1. Company/Candidate are a great match for each other, everyone is happy. Both sides potentially willing to pay, though side with greater demand should carry financial burden.

2. Candidate is not the best fit, but wants Company's attention badly. Candidate is willing to pay.

3. Company is not the best employer for the candidates they want, but are willing to pay for access to those candidates anyway.

You want a system that monetizes the transaction of outcome 1, but does not try to facilitate transactions of type 2 and 3. Instead, the system should try to ‘coach up’ the participants in the later two transaction types and turn them into outcome 1 players.

Monetizing transactions 2 and 3, as this article points out that LinkedIn is doing, ultimately alienates everyone in the system, and strains the systems ability to complete successful outcome 1 transactions.

One may be able to monetize this ‘coaching up’ - an education focused, market information type of transaction - but when you monetize an outcome that is specifically harmful to half of your marketplace, you’re doing nothing but asking for trouble in the long run.

FWIW, we’re working on solving this problem with Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com). We’re a private tool, not a social network, focused on providing ‘Career Management’ services - something akin to Mint.com for your career.

In private beta now, but happy to expedite invites to the HN crowd, as we’re largely focused on helping software engineers and would love your feedback.