If you were applying for a position, having the preferred experience, which generally meant having the right job title on your resume, was the key to having your application taken seriously, and more importantly, for you to have a real chance of landing the job.

The big focus on job titles was part of the military-like command-and-control management style that permeated so many organizations (especially in the United States) from the 1950s well into the 1990s. It was defined like this:

In the more traditional command and control structure, all of the decisions in an organization are made at the top. The CEO makes decisions, which are passed down through a chain of command, and everyone in the organization is lockstep in line with those decisions, doing exactly what they’re told without the freedom to make judgment calls of their own or offer feedback.

While the command-and-control approach to management may work in small organizations where the CEO knows all of the employees and work that needs to be done, it actually breaks down in larger organizations.

One of the big problems with command-and-control was that decision making frequently broke down the lower in the organization you got.

In large organizations, the CEO simply cannot be aware of everything that goes on. By trying to make all of the decisions at the top, they may fail to take into account factors at the frontline of which they’re unaware. Top-down decision-making also becomes problematic when a manager runs into something unexpected at the frontline.

When that frontline manager doesn’t have the authority to make a decision regarding the issue, they have to send it all the way back up to the top of the organization. Then, when a decision is reached, it has to come all the way back down the organization to the frontline. This wastes an enormous amount of time and inhibits the organization’s ability to respond to issues in a timely fashion.

Although command-and-control management hasn’t been totally discarded, the focus has changed a great deal in the new, post-pandemic world of work. Job titles may still have some importance, but they are nowhere near as relevant as they once were.

Back in 2016, Forbes predicted that that the old ways of working were changing and that organizations that wanted to get ahead of the curve needed to change too, As Forbes put it:

The old working world is going away, and the organizations that are fastest to get the memo and shift their cultures are the ones who will keep growing and innovating over the next 30 years. The organizations who pretend it’s still 1955 will lose talent and lose customers. We have to wake up and realize that our ability to snag talented people and hang onto them is our only sustainable competitive advantage — but it’s an incredible benefit to have.

Yes, part of the culture shift Forbes describes is about a stronger focus on retaining talent given how much harder it has gotten to recruit and hire that talent today, but there are two other elements that have emerged in the 2022 workplace that are equally important.

One is a focus on employee skills rather than their previous job title, and the other is building a culture where workforce agility, defined by SHRM as “An organization’s ability to alter its direction or … to swiftly adapt to the changing needs of customers, employees and the marketplace” as is a critical element to both developing and retaining talent.

Recent research from Fuel50, an AI Talent Marketplace technology company, described this workplace shift in a LinkedIn newsletter post titled The Move Towards a Skills-Based Talent Strategy: Why it Matters. Here’s how they put it:

“In today’s world of work, the tides are changing. Technology is continuing to evolve at rapid rates, and organizations are finding it harder to predict and prepare for the future. This is exactly why workforce agility has now become imperative to organizational success, growth, and future readiness. A skills-based talent strategy – where the focus shifts from jobs to skills – enables organizations to respond to change more efficiently, helping to boost their agility, adaptability, and nimbleness.”

The Transition to Skills-Based Workplaces Makes a Lot of Sense

They also described the big shift from traditional role-based or job-based workforces, where employees are put into positions based on education, credentials and experience, to a skills-based approach where tasks are assigned based on people’s skills instead of their previous roles. A recent report made this case as well, bluntly describing the challenges most organizations are now facing:

We all know the world of work is continually evolving. In fact, strategies that may have worked just a few years ago aren’t as fit for the work environment we have today. The rapid changes in technology over the past decade have boosted digital adoption in all aspects of work. As a result, experts predict that 50% of workers will be displaced by technological automation in the next five years and 40% of skills will no longer be relevant.

These workers will need to reskill to stay competitive in the job market or may even need to change the direction of their careers altogether. Forbes says this is what has led to many organizations developing a skills-based talent strategy.

Here’s my take: It can be difficult to wrap your head around the seemingly sudden shift from a roles-based workplace to one that is focused instead on skills and agility. But, it also makes a lot of sense when you dig into it, because the notion that organizations can simply continue to just churn through people and then crank up the recruiting to find more again when needed is not only costly to their employer brand but also terribly expensive and counter-productive.

That’s Just Not the Way to Build a High-Performing Workforce Anymore

The Harvard Business Review saw the skills-based approach coming back in June of 2021, and they made it clear then that this was a train that was gaining speed and that leaders would do well to jump onboard right away. They pointed out that:

Evaluating employees and new hires based on their skill sets instead of their work history can help level the playing field — and help companies realize the talent they already have. It also makes talent pools more diverse and often makes hiring more effective.

This is the future of hiring and development. To get ahead of it, companies need to start weaving learning into their company cultures. Organizations slow on the uptake will be left behind and forced to deal with unsatisfied and unmotivated employees and significantly less innovation overall. At a time when talent is the number-one commodity in business, companies can’t afford to remain stuck in old mindsets.

Well, the future of hiring and development is here.

The true game-changer comes when leaders connect skill-building to internal mobility. Prioritizing employee development is now a non-negotiable for organizations to drive retention and engagement. Employees are looking for ways to grow their skill sets and plan their careers, and the best way to facilitate that is through internal opportunities.

