Are you leveraging LinkedIn?

We love a good (disclaimer: unscientific) LinkedIn poll at Do Good Jobs and this week we asked our jobseekers to tell us whether they used social media to find new job opportunities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, LinkedIn was the favoured option although around a quarter of respondents said they skipped social media altogether and just went straight to job boards.

So….if you are an employer and want to get more eyes on your vacancy, it might be a good idea to add LinkedIn to your recruitment plan. 

How? 

Start by sharing your job ad!

A word of caution here. LinkedIn is, like any social media platform, susceptible to scam listings - think jobs where the job description is nothing like the actual role or even worse, jobs that don’t actually exist. So, many jobseekers approach job ads on LinkedIn with caution.

For that reason we’d recommend listing your job on a bona fide job board first - like, might we suggest Do Good Jobs! That gives your job some credibility. Plus it has the added bonus of getting in front of those jobseekers who don’t use social media and instead directly search job boards for their next role.

Once you’ve listed the role on a job board you can start promoting it on LinkedIn.

Here are some ways you can do that:

• If you have an organisation page, share the job via that page along with a link to the job board listing. Top tip - there’s debate over whether LinkedIn shows posts with links to fewer people so you might want to consider putting the link in the comments rather than your post. The jury is still out on whether it truly makes a difference.

Here’s a fab example of one of our employers Taimahi Trust promoting their current Business Adminstrator vacancy. By the way, if you are interested in working with the Trust you can find details of that role here.

• If your team are on LinkedIn get them to repost what you’ve posted on your organisation’s page or share the job vacancy themselves. And if you have someone in particular listed on the vacancy as the hiring contact, it can help to make them able to answer queries via LinkedIn.
• Tap your network. Your network, in-person, or in this case your virtual LinkedIn network can be a useful source of applicants, especially those passive candidates who might not be actively searching for a role but would move if the right job came along. Ask your network to share your role or tag anyone they think might be a good fit.
• BONUS TIP: Check to see if the job board you are posting on has any options for social media promotion as part of the listing. For example, our Premium listings get a post on our LinkedIn page and a paid social media ad campaign.

Remember that jobseekers might also use LinkedIn to research your organisation before they hit apply. So, make sure your organisation page is up-to-date, correct, and contains useful information, and try to post on it regularly so that people can see you are engaged and active in your sector.

Looking for a job? Jobseekers can take advantage of LinkedIn too.

Firstly, beware of fake job ads where the details don’t stack up, the companies aren’t very visible anywhere else or it sounds too good to be true (it probably is!).

Make your job search easier by setting up filters and getting LinkedIn to notify you when jobs that match that criteria are posted. The easiest way to do that is to go to the Jobs section, search for an area you are interested in and then click the “set alert” button in the search results.

But, many jobs aren’t posted directly on LinkedIn, so don’t restrict your search to the job page. Follow the pages of organisations you are interested in working for and hit the notification button. That way you’ll get notified when they post and will get a heads-up if they post about a vacancy.

Use your LinkedIn network to help you look for suitable roles. If you are an active LinkedIn user, you’ve probably seen a number of posts like this recently, especially following the public service cuts in Wellington and other large layoffs, where people state what kind of role they are looking for and ask people to share anything suitable. The jury is out on whether it’s a good idea to do this, just like whether it’s a good idea to display the “open-to-work” banner, or whether it comes across as a bit desperate. But it’s a personal call to make. If you don’t want to be so overt, you could send personal messages to people in your network asking for assistance.

Don’t forget that just as you are looking at potential employers on LinkedIn those potential employers might be looking at you too. Make sure your profile is up-to-date and accurate (and matches with any CV you will be sending to employers), and think carefully about what you are posting or sharing. We’ve got some more tips for taking your LinkedIn profile to the next level here. You might even consider reposting or commenting on posts from an organisation you are really keen to work for as they might notice your interest.

What’s your take on LinkedIn when it comes to recruitment? The first thing you use? A handy addition to other tools such as job boards? A place you avoid like the plague? Let us know in the comments and tell us if you have any handy tips for employers or jobseekers.