The idea for my blog this week come from the common answer I get when I ask companies about their use of Linkedin for recruitment….. Our agency use it on our behalf!!!
What does this mean and is it actually true?
In my experience effective use of Linkedin for recruitment comprises of 2 major factors. I am aware it is much more complex than this but to simplify things I will concentrate on the following 2 general areas:-
Advertising job vacancies (Paid for job adverts and free options)
Searching and contacting candidates and having a network of connections
Rather than share with you my findings on how effectively recruitment agencies use LinkedIn, I thought I would provide you some basic tools so you can check the agencies you use yourself.
Step One:
Once logged in to Linkedin, click on the job tab. Under the search button click on Advanced. Enter the name of your recruitment agency in the company field and carry out a search. This will then display all the jobs your agency have on Linkedin!! BEWARE…. IF THERE ARE NO JOBS BEING ADVERTISED ON LINKEDIN BY THEM YOU WILL BE PRESENTED WITH THE JOBS THEY ARE ADVERTISING ON SIMPLY HIRED. The jobs that are advertised on simply hired will only be displayed if there are no Linkedin jobs to display so these will not normally been seen.
Step two:
On Linkedin, conduct a search to find your recruitment consultant, if you are not already then connect to them.
Once you are connected to them here are some ideas of things you should take a look at to access how effectively they are using Linkedin:
How much information is in there profile? Would it inspire you to connect and work with them if you were looking for a new job?
How many people are they connected to? Do they have an extensive network of connections?
View their profile and have a look at their activity within Linkedin (You can see how often and what they are doing within Linkedin)
Finally take a look at the groups they are a member of? You can join up to 50 groups. Are the groups relevant to the type of recruitment they do? (If you have more time join a some of those groups and see if they actively promoting vacancies within them and engage with discussion in the group)
I have carried out the above steps with a number of my clients and they have found the results surprising to say the least!
I would be very interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts!