LinkedIn Commercial Agreement · UK public procurement notice

The Defence People - Civ HR, part of the UK Ministry of Defence, intends to award a three-year contract with a value of £1,048,792.80 (incl VAT) to LinkedIn for licenses for the Hiring Enterprise Program and LinkedIn Talent Insights Leader.

It is considered that this contract can be awarded under section 41 of the Procurement Act 2023 because the direct award justification specified in paragraph 6 of Schedule 5 ( technical reasons) applies.

This is because LinkedIn is the only provider (there is no alternative supplier offering their services) enabling business areas to showcase prospective candidates what it is like to work for them using a variety of content including adverts/featured content/testimonies before prospective candidates place an application for the advertised role.

LinkedIn is the only company that provides hiring solutions services to customers within Europe, middle east & Africa. Its hiring and social networking solution is unique and as such, a direct competition process isn’t viable. Other companies like, ‘Facebook’, ‘Bark’, ‘Opportunity’, and ‘Xing’, offer similar social networking platforms but with limited professional reach, unlike LinkedIn. There are clear differences in the services on offer and the scale of reach in terms of target audience. Of these four companies, none have a comparable level of professional and global presence and therefore this would not enable MOD to source quality talent and in turn build and sustain a more diverse workforce. This would detrimentally impact on MOD ability to fill our roles and deliver MOD key objectives.

Given the above there are no other value-for-money alternatives to consider which will enable the Authority to promote MOD as an employer, advertise vacancies and additional products (recruiter directly reach out to prospective candidates).