The 3 Greatest Tips on How to Use LinkedIn for Recruiting
Put simply: LinkedIn is the world’s best website for career networking and recruiting. Savvy workers all use LinkedIn accounts to display their talents and experience, which then gives recruiters invaluable access to countless qualified candidates. But while it’s easy to create an account and get going, it can be a challenge to use LinkedIn to its fullest extent.
Worse yet, many recruiters misuse LinkedIn and not only annoy potential candidates, but also harm their own business!
In this post, we’ll talk about 3 of our best tips on how to use LinkedIn for recruiting so that you can start producing results quickly and effectively:
- Make Sure Your Profile Is Top-Notch
- Get to Know Advanced Search
- Etiquette Is Everything (but Only One Thing Is Most Important)
LinkedIn Tip 1: Make Sure Your Profile Is Top-Notch
Think of when you receive an email newsletter or see an online ad for a store you’ve never heard of before. Wouldn’t a boring message drive you away? Not to mention a glaring typo or grammatical flub? Well, that’s the same way your LinkedIn profile will be scrutinized as a recruiter.
Far too often recruiters will judge a candidate’s profile without taking the time to spruce up their own or their company’s. Putting in the effort to write interesting content will build trust with your potential candidate, which can go a long way in improving your chances of them actually replying to your messages. And especially if your company is not the largest or most well-known, it may make all the difference in securing that golden candidate who has plenty of options.
LinkedIn Tip 2: Get to Know Advanced Search
LinkedIn’s basic search function works well if you know have a specific candidate in mind. But for discovering new ones, you’ll want to become familiar with the advanced search functionality. Not only can you search by first and last name, but you’ll also be able to narrow down by title, company, school, location, and industry. For example, you can search for alumni who work within a certain industry or Portland natives with a particular title.
For even more functionality, consider upgrading to a paid recruiter account. This will allow you to create filtered automatic searches as well as track your pipeline of candidates.
LinkedIn Tip 3: Etiquette Is Everything (but Only One Thing Is Most Important)
You’ll see tons of LinkedIn etiquette posts on Google, which I fully encourage you to read. However, you’ll also start to notice very quickly that everything in LinkedIn has unwritten etiquette, such as connecting with strangers, changing your update settings, InMail messaging, etc. And many times, recruiting experts will have conflicting opinions about each of these things!
I’m here to tell you: don’t worry. Really, you can relax. The fact that you care about discovering the best way to do things means that you’ll be more successful than most recruiters on LinkedIn. Just keep this one golden rule in mind:
Candidates are just as human as you.
Let that thought seep into everything you do on LinkedIn. For example, a candidate will feel extremely flattered if you take that time to include a personal detail from their profile into an initial InMail. Or oppositely, they’ll feel resentful if they can tell your message is a boiler plate template with –yikes– their wrong name!
Have any more questions or need recruiting help? Send us an email today! And be sure to check out our reviews to discover why we’re one of Portland’s top recruiting and HR companies.
