Recruiting employees is a competitive endeavor, and that’s particularly true when recruiting for hard-to-find talent or employees with highly specialized skills. Recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers continually seek new and more creative (and effective) ways to connect with potential candidates.
Social media channels have emerged to provide an option outside traditional classified ads, job fairs, or mega job sites like Indeed.
LinkedIn is a notable example. And, in fact, LinkedIn was initially developed as a tool for recruiting job candidates. While it still leads the pack in terms of the social media channels most effective for connecting with a business audience, best practices and functionality continue to change, so it’s always important to stay on top of new tips and trends.
Here we take a look at some current best practices you can leverage to get the most out of LinkedIn.
The Big Benefits of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a top recruitment channel for a very good reason. Those who have LinkedIn profiles have shared a great deal of information about their professional backgrounds that can be readily mined to help narrow down applicant pools or gain insights into candidates’ backgrounds, interests, and connections.
Recruiters can use LinkedIn to advertise or post available jobs, and they can also be proactive in conducting searches for ideal candidates based on a wide range of criteria.
LinkedIn’s ability to connect the dots of an individual’s profile, catering to both job seekers and those searching for applicants, makes the process seamless. Its “Easy Apply” feature caters to the changing attitude of individuals who are time-poor and impatient with long, laborious processes. The option to search for “similar profiles” to your ideal candidate also lowers the barrier to finding the perfect match.
Over the years LinkedIn has evolved to offer more consolidated and advanced talent solutions through its “LinkedIn Talent Solutions” offering – a suite of tools and resources to help streamline the talent acquisition process.
Recruiters can use LinkedIn in both paid (ads and boosted posts) and unpaid (organic engagement) ways to find and connect with job applicants. When doing so there are some useful tips and best practices to gain the best results.
Tips and Best Practices
- Optimize your company page to make it appealing to potential employees. To stand out, share engaging content regularly that gives a sense of your company culture and what makes it a great place to work. Use videos to share employee experiences and testimonials, to provide “tours,” and other visual interactions designed to boost engagement. (Read more: The Power of the Employee Value Proposition)
- But don’t just rely on your passive company page to engage with candidates. Leverage your recruiters, HR leaders, hiring managers, and others’ personal profiles and connections to share information on open roles, company culture and events, etc.
- Use LinkedIn’s advanced search function to find and proactively reach out to passive candidates who match your ideal candidate profile. (Also consider using LinkedIn’s Alumni and Company Pages for targeted research.)
- Use LinkedIn Groups to similarly connect with and proactively share information about job openings and what sets your company apart.
- Make sure your company pages and individual profiles are optimized with the types of keywords and phrases active job searchers are likely to be using when looking for roles at your company—or companies like yours.
- Focus on relationships, not just transactions. Engage with potential candidates and stay connected even when you’re not actively recruiting. That can help boost your recruitment brand and enlist these connections to spread the word about your company and its open roles.
Remember that, just as when marketing products and services, a clear understanding of your target audience’s interests, preferences, potential questions—and alternatives (aka your competition) will help you position your company and your open roles most effectively regardless of the channel you use.
Image by Raphael Silva from Pixabay
