How to use LinkedIn for Recruiting?

Original Question:
How to Use LinkedIn for Recruiting

Response:
There are two methods for using LinkedIn – Paid and Unpaid – for finding both active and passive job candidates.

Paid:
On your LinkedIn home page, just scroll to the bottom where you will find “Recruiting Solutions”. There is a whole tutorial of the paid system. In short, you get access to expanded search functionality, ability to see full profile, Inmail rights, job posting and several tracking tools. Most important, regardless of the person’s connection status with you, you can connect with them – so now you can reach everyone on LinkedIn.

You can also pay to post a job on LinkedIn (which I’ve used), when you receive an application, you also get all of the points of contact with the candidate (common connections, groups, etc.)

Unpaid or Using a “Basic” account:
Much like your normal networking – there is ‘awareness’ and ‘targeting’ – to create a pool of potential candidates.

For Awareness, the goal is to get the network working on your behalf. This is as simple as posting updates in a few areas and takes no time to accomplish.

1. Your LinkedIn profile “I’m hiring a Controller, please see...” (with URL to job description)

2. General networking groups that may be for your industry, geographic area, or large job groups (StarJobs, etc.) – post to the “Jobs”. There type of person you seek may or may not be in the group, but people pass roles to colleagues regularly.

3. For groups that are related to HR or Talent Management, where you do not belong, ask a colleague post on your behalf to the “Jobs” tab (e.g. LinkedHR, Talent Bar, etc.).

For Targeting, the goal is to get to specific people. After defining the desired background for candidate (industry, years, specific company, etc.), then it’s a matter of using your network, LinkedIn search and specific groups.

1. For members of your network who are tied to any of the candidate criteria (company, industry, etc.), they will be more relevant network to work within

2. Use the “Company” function to find people who work a company from where you want to recruit and get a connection via your network

3. Post the job in specific groups that would cater to people that you want to recruit (e.g. FEI Indianapolis, etc.)

A few lessons to share:
The sheer volume of candidates you can reach is both your best and worst day – as you may get swamped with candidates.

1. Create a new e-mail to collect response, so you don’t bury your Inbox

2. If there are mandatory requirements, ask the candidates to add an extra page on their resume to specifically address each item – use Y/N or objective answers (# of years in healthcare). This will save you a load of time in screening.

3. Under Resources on Proformative see “Getting Started: Hiring Process – Possible Delays to Making a Decision”. Just to make sure you’ve defined everything you need in both the role and candidate.

As always, hope this helps.

Mark

Rather than posting a position on Linkedin - for which you are likely to get many unqualified folks - conduct a key word search for prospective candidates that meet your requirements, and approach them directly. It's the way recruiters work ... and it's pretty effective.

Bruce... LinkedIn back in 2003/2004 when I joined was mostly executives and recruiters. They have a very good system or recruiters would leave.. instead of paying their way.

I can tell you, now that I have a paid LI account, that I can contact 10 people a month as part of the program I'm on. Recruiters usually pay more for their LI accounts.

And you can also find people by searching on Bing or Google, too.