Department of Justice Spending $500,000 on LinkedIn

The Department of Justice plans to spend more than a half-million dollars to enhance its company profile on LinkedIn, giving its recruiter service unlimited access to each of the business-oriented social media site's 250 million users and to enhance its brand awareness.

The contract was awarded on Christmas Eve, reports Fox News, and will allow the DOJ's Criminal Division to use the LinkedIn Recruiter service to post job advertisements. Government IT company Carahsoft will get $544,338 to administer the service.

The agency said its contract will let it use the site to "reach a large-scale professional network of existing and potential Criminal Division audiences," and "targeted online job advertising to attract highly qualified Criminal Division employees and intern applicants."

LinkedIn Corporate Communications Manager Doug Madey said the DOJ will be using the website's Recruiter Corporate product, which costs $719.95 per month and allows companies to see all LinkedIn members' full profiles, reports The Washington Free Beacon.

"No other vendor has access to this wealth of user information pertaining to professional backgrounds, experiences, achievements, and aspirations, as well as other demographic information, on such a granular level," the Justice Department said in its announcement. "This will allow our ads to be served to qualified, potential applicants in a highly targeted manner."

The contract will also allow the division to weed out unqualified candidates for open positions. Currently, the DOJ's Criminal division has 906 LinkedIn followers.

Most LinkedIn users do not pay for profiles, according to the recruiter blog UndercoverRecruiter.com.

According to statistics, nearly 91 percent of users prefer the site's free version. The rest choose upgraded, paid accounts typically for recruitment or business development purposes.

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