There are 467 million total members on LinkedIn. Many of those could be excellent candidates just waiting to be found by you. Luckily, using LinkedIn for recruiting isn’t difficult.
LinkedIn is designed for job seekers and recruiters. It has simple but effective tools that make recruiting with LinkedIn worthwhile. You just need some basic knowledge of how to use LinkedIn for recruiting.
Discover how to recruit on LinkedIn to increase your candidate pool.
How to recruit on LinkedIn: 5 Tips
Start using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool with these five tips.
Have a profile
All recruiters should have a profile on LinkedIn. You need a profile so you can search for and reach out to potential candidates. But, it’s not enough to have a generic profile. Your profile should be fully filled out and updated.
Have a professional photo that candidates will take seriously. You shouldn’t use a selfie from your beach vacation.
Fill out the summary section so candidates can learn more about you. Entice them with your services and personality.
On your profile, there’s a section where you can link to outside sites. Link to your recruiting website here so people can learn more about you and your recruiting business.
People can leave recommendations on your profile. Ask your previous clients and candidates to write recommendations. These act as testimonials for your services.
Share content
To fully leverage LinkedIn for recruiters, you should regularly share content on your profile. This keeps your profile fresh. And, it ensures you stay in front of your followers.
You can share content that’s relevant to your industry. This might be the latest news or recruitment industry trends. You can also publish your own content via LinkedIn’s publishing platform. Or, you might share the blog posts you write on your own website.
You can post links to your open job postings. If your recruiting software offers job board integration, you might be able to instantly share your postings to LinkedIn. This gives you yet another place online where people can see and apply to your openings.
Make sure you don’t only post jobs. Having a stream of jobs can make you look spammy.
Send InMail
LinkedIn has a messaging service called InMail. It is similar to private messaging on other social websites. You can send InMail messages to contact potential candidates. This is a good option when you don’t have their emails or phone numbers.
Don’t send generic, mass messages. Personalize the messages. This will improve your open and response rates.
Consider the potential candidate’s profile while using LinkedIn to recruit. Look for things that might motivate them to talk to you and consider the open position. Look at their skills, previous positions, and any patterns. You have the potential candidate’s entire LinkedIn profile at your disposal. Use it to your advantage. Show them how the position fits their skills, advancement, or income.
Join groups
LinkedIn has 1.5 million groups. These are online groups that people can join to discuss and learn about a particular topic. Participate in some of these groups to find candidates.
Join groups that are related to the industries you recruit for. You might also find groups for active job seekers.
Regularly engage in the groups. Answer questions and post relevant links. Show that you are someone who is knowledgeable and can be trusted.
You can even post your open positions. But, don’t get carried away with posting jobs. Depending on the group, you might be removed or blocked.
Search strategically
LinkedIn has powerful search tools. Let’s talk about how to search LinkedIn for candidates.
You can type in generic keywords. For example, you might type in “accountant.” But, typing in single, simple terms doesn’t work well for finding candidates. You’ll have to sort through many people who aren’t relevant to what you want.
You can use advanced search features to narrow down your search. You start with your basic search in the search bar. Then, on the right side of the page, you can create filters. You can filter by connections, location, current company, past company, industries, language, schools, and more.
You can also use Boolean search operators. Boolean search operators refine your search to help you find specific things. Search operators you can use include:
- firstname: This finds people based on first name
- lastname: This find people based on last name
- title: This finds people based on their current job title
- company: This finds people based on their current company
- school: This finds people based on the school they attended
- NOT This removes something from the search
- OR This creates an “either/or” search
- AND This means the person must meet both requirements
You must use quotation marks around multi-word searches. You must use colons with no space after for firstname:, lastname:, title:, company:, and school:.
Let’s say you want to find an accounting director or manager who went to Harvard but doesn’t have the last name Smith. Here’s what you might type in the search bar:
title:(“accounting director” OR “accounting manager”) school:harvard NOT lastname:smith
If you use LinkedIn Recruiter, which is a paid recruiting tool, you can create saved searches so you can easily go back to them later.