People want a career path they can count on, and employers want more agility to move workers around as workforce needs continue to change. A skills-based approach that recognizes the power of more internal mobility that helps both workers and the needs of their organization is the modern way to build a better business.

The post If You’re Not Hiring for Skills, You Probably Aren’t Keeping Up With the New World of Work appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Despite talk of their irrelevance, there are more job boards today than ever before. And for good reason. Job boards are the most popular channel among applicants, with 60% of people using them to look for open roles. And for recruiters, advertising on job boards helps cast a wider net and reach more candidates. 

Let’s take a closer look.

Understanding Job Boards

Job boards are not just a place for adverts anymore. Because recruiters are able to control the narrative, job boards offer a world of opportunities:

• • Employer branding
  • Access to resume databases
  • Candidate search superpowers
  • Advanced technology that maps candidates to the right jobs

They are a competitive space for recruiters racing to find talent. Hence, it’s crucial to be intentional, strategic and thoughtful about how to stand out from the crowd. 

That said, job boards are evolving and moving toward providing users and customers with more than just a digital classified page. Platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor exemplify this shift. The focus is a content-first approach to curating networks of highly-qualified talent, delivering consistent value. In other words, job boards are becoming better at matching jobs and skills. 

Job boards can be classified into two major categories – mass market and niche.

Top Mass Market Job Boards

Indeed: 

• • Monthly active users: 250 million
  • Resumes: 17 million
  • 10 jobs added every second
    • Indeed is a job aggregator which can automatically list the jobs from your career portal on its site. You can also reach out to Indeed to get your career pages indexed, if necessary. If you have listed your job in multiple places, Indeed takes care of scrapping the duplicates.
    • You can showcase culture, people experiences, achievements and more, so candidates can get to know more about your company. Additionally, you can include links to the company website, social channels and forums, and use custom calls to action to attract candidates. 
    • Indeed offers a handy mobile application that enables recruiters and candidates to keep moving forward with jobs and applications from anywhere, anytime. 
    • Offering ready-made work assessments, Indeed helps make screening a breeze.
    • You can also gather valuable intelligence into relevant salaries, making it easy for you to create convincing job descriptions and ads. 
    • Note: For paid job postings, in addition to pay-per-click ads, Indeed offers a cost-per-application model where recruiters/employers only pay for applications that meet certain criteria from the job ad.

ZipRecruiter: ZipRecruiter is another job board application that is extremely popular with candidates across sectors and industries. 

• • Monthly active users: 25 million
  • Resumes: 36 million
  • Active jobs: 9 million
    • When you post a job, ZipRecruiter’s smart technology automatically invites the right candidates to apply. Even better, if you rate candidates, the job board learns from your ratings and sends you candidates that match your preferences. 
    • The Invite to Apply feature allows recruiters to proactively send candidates a personal, pre-written invite to nudge them into pursuing jobs with you. 
    • Unlike many other job boards, ZipRecruiter offers customers 24/7 assistance. You can call, email, or ping on live chat and find a human at the other end. 
    • Also, screening questions attract the candidates with the right skills, experience, and attitude. In this process, you can mark questions as ‘deal-breakers’. When a candidate doesn’t answer them or answers incorrectly, ZipRecruiter automatically rejects them.
    • The ZipRecruiter App gives you the flexibility to review applicants and act on them even if you are on the move.
    • Note: Unlike Indeed, ZipRecruiter has slot-based pricing where you can purchase reusable job slots. The number of slots depends on the plan you purchase. The job ads can be changed as needed.

LinkedIn: Even though LinkedIn is a professional networking site, it has turned into a goldmine for recruiters. A LinkedIn recruiter account further empowers recruiters with highly-targeted search capabilities, InMail management, profile management, collaboration and productivity functionalities.

• • Community members: 740 million
  • Monthly active users: 310 million
  • Registered companies: 55 million
    • Arguably the best channel to reach both active and passive professionals. 
    • Employers/recruiters can create a company page and build a network. This is also a perfect platform to communicate employer brand stories, organizational achievements, open positions and build connections with potential candidates. 
    • LinkedIn is one of the very few platforms to combine content and social proof for recruiters. You can read candidate endorsements from their colleagues, managers and leaders. You can also view and validate their work history details and skills. Candidates are unlikely to stretch the truth in a public forum that can be easily spotted/verified by their connections. 
    • LinkedIn’s search capabilities are highly targeted – its algorithm matches requisitions with related content that applicants post or share to deliver more high-quality leads.  

Adzuna: Adzuna is a classifieds site that is popular for its network reach. Job posters can also reach candidates across affiliated/partner networks and job boards. 

• • Job adverts: 2 billion
  • Monthly active users: 20 million
  • Availability: 16 countries
    • If you are an organization that’s constantly hiring, Adzuna can also use an XML feed to update your job listings. 
    • Apart from showcasing open jobs, the platform provides valuable insights on comparative salaries and labor market trends. 
    • Adzuna partners with 100+ national and local job boards such as Mumsnet, LinkedIn and Jobstoday to further broadcast jobs to a wider audience. 
    • Note: Employers can post several jobs each month to Adzuna for free. When candidates apply, they are sent directly to the applicant tracking system. Organizations are charged based on the number of candidates they respond to.

