Recruiting new employees isn’t limited to unemployed professionals or recent graduates entering the workforce, either. According to a 2015 survey from The Adler Group, 5 to 20 percent of employed professionals are actively pursuing a new opportunity. “Tiptoers” make up around 15 to 20 percent, and another 65 to 75 percent are open to listening to new opportunities. That means at least 85 percent of all employed professionals are willing to listen to you if you have an interesting opportunity for them. Knowing that, you have a pretty good chance of landing some quality candidates for your open positions.
If that isn’t enough for you, in a 2017 survey done by LinkedIn, an incredible 88 percent of all Fortune 500 companies said they use LinkedIn as their primary recruiting tool. A commercial for LinkedIn Jobs on a local radio station that said a job is filled every ten seconds with candidates found on LinkedIn.
Knowing that more than 80 percent of all employed professionals are willing to listen to your opportunity, how can you find these candidates? When you do find them, how can you narrow your search to approach only the very best ones?
HARNESS THE POWER OF YOUR SEARCH
In Chapter 8, we covered LinkedIn Search in great detail. Let’s take a moment to refresh your memory, so you’ll know how to find your ideal candidates in seconds.
Let’s say you’re an in-house recruiter at a biotech firm, and you’re looking for a director of quality to create, implement, and oversee quality systems in your company. Your minimum job requirements are:
■ Minimum eight years of experience in quality assurance for a human or animal drug company
■ Substantial knowledge of cGMP requirements for multiple dosage forms along with prior experience in supplier qualification
■ Additional experience in GDPs and/or GLPs (preferred)
■ Excellent communicator and team player with the ability to proactively address and lead resolution of compliance issues internally and with external partners and contractors
■ 25 percent travel
I don’t have a subscription to LinkedIn Talent Solutions, so let’s go to the basic LinkedIn search and see if we can find some candidates. Make sure you are set to people search, and modify the search parameters as follows:
1. In the Title field, enter “Director of Quality” if you are looking for someone who currently holds that position or held it in the past.
2. Change Industries from its default setting of All Industries to just Biotechnology.
3. Leave all other options at their default settings.
Figure 17–1 on page 187 shows what your Advanced Search should look like to get your first pass search results. If you want to narrow your search geographically, you can change Locations to your area or within 50, 100, or 150 miles of your location.
Of course, you can modify your search parameters further to narrow or widen your search, but first take a look at these preliminary results. As you can see in Figure 17–2 on page 187, you have found 1,965 directors of quality in the biotech field with just one search. Not all of them are looking for a job, but I bet at least a few would be open to a new opportunity if it sounded interesting.
FIGURE 17–1. LinkedIn People Search
FIGURE 17–2. Biotech Preliminary Search Results
Before you start reaching out to some of these people, try narrowing your search a bit to see if you can pin down the more-qualified candidates. Remember: Your qualifications included eight-plus years of experience and substantial knowledge of cGMP requirements for multiple dosage forms, so try adding “cGMP” to your search criteria in the Keywords field and Director of Quality in the Title field.
Now you have only 376 results, which is much better than having to dig through nearly 2,000 candidates. The next step is to start looking at the profiles of these remaining prospects to see if they are actively looking for work. That information may be displayed in their profile headlines. If you have a subscription to Talent Solutions, you can search for people who have turned on the option in their profile that lets recruiters know you are interested in new positions. To turn this option on in your profile, go to Settings & Privacy, select the Privacy tab, and scroll down to Job Seeking Preferences (see Figure 17–3). Setting Let Recruiters Know You’re Open to Opportunities to Yes will not display it publicly on your profile (so your current employer won’t know), but recruiters will be able to see it.
If your search returns some LinkedIn members who are interested in career opportunities or who look like a great fit for your job opening, you have a few options at this point:
■ Send them InMail to introduce yourself. Don’t start out by asking them if they are looking for a new position or you may scare them away—even if their profiles say they’re interested in new opportunities. Tell them you came across their profile and saw something that caught your attention. Find something unique, like an award they won, interesting certifications, schools they attended, etc. You can ask them about it or congratulate them. Try to establish a relationship, so you can get to know them and see if they are a good fit for your organization. If you mention things you have in common, they will be more likely to respond to you.
FIGURE 17–3. Changing Your Job Seeking Preferences
■ Join Groups they belong to so you can send messages directly. At the beginning of the messages, state that you belong to the same Group and you thought they might be interested in an opportunity at your company. If you are a recruiter, I highly recommend joining Groups related to your industry and participating frequently so people get to know your name. If they see you posting regularly in the forum, they are more likely to respond to your messages even if they’ve never corresponded with you in the past. This is a very effective and inexpensive way for small businesses to recruit new employees.
■ If they are 2nd-degree connections of yours, find out who in your network is a 1st-degree connection between you and ask for an introduction. You can also ask your 1st-degree connection what they think of them to help determine if they would be a good fit for your company.
