Those who are not job-hunting are known as passive candidates. They are estimated to make up 70% of the workforce: recruiters who can cast their nets widely enough to catch these hordes of talent therefore gain a significant edge. LinkedIn makes this possible. The selection of more than 20 available LinkedIn Recruiter filters revolves primarily around skills and experience, rather than automatically narrowing the search down to only the active candidates.
Crucially, these skill profiles can be trusted. Users do assess their own strengths, but these are submitted without a specific position in mind; while direct job applications are likely to be doctored to present a good fit, LinkedIn recruiting is an efficient way of finding genuinely strong matches. This is bolstered by additional insights about candidate connections – if someone has engaged with the recruiting company in the past, or is endorsed by existing employees, Recruiter Spotlights and Search Insights will reveal it.
There are a number of things businesses looking to recruit can do to take full advantage of all this functionality. The most fundamental is to set up a company page. This is the first point of reference for anyone who may be interested in a job opening: a compelling profile can go a long way. More than that, it allows existing employees to list the company as a place of work. In this way, all of their individual networks may be leveraged, increasing the chances of finding the ideal candidate.
Setup can be done freely and easily. The “work” icon provides an option to “create company page” – it really is that simple. After specifying the size of the business, all that is needed are details to flesh out the company profile. This is the first step to powerful recruitment. As more people engage with the page and list themselves as employees, more bespoke insights will become available.
The next key step is to list jobs. This can be done in two ways. The best method to fully utilize the vast size of LinkedIn’s network is via paid listings. The site makes these roles visible to all users, but the real value comes through its curation of the best candidates. By matching the required skills and experience to user profiles, it makes sure that the job ad is seen by those best-suited to the position. A viewable top 50 is created, and five free InMail messages allow recruiters to reach out directly using the built-in messaging service. It has a 35% better response rate than emails, so there’s a good chance of hearing back.
Recruiters taking this route are charged on a pay-per-click model. The alternative is free listings: these are not promoted across the network but are posted on the company page. In some circumstances, these can also be very effective. Positions posted by profiles with a strong following will still be seen by lots of people, many of whom are likely to be in a relevant field.
Either type of listing can be amplified further by joining groups. LinkedIn groups are made up of professionals with a common industry. Often, they have dedicated areas for sharing jobs – these listings get a lot of relevant eyes on them almost by default.
Whichever route a recruiter goes down, they have effective filters at their disposal once a list of prospective candidates is in place. This includes Boolean search techniques. Commonly used for querying datasets, Boolean logic revolves around a series of operators. The cornerstones are “and”, “or” and “not”: in a recruiting context, these allow further narrowing-down of candidates based on their combinations of listed skills. These additional filters can be prioritized by using brackets, just as in mathematical operations.
In other words, not only can LinkedIn help put together a list of great candidates, it can then help companies narrow it down until they find the perfect fit. When you have your list of possible candidates, you can speed up the process of moving them over to your CRM by using a LinkedIn Search Exporter, such as LIX. These powerful tools give recruiters who know how to use them a real advantage in the jobs market.
