Toby Dayton, the longtime CEO of job market data firm LinkUp and Managing Director at parent company GlobalData, announced on Monday that he will step down at the end of September after a 25-year tenure at the helm. His monthly column on the job market was a must read.
In a blog post reflecting on the company’s journey, Dayton recounted starting the business over two decades ago. Initially built around print, web, TV, and radio media—including a weekly employment newspaper across 25 U.S. markets—LinkUp evolved to directly scrape job listings from employer websites beginning in 2002.
Under Dayton’s leadership, LinkUp grew into one of the job market’s premier datasets for verified corporate job openings, avoiding duplicate listings, recruiter spam, and third-party syndication. During the 2008 financial crisis, the firm launched the third-ever pay-per-click job search engine alongside Indeed and SimplyHired, while expanding into job market data licensing for major corporations, search platforms, and financial institutions.
Dayton noted that after a quarter-century leading the organization, he made the decision to step down to focus on his next chapter. He did not immediately specify a successor or reveal detailed plans for his future endeavors.
