Using LinkedIn to Recruit Passive Candidates? Yep!

It’s a fact that companies are still filling 80% of their jobs with active candidates – candidates who are actively seeking other employment. Yet, most of the A-playing talent is found within the passive pool, a much smaller pool. How in the world will you be able to hire quality passive candidates if they are not applying for jobs? The most valuable and effective tool for finding and communicating with passive candidates is LinkedIn!

After reading this tidbit of interesting information; how many of you have been in or have known someone in that very same position? They are brought onto a job into a position that is more or less meant to be a mere stepping stone for what they truly want? Honestly; how many of us can say that we have never been at that same position?

LinkedIn is one sure-fire way to locate those prime-candidates that are not actively seeking other employment. It's as if you are walking around outside the local restaurant, not paying attention, and "OH!" there is a $20 bill that is off to the side, stuck in a bush. Now, you weren't looking for a $20 bill, and oh what an odd occurence that you have found one minus the effort. LinkedIn is your bush to find your $20 bill...uh...candidate.


The quoted first paragraph is from Strategic Advisor, Jennifer Millman.

20 Reasons Why LinkedIn Will Be the #1 Recruiting Portal of the Future

If you are a corporate recruiter and you're looking for a database or source that includes a large percentage of passive prospects, by a longshot LinkedIn is simply alone at the top. It is superior for many additional reasons, including that its profiles are accurate and consistent, it allows your employees to find quality potential referrals, and it enables a firm to conduct phenomenal talent management research.

1. It has a high passive to active member ratio – One of the primary differences between a good and a great recruiting source is the ratio of passive over active prospects that populate it. Although both types of prospects are desirable, those who are not actively looking for a job (the so-called passives) are much harder to find and communicate with. If your target is active job seekers, you must realize that in a tight labor market, they don’t require advanced direct sourcing techniques to identify and sell them on applying. With little more than a job posting, they will find you on job boards or your career site. But if you’re seeking the roughly 80% of prospects who are not actively looking for a job, you have fewer sourcing choices because they will not look at job announcements or visit career sites. But fortunately, these employed and not-looking individuals comprise the majority of LinkedIn members. There are other communities dominated by non-lookers (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) but LinkedIn is superior because its content focuses exclusively on professional contacts, sharing, and communication. Without the high percentage of “information clutter” from pictures, small talk, and family matters found on other sites, recruiters on LinkedIn have less information sorting to do. Obviously finding top employed prospects alone is only the first step in sourcing; you will also have to contact, build a relationship, and work hard to convince these non-lookers to even consider a job opportunity. After the connection is made, LinkedIn is not the best relationship-building or communications tool, so supplemental prospect research may be required including creating “Google alerts” on individuals and of course, direct communications and relationship building through e-mail, text, voice, Facebook, or Twitter.
2. The number of members continues to increase – Because of its professional focus and its many uses outside of recruiting, it has become a standard practice for most professionals to have a profile on LinkedIn. In fact, one of its strengths is that its members can be visible on LinkedIn without being suspected of looking for a job. As LinkedIn has added more professional features (i.e. answers, groups, events, etc.) employees have even more professional reasons for joining, expanding the percentage of members who are currently not active job seekers. Having a profile does, however, provide the added benefit of making a person “visible” to recruiters. So even if you’re not actively looking, having a profile will provide you with an opportunity to be periodically “found”, so that at the very least you will know if you’re still marketable.
3. Its database quality can be verified – Although LinkedIn has more than 150 million users, volume doesn’t always mean quality, so you always need to verify the quality of the membership of any prospect database. The best way to verify quality is to use your own employees as a benchmark measure. First, make a list of your very best performers in a high-volume key job at your firm. Then check the LinkedIn database to see what percentage of your best employees are found in a search of their database (you can do the same analysis for your worst employees). Then compare the percentage of your top performers found on LinkedIn with the ratio of your top performers found on other sites including large job boards, referral sites, Facebook, and Twitter. Don’t be surprised when you find that the highest percentage of your top performers are found on LinkedIn.
4. It is referral-friendly – The most effective recruiting source both in volume and quality are employee referrals, so any sourcing option becomes more valuable if your employees will regularly use it find referrals. Because LinkedIn has many features that are not related to job search, your employees probably already frequent LinkedIn to benchmark, to gain mentors, to ask questions and to learn. LinkedIn makes it easy for your employees to identify and connect with others in the same profession that may eventually become an employee referral. Recruiters, who have a broader access to the entire LinkedIn database, can also “suggest” names within LinkedIn that an employee may want to build a relationship with in the hope of eventually making them a referral.
5. Its profiles are easily comparable and searchable – Because resumes come in dozens of different formats, they are a nightmare to search and compare side-by-side. LinkedIn profiles are consistent, meaning that they all contain the same format in every profile. This consistency makes it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to compare different prospects side by side on the same factors. LinkedIn makes it easy to search their database on a variety of topics including industry, connections, current and previous companies, job title, location, profession, and education. LinkedIn also provides targeted updates and follower statistics which allow you to limit and target the updates that you receive.
6. Its profiles are accurate – Research has shown that LinkedIn profiles can be more accurate than resumes. Because their profiles are seen by so many colleagues and individuals (many of whom would’ve attended the same schools and worked at the same organization), it’s much harder for an individual to “get by” with a profile that contains inaccurate information. LinkedIn profiles are also more likely to be up-to-date than resumes, in part because LinkedIn will periodically encourage you to keep improving and updating your profile.
7. LinkedIn can help you identify when someone is about to begin looking – Smart recruiters can learn that certain actions by an individual may “signal” that they are about to enter “job search mode.” The signals might include updating their profile, joining new groups, becoming a LinkedIn answer “top expert” or increasing other networking activities. Contacting a targeted individual who in the past has expressed no interest in a job may get a completely different result when they are considering entering job search mode. And if you get there early, you will likely encounter little recruiting competition.
8. LinkedIn makes it easy to apply – Allowing individuals to apply instantly for a job without having to update their resume is a powerful advantage. Some firms are beginning to use a LinkedIn profile (at least initially) as a substitute for a resume. One way to do that is to add an “Apply with LinkedIn” button to your job postings.
9. It has a job-posting capability – LinkedIn makes it easy to post and distribute current job openings to both types of prospects. When you are seeking active candidates, use LinkedIn job postings as a supplement to your normal job-posting channels.
10. It provides recommendations and facilitates introductions – If you need additional information on a prospect, LinkedIn provides a recommendations feature, which although subjective, it can provide additional insights into the individual and what others have experienced when working with them. LinkedIn also has an “introduction” feature that allows an employee to introduce a recruiter or another colleague to one of their contacts.
11. It facilitates event recruiting – Professional events can be a great place to recruit and the LinkedIn events tool has a limited capacity to help you learn what current professional events are being attended by your target audience. It can also be used to publicize your own events.
12. It includes executive search capability — Because many executives have LinkedIn profiles, the LinkedIn database may allow your internal recruiters to replace some external executive searches.

