Does LinkedIn Recruiter come with talent insights?

LinkedIn Recruiter is LinkedIn’s recruitment software that helps companies source, manage, and hire top talent. One of the key features of LinkedIn Recruiter is the ability to gain insights into potential candidates based on their LinkedIn profiles and activity.

Talent Insights in LinkedIn Recruiter

The Talent Insights feature in LinkedIn Recruiter provides recruiters with data-driven information about potential candidates to help them make smarter hiring decisions. Here are some of the talent insights available in LinkedIn Recruiter:

• Skills insights – See the top skills for any candidate and how their skills compare to others in similar roles
• Education insights – View a candidate’s educational background and how it compares to others
• Experience insights – Understand a candidate’s experience level and tenure compared to industry benchmarks
• Interests insights – Gain visibility into a candidate’s interests to assess culture fit
• Groups insights – See professional groups and associations a candidate is part of
• Connections insights – View a candidate’s 1st and 2nd degree connections at your company

These talent insights help recruiters quickly identify and evaluate qualified candidates by providing a comprehensive view of their professional background and experience.

How Talent Insights Work in LinkedIn Recruiter

The talent insights in LinkedIn Recruiter are powered by LinkedIn’s massive professional network and database. Here is an overview of how the talent insights work:

• Candidate data – When candidates have public LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn Recruiter can pull in profile data, skills, experience, education, interests, connections, recommendations, and more.
• Comparison analysis – LinkedIn Recruiter analyzes the candidate’s data and compares it to benchmarks for similar candidates and roles.
• Insights generation – LinkedIn Recruiter’s algorithms process all this data to generate useful insights for recruiters to evaluate candidates.
• Presentation – The insights are presented in a visually appealing way within each candidate’s profile in Recruiter for easy consumption by recruiters.
• Updating – As candidates update their LinkedIn profiles, the insights stay up-to-date in real-time in Recruiter.

By leveraging LinkedIn’s data and analysis, the talent insights save recruiters time in candidate evaluation and provide a much more comprehensive view of each candidate beyond just their resumes.

Types of Talent Insights

Here is more detail on the different categories of talent insights available in LinkedIn Recruiter:

Skills Insights

With skills insights, recruiters can see a candidate’s self-listed skills on their LinkedIn profile compared to the skills required for the open position. Recruiters can quickly identify skill gaps and areas of strength for each candidate. Some examples of skills insights include:

• Top skills – The top 5-10 skills listed on the candidate’s LinkedIn profile
• Skill assessments – How the candidate’s skills compare to other applicants and benchmarks
• Missing skills – Skills required for the role that may be missing from the candidate’s profile
• Verified skills – Skills the candidate has taken a LinkedIn assessment to verify

Education Insights

Education insights provide details on the candidate’s academic background, including:

• Degrees obtained
• Fields of study
• Grade point average
• Academic honors and awards
• Study abroad experience
• Relevant coursework

This allows recruiters to analyze the quality and relevance of a candidate’s education.

Experience Insights

Experience insights give recruiters visibility into the depth and breadth of a candidate’s work history, such as:

• Length of experience in years
• Companies worked at
• Titles and roles
• Industries worked in
• Company size experience
• Leadership and management experience

This helps assess experience levels compared to role requirements.

Interests Insights

Interests insights show recruiters the types of interests, hobbies, passions, and extracurricular activities a candidate has listed on their profile, for example:

• Sports interests
• Music interests
• Food interests
• Travel interests
• Volunteering interests
• Academic interests

These interests can give recruiters a sense of the candidate’s personality and cultural fit.

Groups Insights

Groups insights display the professional associations, networking groups, industry groups, and LinkedIn groups that a candidate has joined. This provides visibility into communities and organizations the candidate is actively involved in.

Connections Insights

The connections insights show shared connections a candidate has at the hiring company. This allows recruiters to identify:

• 1st degree connections – Direct connections who can provide referrals/recommendations
• 2nd degree connections – Referrals in common
• Alumni connections – Went to the same school
• Coworker connections – Worked at the same company

Leveraging these connections can help engage candidates.

Benefits of Talent Insights for Recruiters

Here are some of the key benefits talent insights in LinkedIn Recruiter provide for recruiters and hiring managers:

• Saves time – Insights quickly surface candidate qualifications rather than requiring extensive profile review
• Data-driven hiring – Insights provide objective information for more informed, unbiased decisions
• Deeper evaluation – Go beyond the resume to evaluate candidates’ full experience and background
• Skills intelligence – Easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate’s skills
• Culture fit – Interests and groups provide signals about candidate’s personality and interests
• Internal connections – Leverage shared connections to engage candidates
• Benchmarking – Compare candidates to role requirements and industry benchmarks

Instead of relying solely on intuition, talent insights allow recruiters to incorporate data and insights into hiring decisions for better results.

Talent Insights vs. LinkedIn Recruiter Lite

Talent insights are only available with LinkedIn Recruiter Corporate and Enterprise packages. They are not included in LinkedIn Recruiter Lite.

Here is a comparison between the LinkedIn Recruiter editions:

As shown above, both Corporate and Enterprise editions include talent insights, while the Lite edition does not. Corporate has a lower allowance for InMail messages and search filters compared to Enterprise, but both include the full talent insights capabilities.

Getting the Most from Talent Insights

Here are some tips to maximize the value of talent insights in LinkedIn Recruiter:

• Compare candidates side-by-side – Use talent insights to compare multiple candidates for the same position.
• Evaluate all applicants – Don’t just look at your shortlist; consider insights for all applicants.
• Use filters – Filter by talent insights to narrow candidate pools efficiently.
• Share with hiring managers – Collaborate and share insights with managers involved in hiring.
• Update job requirements – Keep role requirements updated so candidates can be compared accurately.
• Ask targeted questions – Use insights to probe candidates’ experience and background during interviews.
• Contextualize insights – Consider the full context rather than just the data points.

By actively utilizing talent insights during sourcing, screening, and evaluating candidates, recruiters can make better hiring decisions and build a strong talent pipeline.

Conclusion

In summary, talent insights are invaluable tools available in LinkedIn Recruiter Corporate and Enterprise that help recruiters accelerate hiring by providing data-driven analysis of candidates. The various categories of insights analyze candidates’ skills, education, experience, interests, groups, and connections to provide recruiters a comprehensive view beyond the resume. This enables more informed candidate comparisons, objective shortlisting, and smarter overall hiring decision making. Talent insights give recruiters an efficient way to identify and engage the most qualified candidates on LinkedIn for their job openings.