Overview of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network – over 500 Million professionals worldwide look to LinkedIn to build their careers and businesses.
If you are old enough to remember the 90s up to the early 2000s, you can recall how difficult it was to reach senior-level executives. You had so many gatekeepers to go through before you could (maybe) connect. Not so nowadays because on LinkedIn, the CEO is just a button away and they read their own messages.
Most executives are on LinkedIn and keeping their profiles updated more frequently than they do on job boards. This is one reason recruiters and hiring managers absolutely love it!
How about business people? 80% of B2B leads come through the platform. Speakers/consultants and more are booking engagements right on LinkedIn. I have also found great speakers, business partners and candidates there myself.
LinkedIn for HR & Recruiters
According to a study by Jobvite, 95% of them regularly use LinkedIn to find out more about you! Another research study found that candidates from LinkedIn are less likely to leave the company before 6 months come to an end. This is crucial information for recruiters since they mostly get paid based on you staying in a company, not just by placing you. If it’s important to recruiters, it should be important to us.
It’s no wonder then that HR Executives and Recruiters spend a disproportionate amount of time on LinkedIn. Doing what? Searching for candidates of course! They are also trying to get to know applicants. Over 90% of recruiters go to LinkedIn for just that purpose when they receive your CV. Our social footprints tell a great deal about us. What do your workmates say about you via recommendations or endorsements? What kind of content do you post? What are your career interests? Great recruiters & HR professionals are great sociologists and can deduce a lot from seemingly unrelated information.
For those seeking new career opportunities, LinkedIn is not just a place to meet recruiters but also a great place to meet your future employer directly, start a conversation and get to know them. It’s a great place to keep abreast with your industry and open jobs in great companies. But I am getting ahead of myself. More on this later. For now, I would like to show you two things: a behind-the-scenes view of how recruiters search for candidates on LinkedIn. This will give you an understanding of what you need to do on your own profile.