No doubt if you’re working in the recruitment industry, you’ll be familiar with using LinkedIn, however as the landscape of recruitment continues to evolve at this current pace, you’ll have to be on your game to keep up to date with everything LinkedIn can offer and be ready for the next new tool they might conjure up for recruiters. If you’re new to the recruitment industry, you can hit the ground running and utilise all of the LinkedIn tools available to you from day 1.
What kind of changes are affecting the recruitment industry?
Well, we’ve discussed this fairly recently but here’s a couple of reminders:
The skills gap is of concern for many sectors, and is hindering growth and development for some. The speed of development in technology for example means that trained individual’s skills are becoming out of date much faster than ever before. These more highly skilled individuals will now be looking for development opportunities in their new roles, and recruiters should be looking at providing this; they then not only appeal as an invested employer but get their own pool and feed of the skilled individuals that they desire.
The Gig Economy is also changing the way recruiters have to compete for candidates; the gig economy is thriving because it allows for flexibility, in location for one, meaning candidates may be looking no longer regionally but nationally or internationally in line with their desire for flexibility. It also, perhaps obviously, means that staff turnover is going to increase for organisations and therefore increase work for recruiters, as the gig economy promotes temp workers.
For more trends in 2018 see our blog on recruitment trends.
So how might LinkedIn step up it’s game in line with the industry’s rapid development?
There is speculation, for good reason, that LinkedIn may follow, Facebook, twitter, instagram, and introduce a ‘live’ feature. Bringing an interactive feature will hopefully allow the social media savvy and tech enthusiasts a satisfactory tool on the platform.
Organisations and recruiters could really use this to their advantage in a number of ways; they can offer an insight to a company or organisation that they previously wouldn’t have been able to, introducing candidates to an office environment or showcasing an employer. It would also be a great way to introduce yourself as an expert in your field with daily or weekly live sessions. However you might choose to use it, it certainly opens up your options of how to engage with candidates.
For candidates it would mean that they could showcase their own skills, get their personality across and have a more effective impact upon their desired employer.
Linkedin announced a new notifications feature in December, meaning that candidates can receive notifications on trending skills which similarly qualified individuals possess, encouraging them to add to their own profiles, making a more informed pool for recruiters to choose from.
How would a chatbot who helped you and your potential candidate arrange a time to meet by comparing your calendars and suggesting a time sound? Introduced by Linkedin, with the aim of expanding to offer more than just job search tools, but helping the entire interview and hiring process.
Are you getting the most out of LinkedIn?
Start with the basics, LinkedIn takes you through what you should be providing in your linkedIn profile, whether this be a business page or a personal one, fill it all in, connect what you need to connect, urls etc and add employees and founders or employers; the basics.
Then, make it keyword rich, candidates search for keywords, not necessarily for specific companies, so get your profile, company or personal, appropriately scattered with relevant keywords.
Get visual and include relevant images and if you have them videos, it’s a powerful tool.
“Online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020” (CISCO, 2016)
LinkedIn now allows native video too, so apply the above to your posts as well. LinkedIn is a form of social media, so your content needs to have quality, be consistent and engaging, so incorporate video into this, a variety is good but if video can be part of it then that’s great!
Publish your own blogs or articles, using LinkedIn’s own publishing tool. Offer yourself or organisation as an expert to increase brand awareness, and help to drive traffic to your profile.
Take note of the trending topics that LinkedIn announced last year, allowing you to see what your connections and industry is discussing, so you can post and interact accordingly.
Make the most of the tools you have at your fingertips and keep up with future changes to stay ahead of the game.
