LinkedIn Recruitment Secrets: What Every Employer Must Know!

<div class="grey-callout"><h2>Key Takeaways</h2><ul>
<li>Social media for professionals: LinkedIn is primarily used by those in white-collar and senior roles, making it less effective for blue-collar or entry-level positions.</li>
<li>Recruitment tools: Employers can create profiles, post jobs, and search for candidates, but must be aware of potential issues like fake profiles and message fatigue.</li>
<li>Cost options: LinkedIn offers various pricing tiers, from free job adverts to premium tools like Recruiter Lite and Talent Hub, depending on recruitment needs.</li>
<li>Employer branding: Businesses can promote their brand and culture, which is particularly useful for those in the Mature stage of their business lifecycle.</li>
<li>Global reach: LinkedIn is beneficial for companies seeking international talent.</li>
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What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a professional networking site employers can use to attract both active and passive applicants. The keyword here is “professional” because those in white-collar and senior-level positions mainly use the site. LinkedIn is less relevant for blue-collar roles such as warehouse operatives, drivers, entry-level roles, retail, hospitality, and catering

You can create free “profiles”; a personal one about yourself, and one about your business where you can develop an employer brand. Each type of profile allows you to share content to engage users.

Alongside a business profile it is possible to publish jobs and pay for “sponsored jobs” that have increased visibility.

It is also possible to proactively search for potential applicants and send direct messages. However, due to so many unwanted sales enquiries, some users are getting message fatigue.

Overall LinkedIn is a place to make “connections” for networking, research, sales, and job hunting.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Warning:</span>Warning: LinkedIn has an issue with fake profiles at the time of writing. Most are for sales purposes, where more profiles allow more connections. However, some are flat-out fraudulent, such as people pretending to represent well-known companies. I’m sure LinkedIn will clean up this mess, but for the time being, not everyone is as they appear.</span>

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You may be wondering why this isn’t in the social media section. My reason is that I don’t consider LinkedIn to be that social. Since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, they’ve dropped many of the “social” elements, such as questions and answers, and focused on advertising, recruitment, and sales tools.

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Which Business Should use LinkedIn?

Businesses that typically benefit from LinkedIn when recruiting are those:

• In the Mature stage of the business life cycle: As a previous article on when to hire staff discussed, these businesses often require specialists, and specialists are more likely to be found on LinkedIn.
• Global businesses: LinkedIn is an international platform.
• Those with a strong/developing employer brand: LinkedIn provides a few tools to promote employer brands, so organisations with this requirement may gravitate towards it.
• Recruitment agencies: They are a significant user as LinkedIn is a pseudo-CV database.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Note:</span> You may read remarkable statistics such as “over 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn”, but this is likely to be recruitment agencies instead of hiring managers from employers.</span>

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What Type of Job Can You Fill Using LinkedIn?

The biggest mistake I see employers make is advertising irrelevant jobs. LinkedIn is less effective for blue-collar jobs or roles in retail, hospitality, and manual labour, where professional networking is less important. Moreover, entry- to mid-level jobseekers are less prevalent on LinkedIn.

The types of jobs best suited for recruitment using LinkedIn include:

• Senior-level, professional and white-collar positions: LinkedIn is particularly effective for recruiting professionals in white-collar jobs, especially in finance, technology, consulting, healthcare, engineering, and legal services, where formal qualifications and professional experience are highly valued.
• Specialised or niche roles: LinkedIn’s advanced search capabilities help find applicants with specific skill sets or experience in niche areas.
• Roles requiring advanced degrees or qualifications: LinkedIn allows recruiters to target users based on their education background and qualifications.
• Passive jobseekers: LinkedIn is ideal for reaching passive applicants – those not actively looking for a job but open to new opportunities.
• Global talent search: LinkedIn’s global reach makes it suitable for roles where international experience or language skills are essential.
• Tech and IT roles: As early adopters of new technology, LinkedIn is a good platform for recruiting IT and tech professionals, including software developers, data scientists, IT managers, and similar roles.
• Sales and marketing positions: The platform is also effective for recruiting in fields like sales and marketing, mostly because it is so widely used by these professionals in their day-to-day job.

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When Would an Employer Use LinkedIn?

Employers should consider using LinkedIn at the early stages of the recruitment process. Since some aspects of LinkedIn can be done for free or at a relatively low cost, exploring these options before incurring more expense makes sense.

Importantly, you should always use LinkedIn before using a recruitment agency because you can attract similar applicants without paying a recruitment agency fee.

Employers wanting to build an employer brand should consider LinkedIn a long-term investment. But be careful, because LinkedIn has such a high “domain rating” it can sometimes compete with an employer career page in search engine results; consequently publish the content on your website first and, once indexed in Google, then publish it on LinkedIn.

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How Much Does LinkedIn Cost? Time vs. Money

You must regularly set aside large chunks of time to create compelling content for profiles.

