Pros and Cons of using LinkedIn Recruitment Tool

Social media for recruiting purposes has been a fascination for most hiring teams these days. There would be hardly any recruiter or hiring professional who is not using any social media portal in their routine life. Social media has made life a lot easier for busy hiring teams! Recruiters look around for means to fill up jobs. LinkedIn is phenomenal here, an ever-expanding resource. LinkedIn is the best hub for finding talented professionals. However, using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool does have its pros and cons.

What does LinkedIn Deliver?

Most hiring teams today wonder why they must use LinkedIn? One of the most common reasons why hiring teams use LinkedIn includes job listings, networking, and marketing. LinkedIn is also a great medium for communicating and looking for the right talent. In addition to this, LinkedIn has proven to be a robust tool for social media recruiting and hiring the best candidates. With an exceptional search technology and extensive reach that covers a great segment of the western working industry, LinkedIn serves as the best place for finding talented professionals. Hence, HR Teams have opted for this source to find quality candidates on the Internet’s largest professional network. With an increasing number of recruiters using LinkedIn to hire potential candidates, is LinkedIn an effective recruitment tool?

 

What do Candidates think about Linkedin?

Pros of Using LinkedIn as a Recruitment Tool

Here are some advantages of using LinkedIn as a Recruitment Tool.

1. LinkedIn allows recruiters to reach out to passive candidates

LinkedIn states that 70% of its users are ‘passive candidates’. This indicates individuals who are not actively looking for a new job are very much active on LinkedIn. Therefore, such users are considered the perfect target for Recruiters. LinkedIn’s advanced search tool also aids them to identify these professionals with exact qualifications and experience.

Recruiters today do not spend time writing a job advert. Instead, they focus on making their recruitment process smarter by leveraging platforms like LinkedIn. They prefer to post jobs on LinkedIn, mostly on LinkedIn company pages as well as LinkedIn groups, which helps grab the attention of relevant LinkedIn members.

2. LinkedIn is Up-to-Date And encompasses

Everyone uses LinkedIn today, so why not use the platform to find the top talent? As long as candidates are actively searching for the best opportunity, they keep updating their profiles with the most recent experiences.

3. Consider Candidate Endorsements

It seems that every recruiter must know that in every candidate’s LinkedIn profile, there are endorsements of their skills. In addition to this, there are recommendations from the candidate’s network other than their previous and current job roles and concise skill set.

4. LinkedIn helps you hire the best talent quickly

Candidates having the experience to fill executive roles will generally have detailed LinkedIn profiles and a well-established network of contacts. This proves useful for recruiters who are trying to fill up high-level appointments.

5. LinkedIn helps you conduct reference checks

This LinkedIn feature allows recruiters to easily find common connections for quick reference checks.

Cons of Using LinkedIn As A Recruitment Tool

Hiring teams have also found some cons to using LinkedIn. Here are some disadvantages of using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.

1. Passive Candidates May Not Be Interested

Unless candidates find a job, particularly enticing, being contacted by a recruiter in this regard may be time-consuming with very little payoff. The concept that hiring will be a lot more efficient via LinkedIn compared to other social media portals does not always pan out in practice. Recruiters may contact 15 candidates who they think are the best match for their company, but they might not get back to them. Job ads, on the other hand, are all about timing. Brevity and personalization are the keys to minimizing time wasted on contacting candidates who are not much interested. You can also use inmail messages to contact the desired candidates directly.

2. How credible Are Candidate Endorsements?

Endorsements do not reduce the time recruiters should spend checking references. Many users will only click ‘Endorse’, but it does mean very little unless they mean it. LinkedIn software is primarily driven by what the users are using it for. If the users are not using the ‘endorsement’ option in the right way, it is quite evident. If the network is real and not just a collection of profiles, the endorsers will mention how they know the person and what they know is great about them.

3. A Global Talent Pool

Learning to use the portal is easy. Learning to use LinkedIn like a Pro is no small task. However, the platform is accessible to users worldwide, which ensures there is a sheer volume of the talent pool available. This can be extremely overwhelming.

4. Escalated Costs

The LinkedIn Recruiter tool generally proves to be costly for smaller companies and those that do not hire very often. Such companies should, therefore, opt for a free tool like Jobsoid that helps maximize effectiveness. These companies can benefit from using the free LinkedIn service, provided that they work on their individual, as well as, business profiles. They should also try expanding their networks as it helps boost the search results.

Conclusion

LinkedIn proves to be an amazing recruitment tool that allows recruiters to access a huge pool of talent. However, if candidates have poorly written profiles, it will be difficult for recruiters to find the best person for the right job.