LinkedIn Automation: Proceed with Caution!

2019-02-07

Browser plugins and applications designed to automate work on LinkedIn are popping up like mushrooms after rain. They are an add-on to many ATS systems, that is, recruitment systems such as Element.

Among the interesting solutions, you can find applications that independently search for new contacts, send invitations and messages, or detect email addresses. Such an application can be programmed, for example, to start working on its own every day at 8 AM. The HR software begins searching for contacts, then sends invitations to the contacts found, and to those who accepted the invitation, it sends a predefined message. The content of the invitation or message can, of course, be automatically personalized — the application recognizes the recipient’s gender and first name and places an appropriate greeting at the beginning.

LinkedIn does not tolerate such practices, and it is hard to blame them. After all, it is a network of human community, not robots. Consequently, using tools that automate work on LinkedIn carries the risk of account suspension. According to section 8.2 of the LinkedIn User Agreement, the user agrees not to “Develop, support, or use software, devices, scripts, robots, or any other means or processes (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons, or any other technology) to scrape the Services or otherwise copy profiles and other data from the Services.”

Additional official clarification from LinkedIn can be found at this link.

Developers of such applications, including modern ATS systems, must also reckon with LinkedIn’s response. One of the first ongoing legal cases is LinkedIn vs HiQ. In this dispute, the trial court, relying on US state law, issued a ruling favorable to HiQ. HiQ is a provider of data scraping services for data available on LinkedIn profiles. The favorable ruling for HiQ marks the beginning of what is likely a long battle over how work can be automated not only on LinkedIn but across social networks in general.

Regardless of how this legal battle unfolds, the need to automate work will not disappear. I encourage everyone who decides to use such applications to exercise caution — in particular, to verify whether a given recruitment system uses solutions blocked by LinkedIn. LinkedIn constantly monitors the activity of our browsers and checks whether we are using one of the dozens of most popular plugins. There is even a plugin called “Nefarious LinkedIn” that checks which plugins are currently on LinkedIn’s “blacklist.” When choosing the best ATS system, make sure it is not on that list!

The LinkedIn plugin available in ATS Element has never been — and most likely never will be — a problem for LinkedIn, because it does not interfere with the portal at all. It is precisely such interference with the LinkedIn website that is the most common reason for detecting and blocking plugins and their users.