LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with 70 million members worldwide, today announced that Ariel Eckstein has been named Managing Director of Hiring Solutions in Europe. The news comes as LinkedIn announced yesterday it had passed 4 million members in the UK, taking the proportion of UK professionals on LinkedIn to more than one third.
Working across LinkedIn’s current offices in Dublin, London and Amsterdam, Eckstein will be responsible for increasing the visibility of LinkedIn’s Talent Advantage suite (http://talent.linkedin.com/) for in-house recruitment teams and agencies throughout Europe, as well as expanding the LinkedIn Hiring Solutions team in across Europe.
An increasing number of major European organisations are turning to LinkedIn’s Talent Advantage tools to source new hires directly. LinkedIn makes it possible for companies to discover the right person for a role even if they may not be actively looking to change jobs, so vastly increasing the available talent pool to include ‘passive’ candidates. As a result, 50% of the Fortune 100 and 25% of the FTSE 100 are already recruiting talent using LinkedIn.
Before joining LinkedIn, Eckstein was Vice President of Business Expansion for AOL Europe where he led the strategic partnership, search, mobile and new markets business units. Prior to AOL, Eckstein was a Principal with the New York City Investment Fund, specialising in technology investments. He has also been Chief Operating Officer of software company Clickthings and Engagement Manager with Deloitte Consulting.
Speaking on his appointment, Eckstein commented: “LinkedIn is simultaneously redefining how people enhance their professional lives while becoming an increasingly valuable way for enterprises to source and attract talent. It is a great time to be joining a business with such growth potential. My aim is to show recruitment professionals how they can gain the most from LinkedIn, reducing the cost and time to hire for top talent.”
Kevin Eyres, Managing Director, LinkedIn Europe, commented “Increasingly, we are seeing more companies and recruiters using LinkedIn as an integral part of their recruitment drive to find the right candidates for a role. Ariel’s appointment is part of our continued growth in Europe as a company and in terms of our presence in the hiring market.”
There were more than one billion people searches on LinkedIn in the last year, with more than half of those searches being for specific skills and experience.
