Yesterday, this well-known platform official announced that it would officially stop its service in China!

According to reports, on August 9, 2023, LinkedIn, a well-known global social recruitment platform, announced that its localized job search platform “LinkedIn Workplace” operated in China had officially stopped serving.

Although in the past nine years, LinkedIn has tried hard to localize and launched various attempts, but it has failed. However, LinkedIn said it would continue to focus on the China market.

According to its latest strategic transformation, LinkedIn will shift its strategic focus in China market to assist China enterprises in overseas talent recruitment, brand promotion and skills training. LinkedIn China’s official WeChat WeChat official account resumed its update at the end of July, and said it would continue to write the story of LinkedIn China on this platform.

It has been nine years since LinkedIn announced its entry into the China market in 2014, during which many localization attempts were made, but all these attempts ended in failure.

As a world-famous professional social platform, LinkedIn launched a beta version of Simplified Chinese in 2014, officially entering the China market, and hired Derek, the founder of Nuomi.com, as the global vice president and president of LinkedIn in China. With the labels of “elitism” and “internationalization”, the number of members of LinkedIn China grew rapidly at first. Under the leadership of Derek, the number of members of LinkedIn China has increased from 4 million to over 10 million in more than two years.

In 2015, LinkedIn China, led by Derek, launched the localized workplace social Application Red Rabbit, positioning it as “the social app that knows China’s workplace best”. However, this localization innovation ended in failure. In July 2019, after 1438 days of operation, Red Rabbit officially went offline.

In March 2021, LinkedIn temporarily suspended the registration of new users in China to ensure that “all the content and services provided by the platform comply with local laws and regulations”. In October, 2021, LinkedIn China was suddenly reported to be closed. However, LinkedIn quickly denied that the news was untrue and said that it would adjust its strategy. In December of the same year, LinkedIn officially released a brand-new application “LinkedIn Workplace” in China, aiming to help users connect career opportunities and help employers find ideal candidates.

In the face of the failure of LinkedIn in less than two years, LinkedIn on the one hand affirmed the achievements made by LinkedIn in helping the globalization strategy of China enterprises, on the other hand, it also saw that LinkedIn was always facing the challenges brought by increasingly fierce market competition and macroeconomic environment, which finally led them to decide to stop serving.

Analysys’ report “Insight into Online Recruitment and Job-hunting Industry 2022″ shows that in the past five years, the operating indicators of online recruitment industry have increased significantly, the per capita daily usage time has increased steadily, and user stickiness has continued to increase. With the cyclical fluctuations, the scale of active users in the job-seeking industry has shown an overall growth trend, with the number of users reaching about 50 million. Online recruitment has become an important job-seeking channel.

The market share of online recruitment platforms in China accounts for a larger proportion. In 2021, Worry-Free Future, direct Boss employment and hunting employment will be 26.6%, 25.63% and 15.94% respectively, occupying an absolute advantage. At the same time, from the perspective of market structure, worry-free future, Boss direct employment, hunting employment and Zhilian recruitment are in the first echelon, hook recruitment and market direct recruitment are in the second echelon, and Doumi and part-time cats are in the third echelon.

According to the data, in March this year, the number of active users in the domestic recruitment platform was 18.5 million, the direct employment of Boss was 17.3 million, and the hunting employment was 6.7 million, which was only 959,600 compared with LinkedIn.

Faced with such dismal performance, LinkedIn still has no intention of giving up the China market. On the contrary, LinkedIn said that it will continue to strengthen its development in the China market. Through LinkedIn’s talent recruitment and marketing solutions, they plan to continue to help China enterprises achieve internationalization.

Ryan rossland, CEO of LinkedIn, said that LinkedIn will focus on assisting China enterprises in overseas talent recruitment, brand marketing and skills training in the China market.

According to LinkedIn’s introduction, the LinkedIn platform brings together more than 930 million professionals, 63 million companies, 39,000 skills and 128,000 schools around the world. Among the top 100 overseas expansion enterprises in China, more than 70% of them have launched in-depth cooperation with LinkedIn. In 2021-2022 alone, the number of overseas jobs posted by China enterprises on LinkedIn platform reached 270,000.

Although applications such as LinkedIn Workplace can no longer be searched and downloaded, LinkedIn China’s official WeChat WeChat official account resumed updating at the end of July, saying that “we will continue to write the story of LinkedIn China .


Post time: Aug-11-2023