LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman: We’re the Disruptive Low-cost Provider of Hiring Services

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s Founder and CEO, was on Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to give it a watch since I saw it on Techcrunch, and I was not disappointed.

LinkedIn is doing well in this recession.  According to Hoffman:

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We’ve been profitable the last two years. Q4 was actually our highest revenue quarter ever.

Not surprisingly, recruiting is one of LinkedIn’s three primary revenue sources, along with subscription fees and advertising. In Hoffman’s words:

We have a software-as-a-service business primarily driven by recruiting. And as a surprise we are actually doing quite well at that currently. You’d think that with layoffs and everything else that that business was being hit. Currently, we are the disruptive low-cost provider of really good hiring services, and when you are hiring 50 people as opposed to 1,000 people we are still growing there…

I find that “disruptive, low-cost provider” comment to be especially telling. Many startups claims to be disruptive, but when you actually kick the tires, few truly are. If LinkedIn is growing its market share of dollars spent while just about every job board is shrinking, it sounds about right to me.