LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 722 million users worldwide as of October 2022. For employers, LinkedIn can be an invaluable tool for finding, connecting with, and recruiting top talent. In this article, we will explore the key ways in which LinkedIn helps employers achieve their hiring and talent acquisition goals.
Building Your Employer Brand
Having a strong employer brand is critical for attracting top candidates in today’s competitive job market. Your employer brand encompasses your company’s reputation as a place to work and your employee value proposition. LinkedIn provides several ways for you to showcase your employer brand:
Company Pages
LinkedIn Company Pages operate similarly to Facebook business pages. Your Company Page serves as your business profile on LinkedIn. You can use your Company Page to showcase your company culture, work environment, mission, values, and employment opportunities. Companies can publish content such as blog posts, images, and videos directly to their Company Page to build their brand.
According to LinkedIn, employees who engage with their company’s page are 15% more likely to stay at that company long-term. Having current employees share, like, and comment on your Company Page content shows potential candidates what it’s like to work at your organization.
Showcase Pages
Showcase Pages allow you to create pages dedicated to specific initiatives, departments, or functions within your company. For example, you could have a Showcase Page for your company’s internship program, diversity and inclusion efforts, or engineering team. Showcase Pages give you an opportunity to provide a deep dive into the different aspects that make your organization an attractive place to work.
Life and Culture Pages
Similar to Showcase Pages, Life and Culture Pages highlight details of your work culture. These pages feature images, videos, employee spotlights, and content that paint a picture of your company environment. Life Pages demonstrate what it’s like to work at your company on a day-to-day basis.
Status Updates
Posting regular status updates on your Company Page keeps your brand top of mind among potential candidates. Share company news, employee spotlights, job openings, events, and content relevant to your industry. Status updates showcase what your company has to offer prospective employees.
Recruiting
LinkedIn acts as a virtual candidate database, allowing you to source, connect with, and recruit high-quality talent. Here are some of the ways LinkedIn aids recruiting:
LinkedIn Jobs
The LinkedIn Jobs tool allows you to post open positions on your Company Page and job listings throughout the platform. You can target your job ads to users matching specific criteria, such as location, education, skills, and experience. LinkedIn provides analytics on your job post views, applicants, and source of hires.
According to LinkedIn, job postings on their platform results in about 40% lower cost per hire compared to job boards.
LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter is LinkedIn’s enhanced recruitment platform that offers features beyond the basic Jobs tool. With LinkedIn Recruiter, you can:
- Search LinkedIn profiles using advanced filters and Boolean search
- Prioritize candidates based on skills, experience, and other criteria
- Use saved candidate searches to be notified when new, qualified profiles are added
- Manage your talent pipeline and track candidate status
- Leverage data and insights on how your roles and offers compare to others in your area and industry
Candidate Sourcing
Even without the Recruiter tool, LinkedIn allows you to source quality candidates based on their LinkedIn profiles. You can search by keyword, location, company, job title, school, and other filters to pinpoint the candidates who best match your requirements. With a premium Business Plus account, you can send InMail messages directly to candidates to gauge their interest and build relationships.
According to LinkedIn’s 2021 Global Talent Trends report, 75% of candidates are more likely to consider a job opportunity if contacted by an employee through LinkedIn.
Employee Referrals
Encouraging your employees to refer candidates through LinkedIn leverages your whole company’s combined networks. Current employees often know great candidates, including former colleagues, classmates, and friends. Employees can easily share your open positions through their own LinkedIn network with just a couple of clicks.
| Benefit | Statistic |
|---|---|
| Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire conversion rate | Referrals are about 7 times more likely to get interviewed and hired than other applicants (SHRM) |
| Referrals tend to be higher quality hires | 46% of referred employees stay at least 3 years compared to 14% of non-referred hires (HireVue) |
| Referral programs can significantly cut costs per hire | Referred employees can be about 30-50% cheaper to hire vs other sources (ERE) |
Company Research
Before even applying for a job, most candidates will research the companies they are interested in working for. LinkedIn provides prospective employees with a window into your employer brand, culture, and work environment.
Following Companies
Candidates can follow companies they may want to work for to stay up to date on company news, job openings, and content. Your Company Page followers get updates in their LinkedIn feed, keeping your employer brand top of mind.
