LinkedIn to Close China App InCareer, Laying off Over 100 Employees in China

BEIJING, May 9 (TMTPOST) – After a nine-year run in China, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn’s customer-end application for ordinary Chinese users has come to an end. The company announced Tuesday that it will adjust its business strategy in China, resulting in the closure of its localized job search platform InCareer on August 9 of this year.

As part of this adjustment, the company will also reduce positions in functional, business, and marketing departments and lay off a total of 174 employees from its China team. Additionally, the company will no longer have product and engineering teams in China.

According to LinkedIn, users can download their personal account data from InCareer until August 9. After that date, all personal account data will be permanently deleted. Moreover, it will no longer support companies in posting job information in mainland China.

The company stated its commitment to supporting affected employees during the transition period by offering competitive financial compensation, internal transfer opportunities, and career development assistance. It also stressed that this decision does not signify a complete withdrawal from the Chinese market. Instead, it will continue to provide business-end services in China and even plans to introduce new services later this year.

“Despite our initial progress, InCareer faced fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate, which ultimately led us to the decision of discontinuing the service,” the company said. Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, emphasized in a letter addressed to global employees that going forward, LinkedIn China will concentrate on assisting Chinese companies in their global expansion efforts.

InCareer was released in December 2021, designed to help mainland China users find jobs.

In compliance with Chinese law, LinkedIn temporarily paused new user registrations in March and August 2021. According to a reliable source, certain users had posted inappropriate content on the LinkedIn platform, prompting government intervention and a request for rectification.

In October 2021, the company made the decision to prevent mainland Chinese users from posting original content and interactions on the platform. Instead, they introduced InCareer, an app exclusively designed for job hunting within the Chinese market. The announcement cited a more challenging business environment and increased compliance requirements in China as the reasons behind this strategic shift. However, the removal of the “circle of friends” feature and the exclusion of overseas users resulted in a diminished competitiveness for the company within China.

Since then, amid the surge in remote work and online education during the pandemic, Alibaba’s Ding Talk and Bytedance’s Lark have experienced substantial user growth. Additionally, domestic recruitment apps like BOSS Zhipin have completed listings in the U.S. and Hong Kong. In contrast, LinkedIn’s development in China has been relatively steady.

Airbnb, another US tech company, made a similar strategic adjustment prior to LinkedIn. In May 2022, Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) announced the suspension of support for listings, experiences, and related bookings for travel in China. Instead, the company shifted its focus towards outbound travel business.

To date, only a few American internet companies are still providing services to consumers in China.

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