In addition to direct sourcing, there are many other reasons to use LinkedIn.

1. A powerful talent management research capability — Perhaps the most unique feature of LinkedIn is that it provides you with the ability to conduct talent management research. For example, LinkedIn is the only database that allows you to identify which firms are hiring and which individuals got hired there. Research can also help you measure the turnover at a particular firm, and more importantly which firm those people turning over immediately moved on to. The research capability also allows you to find out whether the number of individuals in a particular job title at a firm are increasing or decreasing and whether employees at a particular firm are being promoted internally. If you’re interested in strategic recruiting, internal movement, and retention patterns, there is really no alternative to LinkedIn.
2. It offers many professional learning groups – Although many think of LinkedIn as a recruiting tool, it is also evolving into a professional learning and sharing site. There are more than a million professional groups that employees and recruiters can use to learn and share. The site allows you to create your own group or join an existing functionally targeted professional group (e.g. The Recruiter Network). A group may include thousands of members, so in addition to the obvious prospect identification goal, LinkedIn groups can provide frequent opportunities for employees to share ideas and to test new approaches. Because LinkedIn is more professional than social, you are less likely to get bogged down in a lot of outside of work conversations in their groups.
3. It provides an easy reference snapshot – In addition to recruiting, LinkedIn is a widely used reference source for quickly getting to know an individual. Many professionals use LinkedIn to get a quick snapshot of a stranger who contacted them or an individual whose name they come across while reading. With permission, it is also possible to conduct 360° reference check surveys among the connections of an individual you are considering hiring.
4. It supports employer brand building – Building a strong employer brand is essential if you want to eventually attract the very best. LinkedIn provides the capability for firms to create their own “company page” and to populate the page with materials that help to build their employment brand. Individual employees can also send updates to their connections with links to relevant articles, news items, and blogs, which taken together may also help to strengthen your employer brand. The company page can also be used to highlight your company’s products and services.
5. It allows you to poll – LinkedIn provides the capability of polling a large number of individuals on professional issues. Not only will polls provide you with valuable and current information but they will also signal to others that you (the poll sponsor) are a key information source on that topic.
6. It is integrated with many other services – LinkedIn is integrated with sites like SlideShare, you can also view the presentation work of an individual prospect who you are interested in. LinkedIn allows you to link with blogs of your choice and it is at least partially integrated with many other vendors including Twitter, Taleo, Amazon, and Windows Live Messenger, just to name a few.
7. It allows InMail for communications – LinkedIn has its own internal e-mail tool for sending messages. However, unless your messages are scripted perfectly, you can’t expect fast responses or a high response rate on your InMails. In addition, if you make the mistake of frequently spamming messages or job postings, your response rate will quickly degrade.
8. It provides an advertising capability – Although its advertising approach is not as strong as other portals, LinkedIn provides the capability of strategically placing ads covering your products or jobs. 

