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Thousands Jobless in China after LinkedIn’s Termination

The Only Social Networking Platform in China to Cut Jobs and Shut its Chinese App Amid Economic Crisis

by aayushi.samdani
LinkedIn suspending its application in China

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The professional social networking platform, LinkedIn has decided to cut over 716 jobs worldwide and to shut down their Chinese job-seeking application InCareer completely on 9th August. LinkedIn in China was already suspended, and now the replaced career-oriented application will also be withdrawn completely.

The decision was made amid shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth considering the challenges they were facing in the operating environment and compliance requirements in China.

The layoffs were an alarming response to the ‘Challenging macroeconomic climate’, with the CEO Ryan Roslansky quoting that these are the necessary steps in making business more agile. Planning for 2024, expecting the environment to remain challenging, LinkedIn will continue to manage expenses and invest in strategic growth areas going forward.

“In an evolving market, we must continuously have the conviction to adapt our strategy in order to make our vision a reality,” CEO Ryan Roslansky said.

About the Chinese Version of LinkedIn

A ‘Bare-bones’ version of LinkedIn, was started back in 2014 and later constricted as InCareer. It successfully caved a path that fellow peers like Facebook and Google couldn’t get through by partnering with local firms and started censoring the content of millions of Chinese customers in accordance with China’s strict laws.

The Chinese-language version of the website was launched to fill a gap in accordance with its operations in mainland China. Although it opposed government censorship guidelines, its absence in the country was depriving Chinese professionals of the chance to make professional connections.

In March 2021, LinkedIn faced criticism and had to suspend new sign-ups in order to comply with regulations. After that as InCareer, the focus was moved solely to job postings, with no social networking features such as sharing or commenting. They had more than 50 million members, making it the third biggest market after US and India. But faced tough competition from local competitors like Maimai.

Why is China’s market so challenging?

The operating environment in China has been more challenging since Xi Jinping came into power in 2012. There were tighter controls and censorship regulations over what can be said and posted online. In such a scenario, it is difficult to achieve more social aspects of a networking platform to be sharing and staying informed about the world.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were been banned in China more than a decade ago. Google also left the country in 2010 in response to a hacking attack and censorship. The e-commerce giant Amazon is accessible in mainland China, but the market is still dominated by other local players like Alibaba, TMall, Vipshop, etc.

LinkedIn has been the only major Western social media platform, which has continued operations after all the challenges and gained a foothold in the Chinese market, but sadly LinkedIn is also calling it quits!

A Way Forward

Phasing out its local jobs application from China, LinkedIn’s move to streamline its operations and expand the use of vendors to serve emerging and growth markets more effectively is well thought off.

In the last six months, giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, and Alphabet have announced layoffs in certain sectors because of the economic slowdown. LinkedIn which employs more than 20,000 people, says while reducing operations in China and other countries, we plan to create 250 new jobs in sales, operations, and support teams.

We look forward to the list of new jobs and eligibility criteria to apply.

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