Facebook: Facebook is the most popular, populated and active social media channel, opening the door to a large pool of passive candidates. 

• • Monthly active users: 2.8 billion
  • Daily active users: 1.6 billion
  • Third most visited website
    • Facebook empowers employers to broadcast jobs in two main ways: directly to a company page or post to jobs on Facebook (posting to Facebook jobs is available only for business pages.). The jobs you post will also appear on the feeds of people who engage with your posts or follow you.
    • In addition to this, you can also regularly engage in relevant groups. For example, a group of job seekers in the same state with whom you can share open opportunities or a group of designers/engineers/marketers where you can find niche talent. 
    • Build rapport with the audience by engaging with them with good content, videos or even the occasional live session, where you can showcase culture, people stories or even have your hiring managers talk about an open role.
    • To top it off, walk-ins and career fairs can be promoted through Facebook events and promoted to reach the right audience. People can also show they are interested by clicking on an ‘Interested’ button. You can start checking out profiles right at this stage and make the in-person conversations more personal. 
    • Given the high rate of engagement, Facebook can be leveraged to drive employee referrals – especially when your hiring is running on a limited budget. Employees can like and share job posts or tag people they think will best suit the role.
    • One of the greatest advantages you will have with Facebook is the ability to target very specific groups of people through ads, including demography, age group, behavior, prior interactions, connection with your page, interests and so on.

Top Niche Job Boards:

• • Poached helps recruiters and hiring managers find highly-skilled line cooks, sous chefs, restaurant managers, servers, bartenders and baristas. With features that allow employers to filter our unqualified candidates, this site is key to creating a kitchen dream team.
  • SalesJobs is one of the largest sales job boards around. You can post and distribute your jobs to over 200 niche sales job boards to find the candidates you are looking for through a single platform.  
  • Medzilla is a popular job board for employers and jobseekers in healthcare and pharmaceutical fields, Medzilla allows you to search for scientists, researchers and clinical experts. Medical staffing pros and applicants post their needs and credentials on this user-friendly platform and listings are mailed out to selected candidates who hold the relevant qualifications.
  • AllRetailJobs allows retail employers across every imaginable product category to post their job listings on this platform. Also, the platform boasts a resume database of over 1.5 million, with thousands more being added each month. 
  • Behance is a great platform for those looking for a creative type in industries like architecture, web design or fashion. It’s is a free resume database with a twist: the online platform is designed not just to show PDFs of resumes but to actually showcase creative work to give it the exposure that it deserves. 
  • HigherEdJobs connects jobseekers and employers across all aspects of academia. The website logs more than 1.5 million visitors per month and claims that each job posting averages 655 views. And, of the site’s users, more than 60% have five or more years of experience in higher education.
  • InsuranceJobs offers employers the opportunity to use a simple solution to connect with jobseekers in the insurance industry. The site boasts a searchable resume database of over 300,000 insurance industry candidates and allows employers to post insurance jobs on the site, which are then automatically distributed to other job boards via the site’s database.
  • CDLJobs is there to help employers address the shortage of drivers across the United States, you can find CDL-qualified drivers. The site has nearly 10,000 trucking job listings and often encourages veteran drivers to find new trucker job opportunities. You can also specify trailer types and have your company’s own listing page for all jobs. 

Making the Most of Job Boards: Programmatic

Posting and tracking jobs across multiple job boards can be cumbersome, especially if you don’t use a programmatic job advertising platform. A programmatic platform can help publish and manage jobs on multiple job boards in a single click. 

You can also make use of ad exchange networks and intelligent automation capabilities to spread your job advertising spend across the most efficient job boards – where you can hire the most candidates at the least amount of cost. 

What’s more, applications directly flow into your ATS where they can be managed, shared and discussed with other hiring team members. 

Finding the right match for your job openings is important in order for your organization to reach its goals and objectives. Job boards are a valuable resource for finding quality talent, and vital to a successful recruitment strategy.

To learn more about how Joveo can help you ace the job board game, schedule a demo today! And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to see how Joveo can help you get the most out of your recruitment advertising.

The post The Insider’s Guide to Job Boards appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

But LinkedIn isn’t just useful for client acquisition. It also helps startups meet their recruitment goals. LinkedIn now has 850 million members and over 58 million registered companies. Fifty million of those members search for jobs on LinkedIn, and 60,480 are hired every single week.

These numbers have caused 40% of companies to rely on LinkedIn skills filters to identify high-quality candidates. It’s clear that LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for any company.

How to Use LinkedIn for Recruitment Marketing

For recruitment managers, even the free versions of LinkedIn can open doors to new hiring possibilities.

Here’s how any business can use LinkedIn to build a recruitment pipeline.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

The first step of recruitment marking is building a brand. This can take several months, as you’ll need to establish a positive brand reputation, build a talent network, and rework your website. But if you’re one of the 78% of companies that can’t fill their open job roles, it’s worth the effort.

Once you’ve done this, you can start working on your personal and business profile. Be sure to incorporate SEO, as it’ll help candidates find you and increase your chances of connecting. Try to utilize keywords or key phrases that are more likely to be searched by people in your industry.