The financial cost depends on the tier you choose:

1. Free job adverts: Advertise a job, but with significant limitations to encourage purchasing a paid solution.
2. Sponsored job adverts: LinkedIn will gladly charge extra to promote job adverts. They are priced on a cost-per-click model, which means you only pay when a user views your advert. You can also set budgets to prevent costs from spiralling out of control.
3. Recruiter Lite: For contacting passive applicants you can send up to 30 InMail messages (LinkedIn’s private messaging system) per month. At the time of writing, it cost approximately £130 per month.
4. Recruiter: Similar to Recruiter Lite, you can send up to 150 InMail messages per month. It also provides better filters for identifying target applicants. At the time of writing, it costs approximately £600 per month. So, to make the most of LinkedIn Recruiter, you need to send a lot of InMails.
5. Talent Hub: Less relevant for SMEs, this applicant tracking system (ATS) allows multiple users to manage recruitment. You’ll have to contact LinkedIn directly to obtain their current pricing, but I’d recommend doing so near the end of the month when they must hit their targets so they may offer better deals!

On a side note, you may have heard of Premium and Sales Navigator, which have no recruitment features.

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Do Employers Have any Guarantees when Using LinkedIn?

LinkedIn does not offer explicit guarantees. The response rate and hiring success depend on factors largely outside its control, such as the quality of the job advertisement, the appeal of the job offer, and the competitiveness of the market.

However, the biggest issue relates to data accuracy: some profiles are embellished or not genuine.

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How do Employers Use LinkedIn?

There are six main ways to utilise LinkedIn to recruit.

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1. Search LinkedIn’s “CV database”

LinkedIn is the equivalent of a CV database, with the difference that fewer users are looking for a job; and there may be out-of-date, undesirable, and fake profiles (for example, three LinkedIn profiles impersonate me – I should be flattered!). When browsing LinkedIn, if you see a connection who mentions they are looking for work, you can easily message them for free.

LinkedIn also has paid search functions to help employers find potential jobseekers. These can find users based on location, skills, experience, education, and job title. Employers can also message users directly using LinkedIn’s messaging solution, “InMail.” 

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Tip:</span> Searching LinkedIn’s database can become expensive. However, some third-party services have scraped LinkedIn contact data, allowing you to search considerably cheaper. You can then use additional tools to find emails and telephone numbers that LinkedIn doesn’t even have. Because this is a grey area, I won’t publicise it too much. Please contact me to find out who I use.</span>

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When you review a user’s profile, consider looking at:

• Recommendations and endorsements: Do their profiles have glowing recommendations? If they do, be cautious and ensure it isn’t acquaintances giving each other reciprocal testimonials!
• Activity levels: Most LinkedIn users don’t have any activity after setting up a profile. A minority are actively engaged, often for networking and sales purposes. Notice those championing their current employer; they might be more challenging to poach.
• Research a user’s connections: Could those be a source of additional applicants, customers, or great industry knowledge?
• Career history: Look at their past roles and the frequency with which they change jobs (but don’t expect the information to be completely accurate).
• “Groups”: Explore the groups they joined to determine whether they are well connected and contributing to the industry.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Tip:</span> When you review a user’s profile, LinkedIn will notify them. If you want to visit their profile anonymously, ensure you turn on Private Mode. To do so, go to: LinkedIn > Settings & Privacy > Visibility > Profile viewing options > switch to Private mode.</span>

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Even if you find a potential candidate, they may not want to hear from you. LinkedIn can attract its fair share of spam, overzealous recruitment consultants and phishing attempts, making recipients sceptical of unsolicited messages. In jobseeker focus groups we identified many who hated being contacted about a “job they will be perfect for”, only to be rejected a few days later. Consequently, you’ll need to contact users with a touch of finesse.

Another challenge is that passive applicants aren’t going to change jobs on a whim. You’ll need to convince them it’s worth it, generally with better pay, perks, and career advancement. This approach is very different than if an active applicant contacts you first.

Rather than immediately mentioning a job, I recommend an InMail message along the lines of: <span class="text-style-email">Hi {user’s name}. I am reaching out because I see you have {experience}, and I’m recruiting for a similar role within my organisation. I wanted to see if you had the time to discuss where you see your future career going. Alternatively, maybe someone in your network might be interested.</span>

If they reply positively, try having a telephone call. Don’t rush in explaining the job vacancy, instead follow up by qualifying them; “What would you improve about your current job?”... “What do you like about your current job?”... “What would you ideally like to do in the future?”

If they’re not a good fit, explain why and ask, “Who do you know who might be a good fit?”

Additionally, you may wish to try LinkedIn’s voice message feature, which allows users to record voice messages for up to one minute. On the surface, voice messages appear to increase engagement and humanise messages.

Crucially, don’t be spammy. It will damage your organisation’s reputation, and LinkedIn may penalise you if you get a response rate of less than 13%.

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2. Publish job adverts

Employers can post job adverts on LinkedIn via their company profile. Encouraging employees to share the jobs on their timeline may increase the advert’s visibility. However, it won’t show your job advert to users who have selected that they are not open to job offers.

LinkedIn may also email potential applicants. 

