Attraction. In many different aspects of life, attraction is what motivates us. The same can be applied with relationships, books, what movie to watch, where to eat. It all starts with attraction. This concept also applies when looking to recruit new staff, to recruit we need to attract candidates. One of the most used platforms for this is of course LinkedIn. There are several things you can do to make sure you are attracting not only candidates but the right candidates through LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional platform with over 750 million members across 200 countries worldwide. 40 million people perform a job search through LinkedIn every day and LinkedIn can produce 45 million profile views per day. The statistics speak for themselves in terms of reach and exposure. But how can you attract the right candidates? Here we look at the steps you can take to make sure you are getting noticed as an employer on LinkedIn.
When to use LinkedIn
Is LinkedIn going to provide the right candidates for every industry? No. If you are looking for salaried roles in industries like Recruitment, E-commerce, Marketing, Tech, Finance, Law to name a few, then LinkedIn is the way to go. However, if you are looking for industrial workers or are geared more towards weekly paid staff there are alternatives to look at like Facebook.
Establish your goal
Building a brand profile is key to attracting candidates but first, you need to establish what you want to get out of LinkedIn. It is important to have an idea of the type of candidate you want to attract to be able to attract them. Your goals need to be clear and set out before you begin the recruitment process. This will prevent any unconscious bias from transferring into the hiring process and prevent you from hiring someone based on their personality clicking with yours. Being a good fit for the workplace is good of course but top talent is defined by experience, execution, and specialization.
Build your brand profile
Once you have an idea of the kind of candidates you are looking for it’s time to build yourself an attractive LinkedIn profile. After following the basics steps of creating a profile and entering a name, it’s important to use visuals and banners to make your profile stand out. Your LinkedIn is now the face of your company. Be selective and choose your images wisely; it is how people are introduced to your company and can govern first impressions from the start. Good images will grab attention, set out the context, and will help keep your page memorable. We recommend that you fill out your summary and about sections with content that will make you stand out from other employers. Use include testimonies from current staff and share good experiences of working with your company. Once you have built your profile it is time to grow your network.
Engaging content to grow your network
What separates LinkedIn from other sites is that it is a platform for building your companies brand and it gives you a chance to showcase exactly how great it is to work for you. One of the most successful ways of gaining exposure is to write almost blog-like content. You do not have to be a blogger, however writing pieces that are industry-specific or highlight things that your company does, has achieved, or wants to achieve. Include employee appreciation posts, new business wins, or company retreats. The content needs to be engaging, to elicit a response from others that will like, share, and expose your brand more. Endorsements from other members will substantiate your ethos and increase your credibility. Vice versa it is good to return the favour and share/endorse what other companies are talking about and doing as well. When posting your job vacancies, be sure to personalise your content and posts with brand logos to help grab a viewer’s attention and create a visual reminder for attracting candidates to your company.
Another aspect to promote is your work culture, you will need to use your platform and content to transfer the culture of your work environment into your social media presence. Google is the best example of this, despite its size Google’s personality on social media feels relaxed. Google promotes an ethos of going to work and being encouraged to innovate and be creative. Ultimately as an employee, this is one of the main characteristics that attract people to a new company or role. I do not think you hear anyone say they work at Google for the money, they do it for the culture. Now whether or not you believe that’s what it is really like to work for Google or not it doesn’t matter, that is what they are selling and due to their branding being so strong and the content they share, most people believe it’s true. Make sure you are showing what makes your workplace special so that even before a candidate starts to search for a new role you are already in the back of their mind.
Be consistent
There is no getting around the fact that competing with everyone in the industry to attract highly qualified and experienced employees are going to be a challenge. Building a compelling brand and attracting people to your brand will take a lot of trial and error, creating engaging industry-specific content can be difficult as well, however, if you want to attract the best candidates you are going to have to work for it!
When building a brand, it is key to be consistent and have a presence across all of your social media channels, not just one platform. If you want to maximise candidate search take a recruitment package out with Adwarrior, it will include advertisement on both LinkedIn and Facebook.