Since 2013, LinkedIn has grown from 184 million monthly active users to over 250 million active monthly users. It’s safe to say that the social network for professionals is buzzing with activity.
Much of this growth has been fuelled by the recruitment industry with Fortune reporting that recruitment and staffing is the most connected industry on the social network. So, ensuring your recruitment company is not only active on LinkedIn, but also standing out from the competition, is essential for your recruitment marketing success.
Still need convincing? HubSpot studied B2B and B2C businesses and found that LinkedIn was 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter. With that in mind, let’s explore 8 ways to use LinkedIn to aid your recruitment strategy.
- Optimise and Promote Job Posts
- Share Relevant Content With Your Network
- Use Visually Appealing Images and Videos
- Unify Your Recruiter Profiles
- Implement the Easy inApply Option
- Reach Out to Candidates via InMail
- Consider Paid Promotion
- Ask for Reviews
1. Optimise and Promote Job Posts
Since LinkedIn boasts million of users, many job postings are seen without recruiters doing much work at all! The ‘Jobs You May Be Interested In’ is a clever algorithm targeted at jobseekers, but if your job postings aren’t coherent and optimised for keywords, they’re likely to get lost in the crowd.
In order to get the best results from your job posting, you should include:
- The company name (linking to the company page)
- The job title (use the standard title suggestions as you can write more in the description)
- The job location
- A short but unambiguous description about the role
- Any desirable skills for the role
- A salary range
- The work hours (i.e. part-time, full-time, contracted, shifts)
- The benefits of the job
- Information about the company
You’ll want to make your job posting grabs the attention of potential candidates, so it’s important to hone each post with the candidate in mind. Since many users will view job postings on mobile, make sure the structure of your postings is broken down into manageable chunks with all the main details included. Using relevant keywords will also make the role more searchable.
2. Share Relevant Content With Your Network
The LinkedIn feed updates more slowly than other social media platforms, which can increase the visibility of your content. Regularly sharing relevant and helpful articles, company updates, and news about the industry or related events on your profile is a great way to aid your recruitment strategy, and can help position the firm as reputable and trustworthy.
As well as sharing the content from your website’s blog, you can directly publish articles to LinkedIn. Make use of targeted updates – a tool that enables you to segment your database by user type. If you are sharing employment advice for a specific sector (e.g. healthcare), you can make sure that the article reaches relevant potential candidates by creating an audience of healthcare professionals.
Encouraging engagement on your posts by asking readers for their thoughts is a great way to start discussions with potential candidates or business leads.
3. Use Visually Appealing Images and Videos
Forbes predicts that by 2019, “video is projected to claim more than 80% of all web traffic”. Furthermore, “90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions”. So, when representing your recruitment firm, posting a video on the Company Page is more likely to be seen than a simple news update, blog post, or any other written content. Your audience may not have time to read an article, but they may have time to watch a thirty second video. Using video is a strong way to grab attention.
Visual content full stop always helps spark initial interest, so it’s important to use appealing imagery when sharing any written content. Your blog posts should feature an attention-grabbing image that hints at the content of the blog. After all, would you rather click on a link that has a white background with a logo on it, or an image of a supernova with a relevant blog title?
Sharing eye-catching videos and content with images can help your posts stand out on LinkedIn.
4. Unify Your Recruiter Profiles
Each recruiter in your company will need an optimised individual profile. Your recruiters are the face of the company, helping create brand recognition within the recruitment firm. Try to include a professional company picture, a background photo (with the company logo), a headline, a summary of what that recruiter does, and the firm’s website.
Your recruiters' profiles will also benefit from being written in first person, demonstrating that they want to hire people (not that they themselves want to be hired). Profiles should also have a custom public profile link, added certifications, and a section to highlight any company activities.
Since your recruiters will use their profiles to reach out to potential candidates or clients, ensuring that there’s consistency in the brand image will pay dividends.
5. Use Easy inApply
This tip is controversial. Some recruiters feel that inApply drives too many non-relevant applications, but others find it helpful because it makes it much easier for users to apply for a job quickly on their lunch break, on their morning commute, or at any other time of day. Candidates can apply from their phone via an app simply by adding their CV and phone number.
From the recruiting end, when candidates apply with their LinkedIn profile, you’re notified by email and you can take action from there. Without inApply, candidates can be directed to an external site. It’s worth keeping in mind that 60% of job seekers abandon applications in the middle of them if they are too complex or too long.
If you make the process easier with inApply (or by simplifying your external link applications), then you’re more likely to have more candidates to choose from.
6. Reach Out to Candidates via InMail
A good way to network is to perform Boolean searches to find the right candidates (a search that uses the words AND, OR, and NOT to include and exclude terms). You can reach out to both active and passive job seekers, but use this feature sparingly. You don’t want to send out hundreds of messages for candidates who may not be quite right. Once you’ve found one user in the field, you can use the ‘similar profile’ features to find other users.
With the search tool, you can search for exact phrases in quotation marks, you can exclude terms using ‘NOT’ (i.e. programmer NOT manager), use parenthesis for complex searches, find people who have ‘VP’ in their profiles, and so forth, depending on your search needs. Your search will yield a list of candidates that you may want to reach out to via InMail, which is LinkedIn’s answer to email. Since InMail boxes generally see less action, there’s an increased likelihood of the recipient seeing your message.
When sending your messages, make sure they are personal. Let a potential candidate know why you are contacting them – what skills or experience made them stand out? Why do you think they’d be a good fit for a role you are working on? Invite them to share their current job-seeking progress and the criteria they are looking for in their next role. Having this information will pave the way for future conversation and give you a clearer understanding of what roles to share with a potential candidate.
Using InMail can be an effective way to get the attention of candidates who might not otherwise know your recruitment firm, but never use it to hound people who aren’t interested since that can devalue your company brand.
7. Consider Paid Promotion
Another way to aid your recruitment strategy is by getting content in front of followers with sponsored updates.
Sponsored updates are basically the same as paid ads. You can get your content or job posting in front of a targeted audience for a specified amount of time. It doesn’t have to be costly either – you can select a budget and choose the cost-per-click or cost-per-impression option that suits your firm’s needs.
The paid tool lets you test your messaging, track leads, and even add pre-filled out LeadGen forms for easier mobile conversion.
8. Ask for Reviews
A final way to aid your recruitment strategy is to ask for endorsements and reviews from past successfully-placed candidates, and from happy clients. These reviews will show up on your page and the reviewer's, increasing your business’s visibility and enhancing your recruitment strategy.
Encourage your employees to promote the company’s career page and anything related to the company. Ask them to share job openings as well. Satisfied and happy employees are the best recruiters.
For company pages, recommendations provide third-party validation and credibility for your business. In the ‘Products tab’, any page visitors are given the opportunity to recommend individual products and services. You can also ‘request recommendations’ through friends, fans, and customers. It may seem blatant, but why not? You’ll be increasing brand awareness and trust overall.
You can use one, all, or a combination of these techniques to aid your recruitment strategy and make your firm more visible for prospective clients, potential employees, or ideal candidates.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve used any of these techniques and which of these – or others have worked for you.
Now that you’ve generated more followers, can you use LinkedIn to grow your business? The answer is yes! Find out more below.
Find Out How LinkedIn Can Grow Your Business
Download your free copy of our eBook, How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Business. You’ll find out how endorsements can help you, why you need to join LinkedIn Groups, how to make the best company profile, and more.