According to LinkedIn, candidates who follow companies on LinkedIn are 64% more likely to engage with that company’s jobs.
Employee Insights
The Employee Insights section of Company Pages gives candidates a sense of your workplace culture by displaying aggregated data on current employees’ schools, skills, gender diversity, locations, and more. Candidates can also view employee photos and written posts.
Company Content
Your Company Page content, including status updates, blog posts, images, and videos offer candidates a window into your work environment. This content shows candidates what your teams focus on and what your company culture looks like on a day-to-day basis.
Evaluating Employees and Candidates
By viewing candidate and employee LinkedIn profiles, you can gather valuable information to help assess cultural fit, hard and soft skills, achievements, and more.
Candidate Profiles
A candidate’s LinkedIn profile provides a comprehensive view of their background, including their past roles, education, skills, interests, recommendations, and accomplishments. You can screen for must-have qualifications and red flags.
According to LinkedIn’s research, 94% of recruiters use LinkedIn to evaluate candidates during the hiring process.
Skills Insights
LinkedIn displays the top skills held by employees at your company compared to other organizations in your industry. You can leverage these insights while evaluating candidates’ skills during the hiring process. Understanding the most common and in-demand skills among your top talent can help you assess candidates’ technical abilities.
Profile Reviews
During the interview process, reviewing an applicant’s LinkedIn profile allows you to prepare relevant questions based on their background. Evaluating how a candidate presents themselves professionally on LinkedIn also provides signals about their judgment, brand, and communication skills.
Endorsements
The endorsements candidates have received from previous coworkers for specific skills offer social proof of their capabilities. While endorsements alone shouldn’t be over-weighted, they provide supporting evidence of a candidate’s strengths.
Team Collaboration
LinkedIn not only helps you source and evaluate talent, but also aids employees in building connections with each other.
Company Alumni Tool
LinkedIn automatically generates an alumni network of all previous and current employees. This allows your team members to connect with and tap into the expertise of former coworkers.
Employee Profiles
Having employees complete LinkedIn profiles with relevant skills, experiences, and interests allows colleagues to discover commonalities and potential areas for collaboration.
Company Feed & Dialogue
Employees can interact via the Company Feed and publish posts to facilitate communication, knowledge sharing, and relationship building across the organization.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning gives employees access to thousands of expert-led courses around business, technology, and creative skills. Colleagues can exchange insights learned on LinkedIn Learning through posts and messaging.
Advertising Opportunities
In addition to organic reach, LinkedIn advertising lets you get your jobs and brand in front of qualified audiences in a targeted way.
Sponsored Content
You can sponsor Company Page posts to reach a wider group of relevant professionals with your employer brand content.
Job Ads
Sponsored job ads allow your open roles to stand out and reach active and passive job seekers tailored to the position requirements.
Programmatic Display Ads
Display ads distributed programmatically through the LinkedIn Audience Network can appear on premium publisher sites. You can target ads by member location, industry, seniority level, and more.
Text Ads
Sponsored InMail allows you to reach prospective candidates via targeted direct messages that can include job opportunities, company, and brand information.
Dynamic Ads
You can serve customized ads to LinkedIn members based on their professional profile data and activity. For example, ads showcasing open roles requiring skills matching the viewer’s are dynamically generated.
Analytics & Reporting
LinkedIn provides robust data and analytics on your employer brand performance and hiring efforts.
Page Analytics
Your Company Page analytics provide data and graphs on followers growth, top content, visitor demographics, follower demographics, updates reach, and page visits.
Recruiter Analytics
The Recruiter system offers real-time metrics on job post performance, candidate pipeline, source of hires, time-to-hire, and other key recruitment KPIs.
Talent Insights
LinkedIn Talent Insights delivers reports with rich data on salaries, skills, education levels, demographics, talent availability, and competitor comparisons within specific industries and regions.
Advertising Analytics
For your ad campaigns, LinkedIn Ads Manager tracks performance data including impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate, cost per click, and conversion tracking.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn provides a powerful platform to strengthen your employer brand, advertise jobs, source and assess candidates, collaborate with employees, and gain data-driven recruiting insights. By fully leveraging LinkedIn for hiring, you can connect with passive candidates, reduce cost per hire, build an authentic employer brand, and ultimately hire high-quality employees better suited to drive your company’s success.