■ If they have enabled the Open Profile feature, any LinkedIn member can send regular messages to any Premium member without having to use InMail. Members who use Open Profile are generally open to people reaching out to them with job opportunities. As I’ve said many times before, you joined LinkedIn to be found, so take full advantage of all the available tools to gain more visibility. Most people join LinkedIn to grow their professional network. Unless your company requires you to limit your visibility, I highly recommend raising your profile as much as you can. No matter how happy you are at your current job, there are always bigger and better opportunities out there, so be open to the possibility, and let LinkedIn help you!
In Chapter 9, I went into great detail about the importance of keywords when searching on LinkedIn and how to choose the best ones for you. Now is a good time to review that section and create a list of keywords that will help you find your ideal candidates. Once you create a search that returns quality candidates, don’t forget to save it so you can use it again and again to fill open positions.
TIPS TO HELP YOUR RECRUITING EFFORT
For recruiting tips, look at the LinkedIn Talent Blog at http://talent.linkedin.com/blog. LinkedIn’s various blogs teach you more about the solutions the site provides and new features and tools as they are released. Here are some recruiting tips culled from various Talent Blog posts:
■ If you are a recruiter looking for talent on LinkedIn, make sure your own profile is in order. Check to see that your profile is at All-Star level, including your three recommendations. When you reach out to candidates, they are going to check out your profile to get to know you and your company, so make sure you give a great first impression.
■ Make sure the employees in your company complete their profiles, including their recommendations. When a candidate researches your organization, you want to present a professional image from top to bottom. It makes a great impression on candidates when they see a lot of re
commendations on your employees’ profiles. Encourage your teams to get as many glowing recommendations as possible so your candidates see that your company hires only top-notch people. Make sure they get a variety from past and current positions, not just from current co-workers, which can look suspicious.
■ Create a company page on LinkedIn and fill it out completely. Active candidates will visit your company page to get to know your company and its culture. You can set up a company page for free or invest in a premium account to add more features. See Chapter 7 for more about LinkedIn Pages or go to https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/linkedin-pages.
■ Join Groups related to your business and industry. Be an active participant and have your company’s employees do the same. When someone sees a lot of people from one company engaged in intelligent group discussions on LinkedIn, they will get a good impression of your company and the quality of your employees.
■ Search posts, Groups, and profiles to find the best candidates. Use the search features to help narrow down your search and save your best search templates in Saved Searches if you have a subscription to Talent Solutions or Sales Navigator. If you are recruiting new employees on a regular basis, invest in a subscription; being able to save your searches will save you a lot of time and effort.
■ All these tips are effective whether you are an in-house recruiter or work for a staffing firm. You always want to be on the lookout for quality candidates and keep your pipeline full. The key to success is consistency—whether it’s searching through profiles, Groups, and posts for candidates or building your professional network—so you are always just one invitation away from a candidate or hiring manager. As a recruiter, you want to build your network as large as possible to help cast a wider net. It’s all about quantity when you are recruiting employees, but you also want to build a network of quality contacts who can send you referrals or introduce you to potential candidates.
Of course, you can manually search LinkedIn and still find great candidates, but it’s very tedious and time-consuming. The LinkedIn Recruiter subscription will automate most of your recruiting tasks, saving you precious time, and can filter out the very best candidates based on their work experience and education.
LINKEDIN RECRUITER
This premium subscription is designed for corporate recruiters in large companies who are constantly searching for the best talent. LinkedIn Recruiter is the equivalent of Sales Navigator, the advanced tool for sales professionals. In Recruiter, you can create advanced searches for candidates which run 24/7. As Recruiter learns your ideal candidates, it offers Smart Suggestions for similar candidates.
The LinkedIn Recruiter dashboard, as you see in Figure 17–4, provides a comprehensive snapshot of your recruiting activities. The easy-to-navigate menu lets you quickly access your recruiting projects, a clipboard where you create and save job postings and notes, your posted jobs, reports, and more options. In the newsfeed section, you see real-time updates with new applicants, job posting status, and saved search results. In the right column, LinkedIn recommends potential candidates in the People You May Want to Hire widget. You also see Project Activity and Job Activity in separate right-column widgets.
Most of LinkedIn’s revenue comes from recruiting, so it’s constantly improving the dashboard and adding new features to ensure you’re finding the best candidates for your company.
Next we’ll explore LinkedIn’s dashboard for job seekers. This is where your job postings will appear if you’re a recruiter, so it’s a great idea to get familiar with it. Here, you see how your postings stack up against your competitors and how appealing your job postings appear to potential job candidates.
FIGURE 17–4. The LinkedIn Recruiter Dashboard
FINDING A JOB
When you are looking for a new job, you can select Jobs from the main menu or visit https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/. This is LinkedIn’s advanced search tool that helps you find and apply for your new position.
