Three brilliant under used LinkedIn social recruiting tools
Everyone is now talking about social recruiting, using social media in recruitment, but still many people are missing a few tricks with the 'recruiting default social network', LinkedIn. Just because you have a LinkedIn profile, does not mean you are using it properly. I know - I have seen hundreds of examples of recruiters (agency and corporate) LinkedIn profiles that make me wince! It is a recruiters dream product and yet still so many of them pay it lip-service.
Anyway for the ones that want to get even more out of it, here are three brilliant LinkedIn tools to help you do your job - find and engage with more new candidates and clients.
Here are three superb tips that will help you use LinkedIn more effectively every day.
- Who Works At. A simple but really good application that tells you (via a visual popup on your screen) who in your LinkedIn network works at a particular company. Not only does the app (a Chrome browser extension)prioritise the results with the most relevant people, but it also allows you to look at all the new hires and any (people) promotions or changes in the company. There, I told you it was superb, didn't I? So here is a simple example:
I went to the Accenture website in my browser and then clicked the application link(top right in the red square). This then popped up the information box:
No.1 shows the people in my network that I am connected to that work at Accenture - 4951; No.2 shows where the links are to see new hires etc and No.3 is a really quick way for you to Follow Accenture on LinkedIn.
I don't have to explain the massive benefits of this tool now, do I? You are recruiters after all!
Aside from using this tool to connect with people via LinkedIn, take it a stage further and then find these people (now you have their names) on Twitter or Google+ (maybe even Facebook), and engage with them on a more social level.
This is a great strategy - talk to them about subjects they are talking about - and it probably won't even be work stuff. Listen, show an interest and engage with them. It is a very powerful way of developing relationships, with people that would normally wouldn't give recruiters the time of day! - LinkedIn Signal. You may not know what this is by name, but you will see it every day. This is the status update 'box' that appears in the middle of your screen when you have logged into LinkedIn. It is the updates from the people in your network No.1 in the image below:
Now, click on No.2 (red circle) and you open up a goldmine of information - the Signal search functionality.You can now search ALL the status updates of your LinkedIn connections, using the normal LinkedIn search functionality (No.1). Then here comes the kicker - you can save the searches! Then every time you return to a search it will do a real-time search within the status updates.
So get creating searches for your competitors, influencers, industry keywords etc ! I have created a string (as you can see above) that will show anyone posting in their updates words around job seeking. Useful if you want to get active candidates.
this tool is brilliant, yet not many people are using it. Give it a try and you really won't be disappointed!
- Company Updates. On your LinkedIn Company page, you will have a box on the right hand side that says Followers - carrying on with the Accenture example:
These are all the people that are following them to get updates and information from them. There will be analysts, industry people, journalists etc but there will also be loads of people that are interested in working for them. Bingo!
LinkedIn now allow you to segment these Followers of your company and engage with them accordingly (it is being rolled out - larger companies are getting it first). You can create specific and targeted follower lists based on different criteria: Industry, Seniority, Job Function, Company Size, Non-company Employees, and Geography.
Then using a reporting part of the page - Who Followed Your Post - you will then be able to track some excellent engagement information on your company page.
So, make sure that you give people the opportunity to Follow your company on LinkedIn. This will be gold dust from a future engagement perspective. Go to https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins and add the Follow Our Company button to your website, blog etc.
Don't be bashful about this, these are FREE and focused potential candidates for your company, so get them on board and build your Follower count.
These really are 3 brilliant FREE TOOLS that you should be using with LinkedIn. I cannot see any reason why you wouldn't use them.
And of course if there are any other 3rd party tools LinkedIn you want to make me and my readers aware of, please share away in the comments below.
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Comments 10
Katie
Very helpful! Have shared with the team here at PepsiCo…
StephenTurnock
Some great tools Andy and surprising how many recruiters are unaware of them. WhoWorksAt is great for Business Development and finding great contacts to engage with on a social level in advance.
Recruiters tend to live in many systems through the working day and still none more so in corporate land than Outlook at their desktop.. hence another great tool is the Outlook Social Connector. An adititional social connector plugin is required from microsoft if using office versions below V10. You can see activity feeds /status updates within each email or folder, send LI invites from within the email and see all your connections in outlook contacts. Also works with enterprise social networks, facebook, Viadeo & XING.
Headfield
Very helpful post thanks for its post it has given us the complete information about this social network site.Hope so like me many other people would also had been missing some text which you have fulfilled.
Pealk_
Thank you for this great post!
I think you may also add our tool Pealk: https://www.pealk.com
It’s a free productivity app for recruiters on LinkedIn
We have 2’300 users worldwide 2 months after our launch! And a lot of great reviews from our users so far!
Kind regards,
Boris
Andy Headworth
Thanks for the heads up on that Stephen - i wasn’t aware of that one.
Andy Headworth
Boris,
I have used Pealk and it is very good, I agree.
But I have one of those ‘uncomfortable’ questions for you. Why does LinkedIn allow you to use their network to benefit your business via the API? BeKnown did the same thing and lasted a couple of weeks before they got blocked.
If I have missed something here, happy to be told!
I just want to know that investing time using Pealk won’t be a short-lived affair. Happy to talk off-line.
StephenTurnock
You spoke too soon Andy - LinkedIn cut off API access to Pealk!
Andy Headworth
Kind of knew it would!
But what it did was highlight some areas of LinkedIn that could be improved and maybe the guys at Pealk may actually be involved with LinkedIn in the future………….. just maybe
Carolina
Thanks Andy for sharing these tools. I also find Talent Pipeline very helpful. It tracks and manages all of your talent leads from any source ensuring you have updated information on all your candidates.
Andy Headworth
Can’t argue with that Carolina, it is an excellent product.