LinkedIn is the champion of social networking sites when it comes to recruitment, with 94% of recruiters using the site. Are they successful in finding hires on LinkedIn? The short answer is yes. Seventy-nine percent of recruiters have found a hire through the website. Social networking, especially on LinkedIn, is set to be a key recruitment trend for 2015. Whether you’re an active or a passive candidate, here are three insider secrets on how to get your LinkedIn noticed by recruiters.
Join Industry-Based LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn’s groups are still not given as much credit as they are due. Industry-based and skills-based groups are not only populated by hopefuls wanting to break into certain careers, they are also joined by recruiters who follow the group’s discussions. While intelligently contributing to discussions in the group is one way to be noticed by recruiters, there is another.
Once you are a member of a group, you are able to message other group members even if they are not you connections. By searching the “members” page of the group, recruiters can see all group members and whittle them down by keywords before sending a message. This feature is excellent for recruiters as they are able to reach out to passive candidates who have the right credentials for the positions they are looking to fill.
Contribute To LinkedIn’s Blog
Writing articles related to your expertise for LinkedIn’s blog platform is an excellent way to establish thought leadership in your field. In the beginning, only “influencers” were able to share content on LinkedIn, but in February 2014 LinkedIn announced that all members would be able to publish articles.
With over 270 million users on LinkedIn, articles have the potential to reach a massive audience. Of course, it also means that there is big competition to be the most widely read, and as such has caused an influx of articles on the internet on how to write clickable LinkedIn headlines and what topics get the most shares and so on. Nonetheless, the fact that there is a chance to get your content noticed, even if only by a fraction of LinkedIn’s users, certainly counts for something.
Grow Your LinkedIn Network
There is some debate as to whether you should accept invitations from people whom you don’t personally know on LinkedIn, but there are plenty of reasons that you should approach LinkedIn the same way you would Twitter. One of the big reasons is that the more connections you have, the more people there will be viewing your profile. Though you may be skeptical about the benefits of this, growing your network is a surefire way to gain clout and get noticed.
About the Author: Ron Stewart has worked in the recruitment industry for 30 years, having owned companies in the IT, construction and medical sectors. He runs the Jobs4Group, and is CEO of Jobs4Medical.
photo credit: IMG_1971 via photopin (license)
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