Additional reasons for using LinkedIn 
Some other miscellaneous reasons associated with using LinkedIn include:

• LinkedIn is relatively easy to learn and master by recruiters and even hiring managers.
• Is relatively inexpensive to use, even with its advanced features.
• If some of your employees are well-connected on LinkedIn, your recruiters may be able to piggyback on their contacts in order to get immediate sourcing results.
• LinkedIn is continually growing and becoming more global.
• Their answers tool can allow your employees to showcase their skills and solutions by answering the questions posed exclusively by individuals their network.
• It can also double as a sales lead building tool.
• Incidentally, if you’re looking for a job, contacting recruiters directly through LinkedIn isn’t the best approach.

LinkedIn seems to be on the "continual-growing" path, and if it does indeed continue to rise in popularity and garner acclaimed attention; it won't be long before "not-looking" professionals will be using the database for sourcing needs.

A Suitor for MONSTER.com!

Monster CEO and Board Chairman Sal Iannuzzi said, “At a certain price, anything’s for sale.” As to the buyer, Iannuzzi told Bloomberg it is less important and he said at the time, “The real issue is we know we have value, and we know we can go around and look for opportunities to get that.”

Apparently, the social-networking monster (no pun intended), LinkedIn, is considering purchasing the grossly-popular job board/search engine, Monster.com/Monster Worldwide. According to sources close to the situation, LinkedIn and Silver Lake Partners are two of “a broad range of strategic and financial buyers” who are weighing Monster as a potential acquisition target. Now, LinkedIn is only one of many suitors looking to acquire Monster Worldwide. An acquisition by LinkedIn has been rumored as Monster’s stock price continued to produce less than desirable notice. The social network for professionals competes directly with some of Monster’s products (notably the job posting and resume search business) but some Monster’s other technologies like the semantic search product SeeMore and Facebook networking platform, BeKnown might be an attractive piece in addition to an influx new customers.

Businesses, Social Networks, Recruiting

EMarketer posted an interesting article about companies using and not using social media networks in their recruitment. Listed as the highest use and hiring rate was LinkedIn, followed by Facebook and Twitter (although quite lower in effectiveness.)

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007811

INTERNET - Tripling Traffic to Your Careers Site With a Facebook Account?

This was a great article posted on ere.net that covered Sodexo's entry into the world of social networking and their success. What are your thoughts on your company's stance towards social networking? How do your competitors stand? A few days ago I saw an article posted about Amegy Bank of Texas and their policy never to use social networking for the recruitment process. What are your thoughts on this policy?

http://www.ere.net/2009/04/21/tripling-traffic-to-your-careers-site-with-a-facebook-account/

SOCIAL NETWORKING - LinkedIn To Launch Its Own Ad Network

LinkedIn is now offering a new way to reach out to their potential target markets available to marketers and recruiters.

The difference in what is becoming available is the ability to specially target your message based on information that is not readily available through open profiles. Information include industry, gender, job function, company size, and geography lend themselves to the ability to produce highly targeted messages to audiences.

This is a great chance for recruiters to specifically target candidates in their geographic area and within specific industries while closely watching their ad dollars.

LinkedIn is on the rise within the social networking circles and continues to carve out its niche as the place for business networking, leaving Facebook, MySpace, and Classmates to high school friends. Plans are for multi-language versions of LinkedIn to begin rolling out in additional international markets within the year. Plans for mobile applications are in the works as well.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=90566

VIDEO - What is LinkedIn?

This is a great explanation of the business social networking site known as LinkedIn.
Feel free to find and connect with our Patriot Advertising staff on there!



LinkedIn also offers great potential when reaching out to potential candidates and checking out references.