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Tip:</span> LinkedIn allows applicants to “Easy apply” with a few simple clicks, and this is much better than redirecting them to your employer career page, where they must fill in more forms. Since you’ve already got so much information on LinkedIn, there is no reason to make them input it again – and few will! (See our article to understand why employer career pages perform poorly.)</span>

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3. Have an optimised personal/professional profile

There are lots of optimisation techniques you can adopt to help users find your profile, and the most common ones for recruitment include:

• Use a “Hiring” badge on your profile picture.
• Use a professional picture with your face visible to create a good first impression.
• Your background image should reflect your professional identity, corporate brand, or the industry you’re recruiting in.
• Write a detailed summary highlighting the types of jobs you frequently recruit for and your company culture. Include a call to action.
• Add your telephone number and email address in the “Intro” section.

Remember that on LinkedIn, a personal profile is a professional profile. Leave the photos from the wedding you went to on Instagram – on LinkedIn the updates are about professional updates, qualifications you’ve just achieved, awards ceremonies you’ve attended etc. 

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4. Contact people who have viewed your profile

When paying for any LinkedIn subscription, you can see who has looked at your LinkedIn profile. People have looked at your profile for a reason, perhaps investigating a purchase but potentially looking for a new job.

It only takes two minutes each day to monitor who has seen your profile, and if appropriate, send them a message such as, <span class="text-style-email>I noticed you reviewed my LinkedIn profile. Please connect to me if you’d like to start a conversation.</span>

This simple technique is very effective; it’s how my eldest son got a job recently!

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5. Promote your company profile

An employer can showcase their mission, values, culture, and benefits on a dedicated company page.

There’s been a lot of hype about this, and I’ve found two common issues:

1. Multiple stakeholders want to control the company profile; often marketing, sales, and HR. Each will make a compelling argument about whether LinkedIn is a customer acquisition tool (and so requires consumer branding from marketing and sales) or a candidate acquisition tool (and so contains employer branding from HR). Either way, someone is going to be disappointed, usually HR!
2. You need significant time and effort to generate the fresh, quality content required to attract applicants. Sales and marketing often have lots of evergreen content available – hence why they usually win the argument and control the company profile.

When consulting about content creation, I try to help marketing and HR see that the content doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. For example, an article demonstrating a company appreciates their staff may be important for prospects and customers. Equally, customer success stories and product or service updates may be attractive to jobseekers who want to work with a successful business. You also need to be careful; showing a post about your top salespeople enjoying an action-packed trip to Las Vegas sends mixed messages to customers!

Some suggested content could include:

• New hires: Announce new team members, showcasing their backgrounds and roles within the organisation.
• Employee accomplishments: Highlight achievements and milestones reached by your staff, both within and outside the workplace.
• Employee testimonials: Share testimonials from your staff about their experiences working at your company.
• Employee spotlights: Feature different employees and their contributions to the business.
• Behind the scenes content: Give a glimpse into the day-to-day operations of your organisation and its culture.
• Community involvement and CSR initiatives: Showcase your organisation’s participation in community services and corporate social responsibility projects.
• Business accomplishments: Celebrate significant business achievements and milestones, such as reaching sales targets (in a non-obnoxious way), expanding to new markets, or developing new products.
• Thought-leadership pieces on your industry: Publish articles or posts that demonstrate your company’s expertise, and insights into industry trends and future predictions.
• Customer success stories: Highlight how your products or services have positively impacted your customers.
• Educational content and webinars: Provide valuable educational resources or host webinars related to your industry or business expertise.
• Industry awards or recognition: Share any awards or recognition your business or employees have received.
• Interactive posts: Engage your audience with interactive content like polls, quizzes, and Q&A sessions.
• Product or service updates: Update your audience about new products, services, or improvements to existing offerings.

Crucially, once you’ve started uploading content, you must be consistent. If you stop, the quality of your profile will quickly look outdated.

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6. Promote your personal/professional profile

The most common way to achieve this is by sharing short messages under your “Status Update” or longer articles, documents, and polls.

LinkedIn also has a “Creator Mode” where your content takes centre stage over your career history, and it allows users to “follow” rather than “connect”. I’ve provided a lot of general advice about writing content for social media.

Additionally, you may want to join LinkedIn Groups. These are private networks where like-minded professionals can discuss specific topics. Participating allows you to learn, network, and position yourself as an authority/thought leader. Even if you can advertise jobs in a LinkedIn Group, this isn’t the place to spam members. (Whilst tempting, I don’t recommend creating your own LinkedIn group because they take a lot of time to develop and manage.)

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Additional Resources

• Talent Acquisiton Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees
• Downloadable PDF  guide; LinkedIn Hiring Secrets: Proven Methods to Recruit the Best Talent.
• Article; How to Use LinkedIn for Recruitment: A Simple Guide to Finding Employees.
• Article; Advantages & Disadvantages of Usig LinkedIn for Recruitment.
• Article; Social Recruiting: Myths, Facts, and How to Do it Right.
• Because LinkedIn changes so frequently, I recommend checking the our latest LinkedIn Recruitment and Social Recruiting articles.