How To Use LinkedIn For Recruitment

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for recruiting top talent, with 40 million job seekers using the site to search for jobs every week. However, simply having a LinkedIn account for your company and posting job listings is not enough to effectively recruit on this platform. To truly maximize the potential of LinkedIn for recruitment, companies need to take a strategic approach and engage in employee advocacy.

Employee advocacy is the practice of empowering and encouraging employees to share company content and promote the company brand on their personal LinkedIn (and other social media) accounts. Employees are encouraged to share company updates, job listings, and other relevant content with their personal networks. 

This approach can be incredibly powerful for recruitment. It allows companies to tap into the networks of their current employees, stand out from the competition, and reach a wider audience of potential candidates.

In this post, we’ll break down some of the ways LinkedIn can help your company identify and recruit talent, and why employee advocacy on LinkedIn is vital to attracting new candidates to your business. 

Strategies for recruiting on LinkedIn in 2023

LinkedIn is one of the primary destinations for job seekers and recruiters alike, boasting more than 690 million professionals using the site. The site’s popularity makes it a key element in any company’s recruiting plan, but it can also be difficult to make your company stand out to potential job seekers. 

For recruiters looking to leverage the platform, there are a few basics to get right before implementing an employee advocacy program or any other advanced outreach strategy. First and foremost, your company page needs to be filled out completely. Use your page to promote job openings, share company updates, and showcase company culture. Recruiters should also be using LinkedIn’s InMail feature to reach out to potential candidates directly with personalized messages.

In addition, make sure your recruiting team is using the full scope of LinkedIn features to find and connect with candidates. Consider using: 

• LinkedIn Recruiter Lite, which offers access to more data on potential candidates, such as their skills, experience, and job history.
• LinkedIn Talent Insights, which provides up-to-date industry trends and identifies potential candidates in high-demand fields.
• LinkedIn’s Employee Referral Program, which can be used to encourage current employees to refer their networks for open positions.
• LinkedIn Sponsored Jobs, which can increase the visibility of your job openings to a targeted audience. 
• LinkedIn Groups, which offer a way to connect with potential candidates in specific industries. 

These LinkedIn features are incredibly powerful ways to make sure you’re using the platform to its fullest extent. However, it’s worth noting that 87% of recruiters regularly use LinkedIn. Candidates on this platform are flooded with dozens of sponsored jobs, InMail messages, and recruiter outreach every day. As a result, an employee advocacy program can help your brand stand out among the competition. 

How does employee advocacy on LinkedIn work?

Employee advocacy on LinkedIn means encouraging employees to share company-related content on their personal LinkedIn profiles and in their news feeds. This can include company updates, videos, listicles, industry news, and other information about life as an employee. 

When employees share content on their personal LinkedIn accounts, it extends your recruitment reach exponentially. LinkedIn limits the number of people who see content from business pages, but personal pages enjoy almost limitless viewership. When you can activate your large network of employees to share company news, it can increase the visibility and reach of your company on the platform. 

Additionally, because the content is being shared by employees rather than the company itself, it can be seen as more authentic and trustworthy. 

Many companies don’t have a system in place to manage a formal employee advocacy effort on LinkedIn. The steps outlined below can help you get started. 

How to run an employee advocacy program on LinkedIn

Running an employee advocacy program requires activating your team members to become brand ambassadors on LinkedIn. Some companies use employee advocacy software to track and measure the reach and engagement of employee-shared content. Clearview Social, for instance, makes it even easier by creating a feed of content employees can choose to share in just one click. 

Here are a few tips for using LinkedIn for recruitment through employee advocacy. 

1. Encourage employee participation

The first step to using an employee advocacy strategy on LinkedIn for recruitment is to encourage your employees to participate. This means creating an open and supportive culture that encourages employees to share company content and promote the company brand on their personal social media accounts. This can be done through training, incentives, and regular communication.

2. Provide employees with content to share

Once you have encouraged your employees to participate, you need to provide them with content to share. This can include job listings, company updates, and other relevant content. You should also make sure that the content is easy to share, which is where Clearview Social can help. 

On Clearview Social, your company can create a queue of articles about your business that are optimized for LinkedIn. The platform then sends employees prompts to share approved content with one click. Your team members can pick and choose the pieces they want to share, share everything with one click, or opt into auto-sharing with no action required. Clearview Social’s PeakTime™ AI ensures that content is shared at strategic times of the day to reach the largest possible audience.

3. Track and measure employee engagement

Once you have encouraged employees to participate and provided them with content to share, you need to track and measure employee engagement. This can be done through Clearview Social’s analytics and reporting functions, which will allow you to see how your content is performing and how many people are engaging with it. You can adjust your content strategy accordingly with visibility into what type of content is working best.

4. Reward and recognize employees

Once you have tracked and measured employee engagement, you should reward and recognize employees for their efforts. Clearview Social makes it easy to see how each member of your team stands in the rankings with leaderboards. We measure shares, clicks, EMV and SocialScore to see who the top participants are in your program. Then, you can opt to provide rewards such as bonuses, gift cards, or even a day off. Recognition can also be something as simple as a shout-out in the company newsletter or at a company meeting.

By following these tips and creating a comprehensive employee advocacy program, you can effectively use LinkedIn for recruitment and tap into the networks of your current employees to reach a wider audience of potential candidates. Remember to encourage employee participation, provide employees with content to share, track and measure employee engagement, reward and recognize employees, and create an employee advocacy program. 

With these strategies in place, you can maximize the potential of LinkedIn for recruitment and find the top talent you need to take your business to the next level.

Learn more about employee advocacy and Clearview Social by signing up for a free demo, today.