Here are some other tips you should use to optimize your LinkedIn profile:

• • Write a LinkedIn headline that describes who you are and what you do
  • Write a 200-500 word summary that incorporates keywords naturally
  • On your personal profile, add your experience and job details
  • Ask for endorsements from your employees, colleagues and partners
  • Ensure you’re connected to your company page (and share content to it)

You’re allowed to invite 100 people to your company page each month, while a personal page can connect to 100 people per week. That means you can send messages to 500 extra people.

Post Relevant and Valuable Content

Content marketing is an essential part of inbound marketing. Businesses should get into the habit of posting content that’s valuable and relevant to their industry, such as blogs or videos.

Encourage recruiters to learn everything about new hires’ paperwork, or you can focus on content that helps candidates write resumes. This type of content can attract a specific type of worker (i.e., HR staff and recruiters) or benefits a wide range of candidates.

By posting regular updates and worthwhile content, you’re establishing yourself as an authority, which makes you more trustworthy. New posts show up on feeds, making it more convenient to interact with you. Both initiatives increase your exposure to new audiences and candidates.

If you’re unsure what to post, look at your competition and review their content. Once you have an idea of what your customers may like, review your analytics and adjust if it isn’t working. Create a content syndication strategy that will generate new leads and educate prospects.

Ensure Key Players are Active

Key players in your company, such as the CEO, CFO and COO, should maintain a strong LinkedIn presence. This shows that they’re willing to network with and engage with candidates.

Authenticity is very important for your brand, and several modern candidates expect it. If you’re an executive or essential shareholder, you may be too busy to post content or interact with others. Instead of doing this, hire a social media marketer to handle your LinkedIn account.

But if you’re a recruiter, ask yourself the following questions about your executives:

• • Are they joining enough relevant LinkedIn Groups?
  • If they are, should they be contributing more often?
  • Do they routinely post to their own LinkedIn feed?
  • What type of content are they posting? Is it relevant?

While company employees can help prop up what the executives are saying, your key players have to lead the way. Discuss with your executives the importance of posting consistently.

Join and Use LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups present multiple opportunities to interact with other industry professionals or talented individuals. You should participate in group discussions regularly to build your brand.

However, you can’t just choose any LinkedIn Group. Before joining a group, take a look around. Are the people commenting related to your target audience or company interests? Do your ideal prospects spend a lot of time here? Is the group large, and if it is, is engagement pretty high?

Once you’ve joined the group, commit to doing the following:

• • Post updates about your industry
  • Comment and share posts
  • Ask questions to encourage discussion
  • Be helpful by answering people’s questions
  • Don’t pitch all the time
  • Pay attention to common pain points in the group
  • Address these pain points by making new content

If you want to use LinkedIn Groups for talent acquisition, ask if you’re allowed to post a job directly to the group. If not, search for groups that act as a secondary job board for candidates.

Grow Your Following to 500+

Your success on LinkedIn hinges on how sizable and active your followers are. High-caliber content can do a lot to bring more eyes to your page, but it won’t make them log in. With that said, be careful when using automation tools to connect with potential candidates or clients.

LinkedIn’s Terms of Service prohibits the use of automation tools to send messages or post content. In some cases, LinkedIn will send a warning even if you aren’t using automation tools, so you have to slow down when adding new people or mass sending InMail messages.

It’s possible to use these tools if they mimic human behavior, but there’s still a chance you’ll get banned. It may be wise to spend 10 minutes a day manually adding people to your network.

When you run out of connection requests, visit other people’s profiles. If they have their “viewed” notifications on, they’ll see you looked at their page and they may send a request to connect.

The post How to Leverage LinkedIn for Lead Generation and Recruitment appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Sometimes the best candidates aren’t always those deeply committed to a full-time position, who need to be subjected to the poaching and enticement process. Sometimes they are. But, that banner doesn’t tell you their story. So, do you engage or ignore?

Recruiting And ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’

It is obvious and understood that employers will always desire the best candidates to interview and then offer employment to. I mean, why wouldn’t they? It is important, however, to understand where we glean those top-tier candidates.

While cherry-picking from the top of the tree might seem like the best approach, are you, as a recruiter missing out on some premium, available and more reachable fruit? Yes, this fruit analogy can be taken too far, but you wouldn’t want to suggest a rotten apple as a potential candidate to your employer who has faith in your abilities and skills to pick the best for the position.

So the question for many of us becomes whether seeking out those with the Open-to-Work banner is worth it. Are these candidates just low-hanging fruit?

Of Course, They Are Open To Work

There seems to be less fear and trepidation about an employee’s openness to other opportunities than a few years ago. Employees feel less obligated to a company and sense more freedom to be open to new opportunities. Not to mention the unfortunate layoffs many have encountered recently.

As recruiters, we should understand this mentality. Feeling less obligated and advertising their open-to-work status does not diminish their value in their current position or the position you are searching to fill.

Most would agree that candidates would definitely consider it if a recruiter came knocking with a tempting offer. Whether they currently have a full-time position, recently let go or simply doing their own thing. They’re clearly open to work.

So does using the banner make the potential candidate seem desperate for work and less desirable to an employer? If we as recruiters have a more open mind, then most definitely not. Unfortunately, some of us are a bit closed-minded about this.

