If you’re looking to recruit staff for your small business, the thought of the time, cost and effort involved may be giving you a headache already. But have you ever considered using LinkedIn for recruitment?

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the biggest professional networking website on the internet. Think ‘Facebook for professionals’. Millions of people upload their profiles to the site containing a huge bank of valuable information, such as their:

• ·         personal statement
• ·         career history
• ·         education
• ·         recommendations from peers
• ·         contact details
• ·         professional connections
• ·         expertise

Now that you’ve seen how powerful LinkedIn can be – let us take you through the steps and the appropriate ‘netiquette’ for approaching potential candidates for your role.

Create a LinkedIn profile

If you want to use LinkedIn to connect to possible job candidates, it’s a good idea to build a profile for both you and your business. After all, prospective employees will want to see what you’re like as well!

Make sure you complete your profile as fully as possible. Most importantly – try to gain as many recommendations from current and previous colleagues as you can. Recommendations from others are an excellent way to demonstrate your trustworthiness to those who haven’t met you before.

Grow your own network

By growing your own network of connections on LinkedIn, you’ll find you have access to numerous contacts (as your direct contacts’ connections become your ‘secondary’ contacts). This can be incredibly useful if you work in a specific industry – the connections you gain will usually be extremely relevant as the ‘network effect’ takes hold. 

You can also try joining ‘groups’ that relate to the specific industry you work in and engage with the members there. LinkedIn hosts a huge number of existing groups, but if you were feeling really ambitious, you could even start one yourself! Join in discussions, answer questions that other users post and make yourself known. As well as reputation building, you can also post relevant positions on the job-boards and connect with the members selectively.

Search for candidates on the LinkedIn network

For a quick and thorough way of searching for potential candidates – you can use LinkedIn’s ‘search’ function. With LinkedIn’s free, basic profile you can use their advanced search function to look for potential recruits by:

• ·         keywords
• ·         name
• ·         location
• ·         country
• ·         postcode (proximity)
• ·         job title (current and past)
• ·         companies they’ve worked for
• ·         school
• ·         industries
• ·         groups
• ·         language
• ·         and many more.

However, at this point, you may come up against some obstacles. For example, with the basic, free service, you’re only able to view 100 search results. You cannot contact any of the candidates via InMail (LinkedIn’s direct messaging system) who aren’t in your network and you won’t be able to see the full profiles of those candidates. In this case, you may wish to consider upgrading to one of LinkedIn’s ‘talent finding’ accounts. 

Once you do have access to potential candidates’ profiles, check out the ‘contact information’ and ‘contact user for…’ sections of the profile. In this area, it will be clear whether the candidate is interested in receiving details of job opportunities and whether they’re happy to be contacted directly by phone or email.

Contact potential candidates

At this point, you may have found a few potential candidates you’d like to discuss your role with. So how should you get in touch? If you’re not already a contact of the person in question, it’s a good idea to ask politely for an introduction from a shared contact (if you have one). 

If you’re lucky, the candidate in question may have set their contact details to be visible on their profile. In this case, you can assume they probably don’t mind being contacted directly. 
If neither of these methods are successful, you may want to consider upgrading to either a ‘talent seeker’ or ‘business premium’ account from LinkedIn. For a small fee, they’ll allow you to message a limited number of candidates directly without becoming a contact of theirs.

Post your vacancy on the LinkedIn job pages

LinkedIn’s job pages are one of the fastest growing boards for job seekers. You can post your own advert here for a current rate of US $195 (subject to change). It may sound expensive, but these job ads are highly targeted and will be displayed to numerous candidates whose profiles match the requirements of your role. This job advert can do most of the hard work for you!

A few words of warning...

Before you get started on LinkedIn – it’s important to understand the ‘netiquette’ surrounding the site. Follow these tips to make sure you keep your reputation in tact:

1.     Try to avoid asking complete strangers to connect with you. This is usually frowned upon and could start you on the wrong foot with a potential candidate.

2.     Be selective about who you do connect with. If you spend too much time making connections for the sake of it, people may be suspicious about your motivations for connecting with them.

3.     Don’t join groups and start posting job roles and advertising your business straight away. You will quickly get removed from the groups and your reputation may be damaged.

Simply remember these 3 tips and LinkedIn could become one of the most valuable and inexpensive recruitment tools at your disposable. 

This feature first appeared in the Business Fit section of the Make It Cheaper website