Today, about 95 percent of recruiters utilize LinkedIn as a major sourcing tool to find candidates to present to their client companies seeking top-tier talent. But if you want to be found by one of them, it’s important to understand how they use LinkedIn to source their candidates and position yourself accordingly.
RiseSmart’s Kimberly Schneiderman presented results of a recent extensive poll of recruiters to the Career Thought Leaders Conference in Baltimore last month. Confirming popular belief, the poll revealed that LinkedIn is, by far, regarded as the best consistent source of quality candidates online.
[See: 10 Ways Social Media Can Help You Land a Job.]
Meanwhile, keyword searches are the most common way of finding ideal job candidates with the right skills and accomplishments, followed by searching previous employers, searching through contacts and then searching contacts of their contacts.
At the same conference, Shally Steckerl, one of the leading sourcers helping Fortune 500 companies efficiently find talent, suggested that in order to figure out what keywords to utilize in your profile, find a job ad for a position you seek or one similar to the one you have, and use the URL to create a Wordle diagram of the important words. Make sure to use them in your profile summary and everywhere else on your profile, as well. Matching as many keywords to a job type as you can will help recruiters locate your profile.
[See: 16 Things You’re Doing All Wrong on LinkedIn.]
Here are some other ways recruiters find candidates:
— Industry groups. Savvy recruiters spend time visiting LinkedIn’s groups, particularly in the industries they serve. They peruse the discussions and see who actively contributes by asking intelligent questions, who posts articles of relevant professional interest to colleagues and who adds their insightful voice to discussions in a helpful manner.
— Search of rival companies. An ideal target for recruiters is someone who is already doing the same or a very similar job as the one they are seeking to fill at a rival company. To find these people, they will search by company name associated with titles and skills.
— Observing who is recommending and endorsing people. When you recommend or endorse someone on LinkedIn, not only does it go into their profile, but it goes on yours, as well. Recruiters are able to search for people who recommend or endorse others. When you recommend others, you show yourself to be a team player who respects others for their work. Moreover, it shows that you know enough to make a positive evaluation of them — both strong characteristics. Think about people whose work you respect and those who have brought value to your team. Use a mix of people above, equal to you and subordinate to you on your company’s organizational charts. Then write recommendations that highlight their values and accomplishments, being specific. You should aim to create between five and 10 quality recommendations.
— Finding similar people to those they already know. When you conduct a search, you will often find that LinkedIn provides a list of other people for you to review who have similar characteristics to the people you actually searched for. Recruiters are continually conducting LinkedIn searches, and these added suggestions from LinkedIn provide them a bonanza of additional candidates who are similar to their original searches. You should have a large network on LinkedIn, because you never know when you will show up as “someone else” worth viewing, even if you aren’t the exact match to a recruiter’s search.
— Finding alumni from specific colleges. Often companies will find that they have clusters of strong-fit employees from a set of particular colleges or universities, and when recruiters know this they will search out those particular alumni networks.
— Using Google to search LinkedIn’s public profiles. Creative sourcers will employ complex searches for LinkedIn public profiles using Google rather than even going into LinkedIn. Make sure that you review what your public profile shows, and make it visible to everyone so that you can be found!
[See: 10 Ways to Perfect Your Personal Brand.]
In order to be found on LinkedIn, it is important to complete your entire profile. You never know which piece of data about yourself will be the priority item that a recruiter will be looking for. Include a nonwork email address so that you can be contacted if you aren’t part of a given recruiter’s network already. It is critically important that your headline field describe your personal brand rather than simply stating your job title, and make sure your profile is about your accomplishments in each of your jobs rather than just listing the positions you’ve held.
Happy hunting!
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How Headhunters Use LinkedIn to Find Talented Candidates originally appeared on usnews.com