The open-to-work banner signals to LinkedIn sourcing and us as recruiters that the candidate is willing to consider an opportunity that might suit them. After all, if a potential candidate has opted for the banner but their skill set and experience are not up to standard, we won’t even give them a second look anyway.

Discarding The Stigma Associated With The Open-To-Work Banner

The open-to-work banner seems to be disassociating from the stigma previously associated with it. Many were initially skeptical about it, saying it does not speak well of the candidate or could put employment seekers in a difficult situation should their employer find out they are looking for alternative work.

While the jury is still out on whether using the photo frame is a good option, opinions on using the open-to-work to recruiters are swinging in a far more positive manner. As it should.

After all, it’s about the candidate’s skill set, their first impression on LinkedIn, and if their abilities and experience fit the required position. So why do we ignore candidates with the open-to-work banner? I suggest discarding that mentality and opening ourselves up to the many talented individuals out there searching for new opportunities. Let’s not let this LinkedIn feature work against potential quality candidates or better yet, us.

Yes, they are open to work. Not low-hanging fruit, but eager and passionate for new opportunities.

The post Let’s Talk About The “Open To Work” Banner appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

The new tools also include capabilities to aid employees in their career development, enhanced personalization on LinkedIn Learning Hub and tools for skills evaluation and career pathing.

In a blog post, LinkedIn Vice President of Product Hari Srinivasan said that “to maximize the full potential of their workforce, employers are taking a closer look at sourcing open roles internally: 25% of recruiters at our largest customers are already using tools on LinkedIn to support internal hiring.”

To help, “we’re making it easier for talent leaders to foster a culture of internal hiring and career development by launching new features across the LinkedIn hiring and learning products they already use,” he said.

Goals and Learning

According to the website Tech Report, LinkedIn has introduced a “Spotlight” to identify and highlight the benefits of hiring internal candidates. The feature will align with conventional criteria to encourage consideration of internal candidates who match the criteria of a job posting.

The network’s new learning tools allow employees to specify their goals and receive customized learning recommendations, based on them. Individuals can also assess their proficiencies with evaluations across 42 hard and soft skills.

In addition, “role guides” simplify career pathing by offering resources such as relevant content, communities, pre-certifications and others that help workers better understand the skills they need for a specific role.

LinkedIn also introduced changes to help employers identify and hire matching employees. A new commitments feature added to company pages allow employers to highlight specific commitments they’ve made in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); environmental sustainability; social impact; career growth and learning; and work-life balance.

Earlier this year, LinkedIn partnered with IBM, Meta, Oracle and other platforms to expand its professional certification offering. With the partnerships, learners can directly build skills from providers and include their certifications on their LinkedIn profile.

The post New LinkedIn Tools Focus on Internal Mobility appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

We read countless articles, sat through webinars and attended endless events about how the availability of Big Data would be like “drinking from a fire hose,” giving us more than enough information to improve outcomes and capture more accurate metrics. 

Fast forward: the recruiting industry, 2022. There are now six billion people with internet access. Instagram changes its feed with such frequency that it’s become one long stream of ads, rendering it useless for social recruiting (if that was ever really a thing).

Today’s LinkedIn hacks are about hacking the algorithm to increase visibility amid career experts, resume writers and influencers espousing their latest thoughts about “quiet quitting” and other buzzwords. The mobile debate is moot, with smartphone usage outranking other devices. The Candidate Experience Awards are still trucking. And everyone’s trying to figure out how to be “data-driven” and make all the information they’re capturing usable without the help of a full-time analyst. 

It’s striking how much the more things change, the more they stay the same, particularly in recruiting data. Hiring trends come and go (look at you, Great Resignation-cession). Recruiters get laid off and hired back en masse. Told to do more with less. And keep coming back for more. With that said, there *is* a lot of data available these days, and some of it is actually helpful – if you know what to do with it. Here are a few things to note: 

If You Don’t Know What It Means, Don’t Try and Measure It

Some metrics are relatively straightforward. Time to fill = how many days it took, from the req getting approved and posted to the day you received an accepted offer. Time to hire = how many days it took from when the candidate entered your pipeline to the day you received an accepted offer.

On the other hand, quality of hire is a bit more nebulous. How can one determine the value a new hire brings to a company? How long do you give that person to demonstrate value? How does your probably subpar onboarding experience impact their ability to show value? Define your metrics before you start to measure. 

You Don’t Need to Measure Everything

If it were up to most executive teams, every aspect of recruiting would be quantifiable, but it’s not. We’re talking about a human-based function – far too many variables are at play. Rather than measure everything, determine what matters to your organization and stick with a few key metrics.

Are you involved in high-volume hiring? Seasonal? College recruiting? Executive search? You wouldn’t try the same recruiting strategy to fill these different types of positions. Likewise, you cannot, nor should you, try to fit all of these into the same boxes. Pick a few metrics to focus on. 

You Don’t Have to Be an Analyst to Analyze

Seems obvious, right? But not everyone in recruiting is comfortable with numbers. If you were, you might have picked another profession. Luckily in today’s world, there are technologies that can do most of the recruiting data computations for you without needing to build out a complicated formula in excel or stand around like the confused math lady meme.

