LinkedIn is fast emerging as a great recruitment platform. Many organizations are currently turning to the popular social network to boost their recruitment efforts. With over 300 million professionals currently using it, LinkedIn can be a perfect way to identify, engage and recruit future employees.
The ultimate question is: what are the best ways to recruit employees using LinkedIn? Well, LinkedIn provides a number of tools that can be helpful for recruitment. As such, there are a number of ways you can use the network.
Some of the most effective ways are the following:
Searching For Talent
LinkedIn is a great platform for searching for potential recruits. Using LinkedIn Recruiter, you can search for potential candidates who are on the platform. You can view their profiles and see aspects like their academic background, work experience, and current employment status.
The Corporate Edition of LinkedIn provides more advanced search options with LinkedIn Recruiter. For instance, it enables you to filter searches according to Industry, Company, Company Size, Educational Background, Years of Experience in Industry, Years in Position, and so on. This enables you to identify the right individuals faster.
The LinkedIn Corporate Edition enables you to queue up searches. As such, you don’t have to keep running the search. A queued-up search is run automatically several times a day. As soon as a potential candidate is identified, you are sent an alert. The service provides up to 50 alerts a day. This makes searching for top talent much simpler.
In a nutshell, you can use LinkedIn to search for potential candidates. The best way to use it is through its advanced search and search queuing functions. This can make it easier to identify top talent.
Posting Job Ads
With the multitudes of professionals on LinkedIn, a great way to use the platform is by posting your ads. LinkedIn actually provides a number of ways to advertise job openings. There are well—known options like “Work With Us Ads” or “LinkedIn Career Pages”. These are certainly great.
However, there are a few lesser-known options that can enable you to better target your ads.
The Jobs Network
LinkedIn has a feature that suggests job openings to professionals. This is usually a small widget called “Jobs You May Be Interested In”. This feature delivers your ads directly to potential candidates (even if they aren’t searching). To get access to this, you have to post the jobs to the LinkedIn Jobs Network.
Job Slots
A LinkedIn Job Slot is a customized recruitment program. It is intended to make it easy for you to create ads and engage potential candidates. For starters, it delivers your ads to prospective candidates’ profile pages (through the Jobs You May Be Interested In). It also offers you recommendations of up to 50 potential candidates whose profiles best match your job advert. It enables you to redirect applicants straight to your Applicant Tracking System. Finally, it can integrate with your website and pull job ads directly from it. In essence, Job Slots provide an effective mechanism to advertise jobs and engage potential candidates.
Web Ads
LinkedIn can actually deliver your job ads to potential candidates anywhere on the web. It uses information on your advert to select the most qualified candidates (based on the info on their LinkedIn profiles). The ads are then posted on whatever website the person is viewing. This makes your adverts reach the target audience even if they are not using LinkedIn at the moment.
In a nutshell, you can use LinkedIn to effectively advertise job posts. The numerous ad options increase the chances of qualified candidates viewing them. This can ultimately improve your recruitment efforts. LinkedIn actually provides sophisticated analytics which can be used to track the effectiveness of your job adverts.
Your Company Profile
Using LinkedIn for recruitment isn’t just about posting job ads. There are other ways you can make it easy for potential candidates to find you. The easiest way to achieve this is by creating and updating your company’s LinkedIn profile page. The page should contain information about your company’s mission as well as products or services. And of course, you should post any job openings on your page.
One helpful feature about the LinkedIn company page is that it enables professionals to “follow” you. Those who follow you are kept up-to-date with any changes. As such, whenever you post ads on your page, they will likely see it. However, LinkedIn’s analytics actually enable you to view professionals who are following your page. Your followers can be a good place to start looking for potential recruits.
To maximize the potential of the LinkedIn company profile page, you can actually enable candidates to apply directly from the page. Popular companies like Coca-Cola have this feature. Making candidates apply from your profile page makes submitting an application much easier. This can increase the likelihood of people applying for your advertised positions.
Referrals
Another great way to identify potential recruits via LinkedIn is through referrals. This of course requires first building a network of trusted professionals. However, even without a large network, referrals can still work.
Most recruiters start off with their own employees, ex-employees or professional contacts. They ask them to refer people who they think are a perfect fit for a particular job, and then check them out.
The best thing about using LinkedIn for referrals is that checking out potential candidates is very easy. It is simply a matter of viewing their LinkedIn profiles. If they seem the perfect fit, then you can contact them.
Establishing Contact
Once you have identified a potential recruit, LinkedIn makes it simple to get into contact with them. This is can be done using InMail – a feature that can be used to send an email directly to a potential recruit. As such, upon identifying a qualified candidate, it is a matter of sending them an email, and the conversation can begin.
Ultimately, LinkedIn can be extremely effective as a recruitment platform. This is why many companies and recruitment agencies are now turning to the platform to spruce their hiring efforts. Many recruiters use some of the above tips to improve the effectiveness of their LinkedIn recruitment strategies.
Therefore, if you’ve been looking for the best ways to recruit employees using LinkedIn, you now know where to start. Happy Hunting!
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