LinkedIn best practices

Three Secrets of Recruiting Success on LinkedIn

There’s no doubt that the world of recruiting is changing fast. To give you some practical tips that you can implement today to be successful, we asked some of the recruiters and talent teams leading the way in their use of LinkedIn for direct sourcing to share some of their secrets of success.

1. Start with the basics: Polish up your employees’ profiles to drive referrals

Dennis de Munck, Director of Recruitment Methods at L’Oreal says, “the best employees refer the best candidates.” L’Oreal looked at their own employee base on LinkedIn as a way to drive referrals to their career site and leverage them as true ambassadors of the L’Oreal employment brand. His top tips include:

  • Get your own profile in order. LinkedIn is about professional individuals talking directly to individuals. There’s no room for a ‘big company’ attitude or out-of-date recruiter profiles.
  • Give candidates a taste of the company. You can use your own profile to show what’s it like to work there. For example, add a SlideShare presentation about the business to your profile.

2. Be a proactive sourcer: Leverage LinkedIn groups to create conversation

Bridget Hutchinson, Head of Recruitment at Dixons Retail in the UK, and her team have transformed their department to be a proactive, direct sourcing function that actually offers a recruiting service for some of their in-store concession brands, making them a revenue generating department.

A top tip from the Dixons team is to be active on LinkedIn groups, “It’s a way of widening the talent pool and building a relationship with prospective candidates before a specific role is advertised.” By focusing on creating conversation and adding relevant content to the discussion, you can elevate your position to that of a thought leader in your industry.

3.Leverage the Marketing Team within your organisation

Angelic Vloemans, Corporate Recruiter at Exact in the Netherlands, saw that their Marketing team were already using a LinkedIn Company Page to promote their products and services. She partnered with Marketing to build on work already done and adapt it for recruiting purposes.

Vloemans leveraged the Company Follow feature of LinkedIn. “Our marketing team has invested in raising our profile on LinkedIn and, now, every time I post a vacancy, it goes out to our 27,000 followers.”

In addition, Exact invested in recruitment media on LinkedIn to raise their employment brand. The ‘work with us’ banner and ‘soft sell’ approach on LinkedIn works very well for Exact. It’s not aggressive and it projects a good image for the company to complement the efforts of the marketing department. “Through colleagues’ profiles and the company page, LinkedIn gives candidates a really good idea of what it’s like to work here,” says Vloemans.

To read more about the successes that L’Oreal, Dixons Retail and Exact have achieved using LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions, check out our resources page.

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