You don’t even need a huge budget; you just need to know how to make your solutions work for you – and trust me, most of what you’ve got already does more than you realize. So, call up your friendly customer success rep and ask them to walk you through your analytics functions. I’m sure they will love to hear from you. 

Here’s the thing: whether it’s big data or regular data, it’s only useful if you can use it. If it’s just there, with no one looking, or too messy to navigate, it’s not helping your cause. Few organizations outside the enterprise have the option to bring on analysts, which means the vast majority of employers have a slew of numbers collecting dust in the recesses of their tech stack.

Stop trying to do everything, start trying to do something and slow down the fire hose. No one asked for that terrible idiom, anyway.  

The post Unf*cking the Fire Hose, a.k.a. Making Recruiting Data Usable appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Make Your Massage Stand Out

“In today’s market, candidates are inundated with messaging, so it’s important to make yours stand out. My tagline is a Ron Burgundy quote and I’ve done Linkedin messaging campaigns featuring Vanilla Ice lyrics. I got over a 50% response rate on that Vanilla Ice one, by the way, so it works. Make your message memorable, or at least warrant a response. No one wants another worn-out template to ignore.”

Jeffrey Boyle
Associate Manager, Talent Acquisition
North America Indegene.

Organize Webinars Or Other Virtual Events

“Webinars and other free virtual events are a great way to source new candidates. Provide as much detail as possible about the event so that you can attract qualified candidates. Make sure your presentation topic caters to your audience. You want people to leave the event interested and ready to follow-up and connect with you. This is a great opportunity to create a talent pipeline, so be sure to appreciate your audience, follow up and stay connected.”

Phillip Lew, Founder & CEO
C9 Staff

Try Live Streaming

“I love the potential offered by live streaming platforms, such as Twitch. My co-founder, who’s a talented software developer, streams while he works. He succeeded in growing his following from 0 to 1,000 in a few months, and now most of our new candidates for technical roles actually come through his stream. The leads that we get are already familiar with our company culture as they have, in a way, worked together with one of our founders through the stream. Inviting people to join your work sessions is pretty much the closest connection you can create with potential candidates – everyone should try it.”

Max Korpinen, Co-founder & CEO
Hireproof

Engage Through Subreddit Debates and Exchanges

“Here’s an off-the-wall but potentially lucrative way to find candidates. Go onto a subreddit or other niche forum that’s relevant to your business. Comment in a thread or start your own and be part of a respectful yet engaging debate. This is the kind of content professionals in your industry enjoy reading – something that’s energetic enough to keep their interest, and focused around something only they would understand. 

“Let it slip that you’re ‘always looking for workers who have experience in X’ or “if I could hire folks who know how to Y, my bosses would be thrilled.” You’ll get replies and DMs from candidates who were following your conversation and want to be part of your business. Not every candidate will be worthwhile, of course, but the ones that are have  essentially come to you for free. And if you leave the thread up, you’ll find it becomes a continual source of recruiting potential.”

David Patterson-Cole, CEO
Moonchaser

Personalize Messaging With Chatbots

“Gone are the days when chatbots were used solely for customer service. Today, they’ve also proven very useful for recruitment and hiring. With the modern customer expecting a personalized experience, recruits are beginning to expect much the same thing, especially today, when they have the upper hand in the candidate-driven market. Adding a chatbot feature to your career portal is a fantastic way to personalize your recruits’ experiences inexpensively and with minimal effort. The chatbot can field simple requests and hand over the chat to your hiring manager to answer more complex questions with a human touch.”

Scott Lieberman, Owner & Founder
Touchdown Money

Connect Through Professional Communities Like Fishbowl

“One strategy for sourcing candidates through conversations is using Fishbowl, a professional community to connect and talk with others in roles and industries similar to your own or what you’re targeting. While my agency is very niche in our location and sector, the topics, conversations and Q&A on this platform share so much intel on how candidates think about career options. Fishbowl gives you an opportunity to be anonymous and pose questions to candidates to understand their priorities. The platform also allows people to directly message someone (once you have enough “likes”) to have more one-on-one conversations to give advice. This, in turn, has led to connections on LinkedIn and referrals. I believe this platform provides a safer place for candidates to be honest and conversational, changing the recruiting world in a positive way.”

Rachel Newmyer, Sourcing and Recruiting Manager
Taylor White

Get Live On Linkedin

“My means of conversation for sourcing candidates is definitely through LinkedIn, such that I literally have their work expertise right in front of me. I can engage in a casual setting to get a ‘feel’ of who the applicant is. I can even follow their history to determine if they’ll be a good cultural fit. What I like best because of a new LinkedIn feature, I can propose an instant meeting. LinkedIn is definitely the way to go.”

JK Bridges, Corporate Talent Acquisition
KACE Company

Use Conversational AI for Mobile Engagement

“Broken communication channels in the recruitment process have always been a pain point for candidates and employers. On one hand, candidates find it difficult to reach the recruiters to answer their queries or receive feedback. On the other, recruiters struggle to find the time to engage with candidates. 

“Chatbots run on conversational AI platforms. They not only help streamline the recruiting and hiring process by automating search and selection, but they keep candidates engaged with 24/7 chatbots to answer queries at fingertips. AI uses a bank of predefined questions and answers to converse with candidates, immediately providing them with the information they need. Conversational AI provides a mobile engagement solution that offers innovative and personalized communication to regularly engage candidates. This provides a seamless candidate experience by making communication convenient and enabling higher response rates when reaching candidates through other methods.”