For job seekers, targeted jobs are displayed on the sidebar of their LinkedIn homepage and other LinkedIn pages in the Jobs You May Be Interested In widget, as shown in Figure 17–5. LinkedIn scans your current and previous job titles, companies you’ve worked for, and the keywords in your profile to automatically match you up with potential jobs.
As I mentioned earlier, according to a 2015 survey from The Adler Group, an average of 18 percent of employed workers are actively looking for a new job. Another 70 percent are willing to explore new opportunities even though they aren’t actively looking. By using LinkedIn, companies can expand their search to passive candidates through the Jobs You May Be Interested In widget. Letting LinkedIn members see what other opportunities are out there creates a phenomenon in which your job postings find the best candidates, relieving some of the burden borne by your recruiters.
With job openings constantly but subtly displayed on the LinkedIn sidebar, you can’t help but notice and become curious when you see certain job titles or companies you might want to work for. It’s almost subliminal advertising: The jobs don’t appear in the center of your screen; you just notice them out of the corner of your eye.
FIGURE 17–5. Jobs You May Be Interested In
As you see jobs that may interest you, you can click on them to see if any are promising enough to investigate further. If you aren’t interested but know a friend or colleague who might be, you can forward the job to her LinkedIn inbox—assuming they are a connection—or share the job opening on Facebook or Twitter. This is a huge benefit to companies, giving their job openings publicity at no additional cost. If you post a job opening at your company, it can be seen by millions of people on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, increasing the chances you will find an outstanding candidate.
Companies that post jobs on LinkedIn can measure their impact through the site’s job analytics, which are the equivalent of Google Analytics for your website. When you use Google Analytics to monitor your website, you learn how many visitors you have, how long they stay, what pages they visited, and what they downloaded or purchased. You can also find detailed demographic information like what country, state, city, or ZIP code they live in. This information is invaluable to a website owner. LinkedIn’s job analytics help companies understand exactly which types of candidates your job postings are reaching and let you see who’s viewing your jobs by role, company, geography, and more to ensure you’re reaching the best professionals. If you are not reaching the right people, you can adjust the title, change the wording in the job description, or reconfigure to whom you are targeting in the job search. Without these analytics, you would know you are not attracting the right candidates because their experience or skill sets weren’t right for the job, but you wouldn’t know why. This will save you a lot of time and help you fill your positions faster with better candidates.
Candidates can find your job postings by searching jobs, but you can also “push” your open positions to qualified candidates using LinkedIn tools like Career Pages and Job Slots.
Spreading the Word About Your Job Postings
You can purchase a recruiting program called LinkedIn Job Slots, which is an automated tool that places your job openings in front of qualified candidates throughout LinkedIn for 30 day periods or until the job is filled. Job slots allow you to:
■ Change your job posting as often as you like—even daily, if necessary.
■ Easily renew and keep a position open on LinkedIn for longer than 30 days.
■ Receive up to 50 real-time candidate recommendations per post.
■ Streamline the job posting process with integrated third-party job distributors so your job listing gets maximum exposure on the internet.
■ Pull job postings from your website into LinkedIn automatically through Job Wrapping, which is an additional cost. Job Wrapping is a proprietary technology created by LinkedIn that automatically keeps your job postings in sync on your website and LinkedIn.
■ Send applicants straight t
o your applicant tracking system from LinkedIn. LinkedIn has developed many APIs and plug-ins that let you easily connect your recruiting systems with LinkedIn. You can find out more about the LinkedIn development tools at https://developer.linkedin.com/.
■ You can also add a third-party tracking URL to your job posting so you can track your results with your own analytics system, allowing you to easily track the success of your recruiting campaigns.
Have you ever come across the LinkedIn profile of the perfect candidate for one of your open positions or someone who is a “must-hire” for a high-profile role? LinkedIn has a service that lets you create a personalized outreach so that you can woo them to your company. Let’s look at LinkedIn Pipeline Builder.
LinkedIn Pipeline Builder
Pipeline Builder is a LinkedIn service that lets you reach out to perfect candidates with customized recruiting pipelines. Here’s how it works:
1. Identify a specific candidate and directly reach out to that person with personalized content and targeted ads.
2. The content and ads drive her to your personalized Pipeline Builder page.
3. The content on the Pipeline Builder page is designed to generate interest in your position.
4. Your targeted candidate can express interest in the position by clicking on a link, with no need to fill out an application.
5. You are notified of their interest, so you can reach out to them.
This is a very effective way to reach passive candidates who aren’t actively searching for a new position but are open to the possibility of changing jobs. LinkedIn uses a combination of your targeting criteria and data from a person’s profile to display your ads to the most qualified candidates. For example, engineers will see only your engineering jobs, and sales professionals will see only your sales jobs—even if they’re reading the sports section of an online newspaper.
Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business Page 17