LinkedIn Recruiter is the easiest way to identify candidates for your jobs. You can look wide or you can look narrow, but LinkedIn Recruiter allows you to dig deep into the LinkedIn network to identify potential matches.
In the last edition of The LinkedIn Recruiter, I talked about the importance of having a clear strategy for how to maximise your results on LinkedIn including LinkedIn Recruiter, Employer Branding, and Jobs.
In short, it is up to your jobs to deliver traffic to your company page so that your employer branding can drive more followers for hard to hire candidates so that your recruiters are 81% more efficient in their sourcing.
When building a LinkedIn Recruiter strategy, it is easiest to split your sourcing needs into 2 types. I call these
- Evergreen roles
- Adhoc roles
EVERGREEN
Jobs in which you are always looking for candidates. This could be because they are hard to hire, like IT, or because you have to hire a large amount of people, like sales.
ADHOC
Jobs in which an unforeseen need has happened and you are more reactive in your sourcing strategy. An example of this could be a Leader leaving or retiring amongst others.
With this in mind, let’s take a deep dive into how you can build a simple strategy of how to source candidates and build a strong pipeline of potential hires for both types of jobs.
Evergreen Jobs
Generally, evergreen jobs are hard to hire so following the “LinkedIn Recruiter” framework will be essential in becoming more efficient in recruiting these types of roles. However, the most important thing that you can do when recruiting evergreen jobs is to build a healthy pipeline. What do I mean with this?
In LinkedIn Recruiter, you can create a “project” for the evergreen jobs so that you can build and iterate your searches for this talent pool and add in the candidates which are a good match. As you start doing this, you will build a pipeline of candidates who you find interesting.
The goal is to have a set of candidates that you can hire quickly when needs arise. Let me repeat that.
The goal of creating an evergreen job pipeline is to have a set of candidates that you can hire quickly when needs arise.
Why is this important? Because if we have been proactive in our sourcing of candidates, we have already done half to work when a new head count comes to your desk.
So how do you do this? The easiest way to start a search on LinkedIn is to look for the “Ideal Candidate” function in LinkedIn Recruiter. This allows you to pick a person within your company and let LinkedIn Recruiter create an initial search based on the profile of this ideal candidate. As an example, when I set myself as the “ideal candidate” LinkedIn created a list of 1,300 people like me.
If you want to dive deeper you start using all the filters available on LinkedIn to add more specificity into your search.
The more specific you get, the more of a match your candidate will be which, in turn, means fewer options so remember to save the best candidates to your pipeline as you go.
Adhoc Jobs
The issue when we have to hire someone on an adhoc basis is that, by definition, we are in a reactive state. This means that we, most likely, will not be able to avail of the LinkedIn ecosystem to be more successful nor do we have a pipeline of candidates to go from. This is the most challenging type of hire a recruiter can do.
The suggestion from LinkedIn is to start wide and then narrow down your search.
The best way to find your ideal candidates is to create a new separate project in LinkedIn recruiter and then build up a search based on priorities.
One of the worst things you can do is to search for 1 title and 1 location because, most likely, you will already be very limited. It is better to start in the other end. What are our priorities or “must haves” of the candidates?
- Does the candidate need to speak a certain language?
- Does the candidate need a specific skill?
- Does the candidate need any industry experience?
By starting your search with your “must haves” you are automatically creating a list of candidates who have what you require of them. Once you have filled in your “must haves” you can narrow down the talent pool with preferred qualifications in order to create a higher degree of specificity.
Since this is an adhoc (one time) job, the best thing you can do is to start moving people down the pipeline as soon as possible because the faster you move candidates down your hiring funnel, the quicker you can fill your role.
You do not want to be stuck in the first sourcing phase for weeks without any results.
Now that you have created a pipeline for your jobs, you need to start contacting your candidates so that you can eventually get to hiring a top candidate. The best way to maximise your results is to be in contact with people who have a company connection or who have engaged with your talent brand.
LinkedIn estimates that these people are 81% more likely to respond to you compared to all other candidates.
Since you want to be 81% more efficient reaching out to your candidates, we will take a deep dive into how you can build out your employer branding in the best way in the next edition so stay tuned and I will see you all again soon.
If you or someone you know works with LinkedIn to recruit, please subscribe to the blog and share it with you friends and colleagues. If you need help with your recruiting on LinkedIn, feel free follow me on LinkedIn so that you can send me a message.
#TheLinkedInRecruiter #EmployerBranding #LinkedInJobs #LinkedInStrategy #JustJacob
Type your email…
Subscribe