Swechha Mohapatra, Head of Consulting & Delivery
hrtech.sg

Source Candidates Through Groups and Organizations

“Source candidates through groups and organizations that you are already a part of. Women in Tech is a great example. This is a non-profit organization where women in tech are able to meet for webinars, networking events and panels with others in similar industries. Finding candidates here is great and fairly easy. Start with these types of organizations,I then go from there.”

Shaun Price, Head of Customer Acquisition
MitoQ

Develop Conversation Pipelines To Fall on

“One of my favorite things to do with candidates is an exploratory conversation. I find that you can sometimes get a more authentic view of a person when you’re chatting about their general interests and what they want out of a role rather than asking them questions where both you and the candidate have a specific role/job description/list of requirements in mind. Establishing and nurturing these relationships has allowed us to build strong pipelines of talent, which we’re able to reach out to as soon as a role that aligns with what they want opens up. We’ve also found that our candidates become better promoters of our talent brand in the market when they see us as establishing relationships that are more than transactional, or focused on just immediate gaps/needs we have to fill. It’s a key part of our candidate-centric approach to talent acquisition.”

Patrick Ward, Manager, Talent Acquisition
Halloran Consulting Group, Inc.

Reach Out Through Phone Calls

“Sometimes the best method of engaging talent is the simplest and most underutilized. Pick up the phone! There are a multitude of contact-finding tools available and so many phone numbers are publicly listed. I find that most people respond favorably to a well-timed call and a friendly voice.”

Jody Simon, Head of Global Sourcing
Okta

Build Relationships You Can Tap When Needed

“Sourcing candidates through conversations is less about ‘technique’ and more about ‘intent.’ Knowing that eventually everyone is a candidate, it’s important to build a good idea of what the person is looking for. If that authentically fits an opportunity you have right now, great. If not, it’s not a wasted conversation. When they are ready or when you get an opportunity, it will be an easy win. If you think this way for every interaction, you will have relationships for just about any task.”

Jonah Manning, Founder & Sourcer
Hire Wells

The post 12 Ways to Source Candidates Through Conversations appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Modern Hire added new languages to its Automated Interview Scoring (AIS) module, which uses AI to evaluate candidate responses and provide hiring teams with recommended scores. AIS will now be offered in 23 languages, the company said, including dialects. Chief Science Officer Mike Hudy said the product will help enterprises “raise their game” when it comes to diverse and ethical hiring, and provide candidates with an engaging interview experience based on job-relevant questions.

PRO Unlimited introduced Total Talent Intelligence, a solution that provides real-time data on a company’s talent landscape to help it make better strategic hiring and retention decisions. TTI expands on and integrates with PRO’s IWM platform. It works with more than 205 billion data points and mines over 40,000 sources across 160 countries to provide up-to-date information on the talent landscape.

SilkRoad Technology added Entelo’s candidate search and recruitment marketing technology to its capabilities. The addition will complement SilkRoad’s solutions to deliver end-to-end experiences, from source to hire to retire. SilkRoad said the tools will also allow it to provide enterprise solutions that offer sourcing, marketing, candidate management, onboarding and mobility assistance.

Finding and hiring new talent is one of HR’s top priorities, said a survey from HR Dive. Just more than 36% of those responding said hiring was their top concern (36.5%), more than training (almost 8%) and tech (about 7%). Employers are “thinking about how to grow again,” said one respondent. “Even those organizations that had to do layoffs through COVID-19 are now in a position to bring talent back.”

Mitratech, a provider of legal, compliance and HR software, acquired the high-volume, hourly employee-focused applicant tracking and onboarding platform TalentReef. “Combining TalentReef’s best-in-class systems with Mitratech’s expertise, technology and global platform will ensure our customers’ hiring needs are serviced better and faster than anyone else in the industry,” said Mitratech CEO Mike Williams.

The post HCM Talent Technology Roundup August 12, 2022 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

CEIPAL users will now be able to engage with and screen applicants through LinkedIn without leaving their ATS platform. Meanwhile, applicants will be able to use their LinkedIn profiles to apply for any job posted by a CEIPAL customer who’s using Apply Connect.

Leveraging Both Side

With Apply Connect, users can:

• Post jobs from CEIPAL to LinkedIn in real-time.
• Allow candidates to apply for jobs from any device without leaving LinkedIn.
• Get applications from LinkedIn delivered directly to CEIPAL’s talent acquisition platform.
• Incorporate screening questions from CEIPAL’s platform directly into LinkedIn applications.
• View real-time LinkedIn profiles, applicant’s LinkedIn skills data and other insights without leaving CEIPAL.
• Automatically send application status updates to candidates.

According to LinkedIn’s research, with the Apply Connect integration customers can expect to receive up to 4x more applicants with the network’s enhanced job seeker application process. In addition, by automating candidate notifications, customers can more easily keep candidates updated on the hiring process.

Last year, CEIPAL launched what it described as the industry’s first AI-driven solution to address diversity, equity and inclusion within both the existing workforce and across talent acquisition sources.

