Hire vs LinkedIn: How will Google’s new product help SMEs?

Google has officially launched its new product, Hire, which aims to help small and medium-sized enterprises recruit quality talents more efficiently. This new recruitment app is expected to be a tough competitor of Microsoft-owned LinkedIn.

The business of recruitment

Hiring new talents can be costly in terms of money, time and effort. Providing savings on these aspects means a business opportunity in the recruitment sector, per Forbes.

Hire serves as a one-stop shop for recruiters as the app works seamlessly with Gmail and Google Calendar. That keeps your communications and scheduling in just one place, instead of switching between software to send emails and schedule interviews. It makes collaboration with the whole recruitment team easier and timelier than before. Everything syncs.

“Hire makes it easy for you to identify talent, build strong candidate relationships and efficiently manage the interview process end-to-end,” said Berit Johnson, Senior Product Manager at Google Cloud.

Google’s new app also allows users to stay connected to the second-best candidates and share them with other hiring managers or contact them later. Furthermore, Hire has a feature wherein you can search for past candidates in your database, who are likely good leads for new positions.

Hire as LinkedIn’s tough competition

Hire is deemed as a direct competitor of LinkedIn, a social networking service dedicated to business and employment. In terms of saving time and money, LinkedIn does not look much friendly for small and medium-sized businesses. In addition, most of LinkedIn’s content is becoming a distraction for SMEs, which might not make it that worth it to pay for.

With Hire, things are simplified for the businesses it is targeting. The app, pitched as an end-to-end solution, may also encourage more small businesses to purchase the G-suite instead of Microsoft Office to put all things in just one place. How these would play out for Hire and how LinkedIn would respond to this new competition remain to be seen.