LinkedIn is the most revolutionary tool to shape the recruitment industry and – to be completely honest – one of the most prolific tools I use on a day-to-day basis.
Working out of GQR’s Sydney office, but originally hailing from the Los Angeles location, I can assure you GQR’s processes overall are consistent across the board: proactive, efficient and results-oriented. While there are a number of strategies best-in-class recruitment agencies leverage, I would imagine most of these firms have similar ethos around utilising their networks to recruit effectively.
Since GQR was named No. 1 Most Socially Engaged Staffing Agency in EMEA for 2017, I wanted to share a bit about my experience using the platform and ways in which companies can encourage social engagement among its employees.
Consistency & Frequency Are Key
Recruiters use LinkedIn for a few fundamental things, such as building a vast network of contacts, providing content on industry trends and topics, targeted InMailing, sharing analytical reports, engaging with their network, etc.
While these are all excellent practices, the keys to engagement are consistency and frequency. You have an excellent platform at your fingertips to engage with more than half a billion professionals worldwide, but if you don’t use it on a regular basis, you can quickly lose credibility across this channel and your network.
By curating and sharing industry news weekly and developing original content, you can exert a high degree of influence as an industry thought leader. However, if your profile grows dormant, clients and candidates might lose trust in your market knowledge. Organisational leaders who validate the benefits of the platform by consistently updating their profiles and posting regularly will also motivate those around them to do the same.
Alongside frequent updates, establishing personal relationships through direct communication with contacts in your network enhances your brand.
In InMail We Trust
Speaking from personal experience, consistently publishing quality, thought-provoking content across my profile has proven to be extremely effective in engaging with my network and building my personal brand. In fact, in the last two years, content consumption on LinkedIn has increased overall by 21 percent.
But, it’s not enough to merely post frequently across your profile: It takes sharing targeted content that quickly addresses your audience’s questions, challenges and concerns that can take recruitment efforts to the next level. Providing employees access to the InMail tool can play a pivotal role.
InMail – a feature Premium account holders have access to – is one such tool all GQR recruiters use that massively differentiates us from competitors. A key feature of InMailing is that it allows us to reach out to individuals we are not currently connected with.
Through this direct communication, we strategically develop custom content that addresses the needs of individuals outside our network. This aims to build quality relationships and further exert our influence as market specialists with those we may not have had access to otherwise.
Interestingly, a recent study found that more than 78 percent of consumers will only engage offers if they have been personalised to their previous engagements with your brand.
InMailing adds exponential value to a recruiter’s work, but demonstrating to new employees how to harness that value will lead to endless dividends for any organisation.
Demonstrate Value
Demonstrating the quantifiable value employees can achieve through LinkedIn, will generate the most buy-in for using the platform to drive business development and quality candidate/client relationships.
So, how can this be achieved?
We use our LinkedIn Recruiter accounts to identify a market’s value or a portion of a market’s value as one of the first projects for new hires. Internally, this is calculated by looking at the number of candidates in the market, multiplied by the billable compensation, multiplied by the fee rate, divided by the average tenure of the employee.
By using this market valuation model, we were able to identify a role that was valued at more than $25 million. As you can see, the market value is massive!
This exercise demonstrates the value of the platform and is key to getting employees to connect and network with a large number of people in their respective markets. To further the point, the most successful recruiters are roughly 60 percent more engaged with LinkedIn’s recruiting tools than other recruiters.
Live For Efficiency
With the many responsibilities recruiters aim to achieve, social engagement on LinkedIn and other social networking sites should be used to augment those responsibilities.
A robust, efficient social strategy is essential for any organisation looking to get employees more engaged. By providing proper training, tools, imagery, status templates, etc. ahead of time, you are ensuring that your people can easily execute branded content distribution without requiring a huge time dedication.
Intranets, where company news, industry trends, polls and other key organisational information is published, can also assist with streamlining the process. This content can be accessed at any time and prevents the need to oversaturate your employee’s inbox with company communications.
Proper communication and proper collaboration all lead to this efficient social media strategy. By equipping employees with the proper tools, technologies and platforms, they will ensure a higher degree of engagement at the employee level to the benefit of both the individual and the organisation as a whole.
