How Recruiters Can Use LinkedIn

Building a career as a recruiter is no mean feat. Even with classified ads and staffing sites, it can be difficult to attract the required talent to make your operations a success. That’s why, more and more recruiters are now turning to LinkedIn to take their processes to the next level.

The reason is simple. Waiting for potential employees to come to your firm through third party platforms doesn’t yield the recruiting results you need. It doesn’t only increase the chances of candidates going to your competitors, but it also enhances the possibility of them never reaching out to you in the first place. This is why you need to take a proactive approach while looking for suitable employees for your company.

In order to achieve this objective, you constantly have to make your way through a plethora of candidates. You need to discover top talent through various processes. And you have to reach out to viable professionals in a way that encourages them to join your organization.

With over 660 million users across every industry, LinkedIn helps you achieve all of these objectives with ease.

So how exactly do you recruit on the world’s most popular professional network? To help you answer this question and take your recruiting to the next level, here are a few tips to make the most of your recruiting efforts.

1. Create a Recruiter Account

The professional network is considered so viable for recruitment not only due to its number of users, but also its specific services that cater to recruiters. In fact, it has a separate section that is built especially for recruiters to find talent online.

This account is different from your personal profile, and lets you represent your company to any candidates you connect with on the platform. With it, it also comes with additional features that let you search through available candidates through various filters.

This service is a part of LinkedIn Premium, which comes with a certain service fee attached to it. It is also distributed into three parts, which happen to be Recruiter Lite, Recruiter Professional Services (RPS) and Recruiter (yes, the names are confusing, so let’s refer to this one as Recruiter-full).

Depending on your business size and needs, you can choose between either of these services. For instance, the Lite version only lets you use one separate account that connects with your company profile. But using RPS or Recruiter-full lets you connect multiple users from your team.

With that being said, if you think that paying for these premium accounts is not viable for your business, then you can also turn to other recruiting methods on the platform.

2. Post a Job

Depending on the network you’ve grown through your efforts, posting jobs can connect you to more than a few candidates without having to pay for LinkedIn Premium.

At the same time, you should keep in mind that posting for jobs on the platform isn’t free but comes at a pay-per-click (PPC) model that charges you on your posts’ number of views.

The process to post a job is easy to follow. You can also associate these job posts with your company account easily.

But the trickier part comes in terms of outreach and connecting with the right candidates. Since you do not have the ability to actively search for specific candidates through Recruiter Lite, RPS, or Recruiter-full, you need to make sure that your job post is able to be seen by people who use the platform regularly.

Here, you can improve the visibility of your job post through factors such as the selection of your job title, your industry, and your job description keywords. This helps the right candidates see your job post and respond to it accordingly.

Asking your company’s employees to share the job post with their connections also goes a long way in boosting its visibility. This also helps you tap into their affiliated professional network and possibly gain more followers for your company.

If you have a decent amount of connections on the platform, then you can also reach out to these connections and turn their attention to your job requirement. This also goes a long way into improving your job post visibility.

3. Consistently Work on Growing Your Network

To make the most out of recruiting methods and activities such as sharing your job posts to relevant connections, ensure that you actually hold a widespread outreach on the platform.

Doing so isn’t difficult. All you have to do is to make sure that you are being active on the platform and building your network by connecting with people in your field.

Take targeted actions that include:

• Sending and accepting connection requests. These connection requests usually involve people who are connected to your company or even your industry. This helps you build your outreach on the platform.
• Joining LinkedIn Groups. This helps you connect with professionals related to your industry. It is also a very good way to share your requirements for candidate recommendations.
• Contributing With Your Experience. Invest some of your time and into engaging with posts that fit your area of expertise. This helps in growing your outreach and lets you build a higher number of connections.

In the long run, these activities help you obtain the outreach you need to fulfill your firm’s staffing needs.

Overall, performing these activities helps you gain the following benefits.

Enhanced Credibility

Most people you reach out to immediately assess your credibility by the number of connections you have. The more connections on record, the more reliable you appear to someone who hasn’t heard about you or your company. This can come in handy when you are connecting with candidates exclusively through the platform.

Larger Network

This larger outreach is logically helpful when you or your company’s employees are sharing job posts with connections. A larger network means that you and your company have more chances to receive results through your recruitment efforts.

Improved Visibility

Candidates often take it upon themselves to look for opportunities in their respective industry. If you or your company have an impressive outreach, then you can easily attract such talent and improve your chances of hearing from them.

4. Browse Industry Connections

Apart from posting a job and boosting its visibility through multiple efforts, you can also directly reach out to industry connections to engage top talent.

Since this aspect requires manual efforts and doesn’t come with specific tools for discovering candidates, this can be a hit-or-miss.

Browse through your connection profiles and look through relevant industry connections. While this method will not tell you if the profile you are visiting is an open candidate looking for job opportunities, it will give you the chance to connect with them and tell them about the opportunity you have at hand.

Since the process does not provide you with targeted tools that come with LinkedIn Premium, it requires persistence and time from your end. But if you don’t want or can’t afford additional expenses for recruitment, then this can be a good way to fulfill your staffing needs.

Choose a Method That Suits Your Firm

Once you’ve narrowed your choices down and are choosing among strong candidates, consider conducting a criminal background check on them. This could be helpful in uncovering things that any applicant may have hidden from you during their application. While it’s important to look beyond at a person’s past, taking this step will be an added assurance that you’re not putting your company at risk. By following these tips, you can make the most out of your LinkedIn recruitment efforts. While using free methods to attract candidates is a good starting step, considering the usage of paid tools such as Recruiter Lite is also something that can be beneficial for your organization. The best way to go about this process is to assess your needs and budgetary constraints, and moving forward in a way that suits your company the best.