This week at the Job Board Doc­tor, we are wrap­ping up the last of the fall con­fer­ence sea­son live from NOLA, at Out­solve’s inau­gur­al HR Gum­bo con­fer­ence. In the spir­it of our pure exhaus­tion, and yours too, let’s look at this week’s indus­try tea.

Not to pick on LinkedIn, but they def­i­nite­ly pro­vid­ed some fod­der for the TA Tech gos­sip machine. But the B‑I-G news of the week is all Indeed and yet anoth­er law­suit.

Flexi­world Sues Indeed for Not One, But FOUR (alleged) Patent Infringe­ments

Hold on to your socks, folks. This feels like a big one.

This week, in Dis­trict Court For The West­ern Dis­trict Of Texas Austin Divi­sion, Flexi­world Tech­nolo­gies sued Indeed for four patent infringe­ments. The ini­tial fil­ing alleges Indeed and its cus­tomers have infringed on these patents with use of pro­tect­ed data min­ing tech­nolo­gies specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to named Indeed prod­ucts – Indeed Ads, Indeed Resume Project and Indeed Instant Match.

The pas­sage below from the ini­tial fil­ing caught our atten­tion.

Indeed has infringed (lit­er­al­ly and/or under the doc­trine of equiv­a­lents), direct­ly, indi­rect­ly, and/or through sub­sidiaries, agents, rep­re­sen­ta­tives, or inter­me­di­aries, one or more claims of one or more of the Patents-in-Suit by mak­ing, using, import­ing, test­ing, sup­ply­ing, caus­ing to be sup­plied, sell­ing, and/or offer­ing for sale in the Unit­ed States prod­ucts and ser­vices via its Indeed platform(s), includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to var­i­ous ver­sions of its Inter­net-based plat­form with fea­tures such as Indeed Ads, Indeed Resume Project, and Indeed Instant Match, includ­ing as imple­ment­ed on Indeed’s web-based plat­form and using iOS, Android, and oth­er apps (the “Accused Prod­ucts”).

Indeed’s cus­tomers have direct­ly infringed the Patents-in-Suit by using the Accused Prod­ucts. Through its prod­uct man­u­als, web­site, instruc­tion­al videos and/or sales and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties, Indeed solicit­ed, instruct­ed, encour­aged, and aid­ed and abet­ted its cus­tomers to pur­chase and use the Accused Prod­ucts in an infring­ing way.

Indeed was served with a sum­mons on Octo­ber 21^st.  You can read the full ini­tial  fil­ing  here – Flexi­world vs Indeed.

LinkedIn Becom­ing (More) Cringe?

Ah, LinkedIn—the once-stuffy pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing site that’s now the go-to place for “cringe-fests“. Bryan Shankman kicked off his LinkedIn par­o­dy by propos­ing to his girl­friend and turn­ing it into a les­son about B2B sales.

Thou­sands rolled their eyes, but it went viral, prov­ing that Linked­In’s trans­for­ma­tion into the Face­book of cor­po­rate over­shar­ing is com­plete.

His post even land­ed on the LinkedIn Lunatics Sub­red­dit, where tone-deaf execs and awk­ward posts are roast­ed for sport.

Despite the eye-rolls, LinkedIn keeps grow­ing, leav­ing us won­der­ing: how did a site for job list­ings and pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing morph into a parade of hum­ble­brags and life lessons dis­guised as busi­ness advice?

Read the full sto­ry from Dal­las News

LinkedIn Lunatics

Oh and did I men­tion I enjoyed some time on the LinkedIn Lunatics Sub­red­dit this week? One par­tic­u­lar­ly cringey “lunatic” made the thread with this fore­head slap­ping post.

Hope none of us made the list. But some of you may con­sid­er tak­ing a look.

LinkedIn User Purge or Na?

LinkedIn users freaked out when their fol­low­er counts mys­te­ri­ous­ly plum­met­ed, with many spec­u­lat­ing that the plat­form was clean­ing house, purg­ing fake or inac­tive accounts. Self-pro­claimed “experts” swooped in to offer advice on avoid­ing bans, while oth­ers spi­raled into exis­ten­tial cri­sis, won­der­ing what they had done to deserve such a dra­mat­ic drop.

After hours of silence, LinkedIn final­ly admit­ted it was just a glitch—no mass purge that they admit­ted to, no dra­ma. They fixed it, shrugged, and offered no real expla­na­tion. Clas­sic LinkedIn, where los­ing fol­low­ers is the new pro­fes­sion­al night­mare, but don’t worry—it was just a bug.

How much of my per­son­al infor­ma­tion have I giv­en them again? Maybe that is a dis­cus­sion for anoth­er week.

Read more at Yahoo Finance

Final­ly, I was priv­i­leged to join Steven Roth­berg, Founder and Chief Vision­ary Offi­cer for Col­lege Recruiter and Yaz Dalah, Chief Growth Offi­cer for Joveo live from Unleash World on the Inside Job Boards and Recruit­ment Mar­ket Places Pod­cast last week.

Take a quick 15-minute watch and let me know what you think.

Til next time!

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