The best recruiters I know do this very well

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Jorgen Sundberg – Social Media Expert

On this blog, Lee Biggins recently wrote about how LinkedIn is not the death of job boards. Whilst I agree with this, I’d like to elaborate a little on my thoughts.

My work is all about helping recruiters of the inhouse and agency kind to use online tools to find better candidates and clients, then matching these up better than the compeition. Ever since I signed up for LinkedIn myself in 2004, it’s been a primary tool in my day-to-day business dealings.

Back in those days (when I was an IT recruiter), I was able to find candidates and clients before my competitors on LinkedIn. By staying on top of LinkedIn as well as other tools, I had first mover advantage but still had to use my recruitment and sales skills to make placements happen. LinkedIn was definitely a godsend back in those days.

Nowadays, every recruiter I have spoken to in the last few years use LinkedIn, and they use it extensively. The trouble is that most recruiters don’t use all its features but instead scrape candidates from it like a directory of people. I could get away with that behaviour eight years ago but times have moved on.

Not only are there about 110,000 recruiters using LinkedIn in the UK, but employers are increasingly tapping into LinkedIn and other social networks to do their own sourcing. On top of that, candidates are realising they can build their personal brands on LinkedIn and contact hiring managers direct.

LinkedIn has become an essential, just like using the phone and sending emails. You have to do essentials right to even stay in business, but they won’t be enough for achieving excellence. Remember that your competitors are doing the essentials and employers are increasingly doing their own sourcing, mainly through LinkedIn.

In order to thrive, I would suggest using LinkedIn not just for people searching but actually having a content strategy as well as a branding plan. Try to engage with clients and candidates, build communities and meet people in real life as often as possible. The best recruiters I know do this very well and they find that the best clients and candidates tend to find them, via the referral route that is social networking.

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