LinkedIn has had a profound impact on recruiting and talent acquisition over the past 15 years. As the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 530 million members, LinkedIn provides recruiters access to a massive database of potential candidates. Additionally, LinkedIn offers powerful targeting, messaging and analytical tools that have transformed the recruiting experience. Here’s a look at some of the key ways LinkedIn has changed recruiting.
Wider Reach of Potential Candidates
With over 530 million members, LinkedIn provides recruiters access to one of the largest databases of professional talent in the world. Recruiters can search LinkedIn’s extensive member profiles to find candidates based on location, education, skills, job titles and other parameters. This gives recruiters a much wider reach than traditional job boards or employee referrals alone. According to LinkedIn, there are over 30 million students and recent college graduates, over 80 million millennials and over 10 million CEOs and founders on the platform. This broad access allows recruiters to tap into both active and passive talent across the globe.
Targeted Advertising
LinkedIn’s sophisticated targeting capabilities allow recruiters to serve highly relevant job advertisements to members who match their ideal candidate profile. Recruiters can target audiences by geography, education, experience, skills, job title and other demographics. Furthermore, LinkedIn captures intent data based on member’s profile views, content engagement and other actions to target ads to users more likely to respond. The platform offers robust analytics on ad performance including applicant quality, cost per click and return on investment. This level of targeting and data enables recruiters to optimize their sourcing strategy.
Access to Passive Candidates
One of LinkedIn’s biggest assets is the ability to access and engage passive candidates who are not actively job searching. According to LinkedIn, 40% of their members are open to new job opportunities. Recruiters can search profiles using keywords to identify candidates who may not be looking, but whose background matches the role requirements. Recruiters can reach out directly through customized InMail messages or work with the company’s marketing team to promote the employer brand to these passive prospects. Tapping into this passive talent significantly expands the potential talent pool.
Recruiter Features
LinkedIn offers several specialized features and tools for recruiters to aid the hiring process:
- Recruiter Lite/Premium subscriptions provide benefits like InMail, candidate search filters and profile visibility.
- LinkedIn Recruiter allows sourcing candidate right from a LinkedIn profile.
- LinkedIn Jobs organizes job posts and applicant tracking in one place.
- LinkedIn Scheduler enables recruiters to book meetings with prospects through seamless calendar integration.
- Integrations with applicant tracking systems (ATS) accelerate workflow.
Candidate Insights
LinkedIn profiles provide far richer insights into a candidate compared to a traditional resume. Recruiters can review the full work history, education, skills, recommendations, honors, volunteer work, publications and other details. This provides a more complete picture of the candidate’s experience and capabilities.
Verifying Candidate Credentials
LinkedIn provides several ways for recruiters to verify a candidate’s credentials and background:
- Employment and education listed in the profile can often be cross-checked on company and university pages.
- Recommendations and endorsements help validate skills and experience claims.
- Many members have earned badges for passing LinkedIn skills assessments.
- Premium accounts allow recruiters to check profile viewing history and activity.
Talent Brand Building
Beyond a sourcing tool, LinkedIn provides a prime channel for organizations to build their talent brand. Some key ways recruiters can boost their employer brand on LinkedIn include:
- Creating an eye-catching company page with key employer branding messages, employee photos and videos.
- Encouraging employees to engage on LinkedIn by sharing company content.
- Promoting company culture and values through status updates, articles and posts.
- Responding to comments and messages on the company page.
- Leveraging targeted LinkedIn ads to reach more potential talent.
- Partnering with brand ambassadors and influencers to spread awareness.
Competitive Intelligence
The abundance of professional data on LinkedIn also enables recruiters to gain useful competitive intelligence, such as:
- Identifying companies competing for similar talent.
- Monitoring key hires made by competitors.
- Analyzing competitor employee turnover rates.
- Researching competitor employer brands.
- Discovering skill gaps based on employees’ listed expertise.
These insights help recruiters develop more effective talent strategies.
Analytics and Reporting
From job views and applications to source-of-hire and ROI, LinkedIn provides recruiters access to a wealth of recruiting data. Recruiters can leverage this data to identify top sources of quality talent, calculate cost per hire metrics, optimize job post targeting and demonstrate recruiting impact.
Access to Future Talent
LinkedIn allows recruiters to connect with the next generation of talent through programs like LinkedIn Campus. This provides access to college students across the country through campus groups. Recruiters can post jobs, share company content and build brand awareness amongst students. Some additional ways LinkedIn provides access to future talent include:
- Connecting with student groups and alumni associations.
- Partnering with university career centers.
- Supporting student clubs and organizations.
- Participating in on-campus events and job fairs.
- Promoting internship and graduate opportunities.
Nurturing these relationships provides a pipeline of emerging talent.
Diversity Hiring Initiatives
LinkedIn has launched several inclusion-focused programs to help organizations attract and engage diverse talent. For example:
- #LinkedInLife – Ongoing program spotlighting diverse voices and perspectives.
- University Recruiting Programs – Partnerships to connect companies with students from underrepresented groups.
- Events and Coaching – Conferences, workshops and coaching to empower diverse talent.
- Content Amplification – Free amplified distribution of company diversity content.
These initiatives make LinkedIn an invaluable resource for diversity and inclusion efforts.
Access to Niche Talent Pools
LinkedIn enables recruiters to tap into niche talent pools through targeted searching and advertising. Some examples include:
- Veterans – Over 3 million veterans have identified themselves on LinkedIn.
- Healthcare – There are over 10 million healthcare professionals on LinkedIn.
- Technology – LinkedIn is used by over 90 million software developers and IT professionals.
- Sales – Close to 40 million members are in sales professions.
This opens up specialized talent that is often hard to find.
Professional Development Opportunities
LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda) provides over 16,000 online courses to empower talent development. Some ways recruiters leverage LinkedIn Learning include:
- Providing free access to candidates to upskill.
- Offering subscriptions to new hires for onboarding and ramp up.
- Building employee retention with development opportunities.
- Personalizing learning paths based on skills gaps.
- Curating multi-course playlists for leadership, IT, sales and more.
These development opportunities can attract and retain quality talent.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn has transformed several core aspects of recruiting:
- Massively expanded talent reach from a centralized candidate database.
- Enabled targeted advertising and precision sourcing capabilities.
- Provided access to passive candidates open to new roles.
- Delivered specialized tools and analytics for streamlined workflows.
- Unlocked richer candidate insights for datadriven hiring.
- Created networking effects benefiting both recruiters and members.
With LinkedIn’s continued growth and innovation, recruiters can leverage the platform in new ways to find, engage and attract the people that matter most to their organizations.