simple model: Users submit demand via call center or app to easy to use car, easy to use the car will need to import hundreds of upstream car rental companies, in a minute to reply whether the order can be received, easy to use the car according to the company rating and service satisfaction, select a car rental company to complete the order, and get a split. Easy to use the vehicle itself does not own vehicles and drivers.

The micro-errand is a temporary mission crowdsourcing platform that helps users develop the value of fragmented time, and its business model is to help companies complete research, control, and accurate branding interactions through crowdsourcing. These research tasks include retail survey, consumer research, paid advertising, mystery customers, trial (product or service), promotions at designated locations, etc. It is reported that the micro-errand has won the first round of capital investment in the middle.

There are Sogou input method, pig eight ring net, beginning Chinese network, using crowdsourcing thinking and form, produced tens of thousands of skin design & thesaurus, or more than 7 million of the "online workers", or hundreds of millions of of the revenue.

There are numerous examples of global crowdsourcing. In these cases, with the help of crowdsourcing, some have acquired a huge amount of UGC content, some have completed huge financing, and some have drastically reduced costs. Crowdsourcing to the core needs of enterprises to meet the obvious, including: 1. Reduce the cost of production-employing but not dependant. 2. Enhance the core competitiveness-innovation center. 3. Leading the market--consumer design

Of course, there are a large number of crowdsourcing platform failure cases, listed on the public package of questions roughly as follows: Crowdsourcing is only management, not a real model, crowdsourcing mode is difficult to have a business model should have the stability, continuity, expansion; The collective wisdom is overrated, to the user is not transparent, is the public packet mode is difficult to implement a big resistance; Crowdsourcing difficult to exist independently, need to rely on a larger, there are other sources of income platform, community to condense users, otherwise it is impossible to let them "by the way" to complete the crowdsourcing task.

However, the problem is whether you are optimistic or not optimistic, the obvious fact is that the public package has risen, and can not be stopped, in fact, all of the above questions are actually "crowdsourcing" the applicability of the problem. Can crowdsourcing be a panacea? Is it possible to subvert an industry or simply change the existing old organizational structure in the industry? These questions are the answers. In the list of industries covered by successful cases, we have seen: NGOs, map companies, weather forecasters, design companies, photo companies, Web literature, input methods, T-shirts manufacturers, translators, car rentals ... and, of course, headhunters. Will the list continue to expand? What are the existing business models that will be completely overturned? whose interests will be violated? Those industry practitioners will get higher revenge through crowdsourcing?

If you are still struggling: is the package a panacea for the world or a passionate aphrodisiac? I think maybe you're out.