The solution integrates all hiring sources and data points into a single talent container, offering organizations access to the most diverse and qualified talent available, while also providing the necessary tools to engage and hire the candidates for any job.

The post CEIPAL, LinkedIn Integration Aims to Streamline Job Posting and Applications appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

What about the kind of information you seek when hunting down an expert, candidate, or potential partner on a platform like LinkedIn?

It would certainly help to know proactively the types of projects each person has led, or all the relevant extras they take on across their professional and personal lives, such as hosting a podcast, mentoring, or volunteering.

Next Generation Professional Social Network

Welcome to Polywork, a professional social network where people share what they do and collaborate with others.

Polywork is a small design-obsessed team working on building the next generation professional social network to enable people to share what they do and collaborate with others.

They believe that the world needs better information on what people can do to make it more productive. lets users create a free personality-focused professional profile where they can share updates and send collaboration requests to others on the network.

In contrast to LinkedIn, Polywork features “badges” to highlight personal and professional skills and interests as opposed to focusing just on a job title. Users also have the option to add projects and accomplishments to career timelines.

Whether it was pivoting careers or starting new projects like a podcast or a store on Etsy to pass the time, the pandemic amplified a growing trend of people who do more than one type of work. Existing professional social networks use the job titles we hold and schools we went to as the main way to identify who candidates are.

Is This Flawed and Outdated?

Consider for a minute the myriad of similar job titles we look for Site Reliability Engineers. At companies like Facebook, these engineers are called “Production Engineers.” Looking on LinkedIn for “Site Reliability Engineers” or “SRE,” actually eliminates results based on job title that could be a fit for the role. 

Yes, as a social network dedicated to professionals, LinkedIn offers a treasure trove of business contacts, but I’d argue that there is more to learn about our candidates which yields better outreach and increased engagement.

All the result of being able to find or decipher a better picture of who our candidate is and what they are interested in doing or producing.

On the professional networking side, the approach allows users to get a quick visual overview of an individual — perhaps fleshing out some of the dry details they already saw on their LinkedIn account — and quickly navigate to individual examples of specific activity.

Recruiters looking for professional ice-breakers will probably relish the chance to find more up-to-date material to work with, ahead of making a cold pitch.

Current professional networking platforms don’t cut it. Your moniker might read “Software Engineer” or “Product Manager” or “Designer” and perhaps the school you went to. But these titles alone don’t come close to capturing what we actually do in our professional lives or the types of work we find motivating.

Enter Polywork and Resume 2.0

As opposed to being a resume directory with a social-professional network built adjacent to your resume profile, Polywork is a historical professional portfolio or journal that also is a social-professional network.

Polywork focuses on letting people tell their own stories and all they’re capable of, so we can meet new people, supercharge our teams, and unlock creativity.

From capturing details like who you collaborated with on various projects to career highlights, to a system of community-created badges reflecting both personal and professional traits, Polywork is building a new professional network, from the ground up, that reflects how we work in 2022. 

It looks like Polywork is building a professional network that strongly appeals to the aesthetics of young professionals like influencers, developer advocates, designers, hustlers, lifestyle entrepreneurs, models and musicians.

These have been the early adopters. While making these observations, it’s important to consider the function and future of resumes because it becomes apparent that this network is for everyone. 

What is a Resume, Anyway?

A resume is a pdf you email to a company. Another way to see it is that a resume is a burdensome standardized method of communication.

A resume is job-history-oriented, and that we use to verify an applicant’s supposed “experience,” right?

Candidate says they know Java, so they know Java. Right? Well, how well do they know it? Can you verify it via a code test or a code snippet from Github?

It’s not like carrying a certification from your state’s Bar Association, is it?

There is this supposed authenticity via the resume. With a resume it primes the hiring manager or recruiter to use job-history oriented as the filter:

• Is this person changing jobs too frequently?
• Does this person have gaps in their workplaces?
• Does this candidate really know Java?

After all, Java is to Javascript like Ham is to Hamburger. Same thing, right?

The problem with this analysis (and complete absence of logic) is that these are concerns and do not tell if an applicant is qualified.

Also, it does not adapt to the market as a whole.

Shitty References and Bogus Endorsements

References have not been legitimate for years.

Anyone can pretend to be your reference. Anyone can endorse your work without tangible proof.

People on LinkedIn will endorse me as being knowledgeable with SEM. This is preposterous.

The reason they endorse me: I used to place a lot of search engine analysts, managers, and sales people. It would be more useful if the proof of endorsement was tied to an activity such as posting a SEM certification like Google AdWords.

You can kind of replicate this on LinkedIn by mentioning people on a post in the public time-stream. However, it eventually becomes lost and cannot be easily filtered. The LinkedIn social network is adjacent, not your resume.

Opportunity Over Spam

Direct Messaging on LinkedIn, on the whole, is people messaging you for unsolicited services. It has us treat every connection or relationship with suspicion and apprehension.

Polywork has messaging with a purpose before being sent to a target user, a first big step to cut down on spam.

I could see them expanding this feature with their AI assistant to assess whether the sent message is genuine, meaningful and a wanted communication. The system could quickly penalize unapologetic spammers via an internal karma system.

Another option is to associate activity tags with contact types. This would allow contacting users to be forced to understand the context of what they are messaging for — and do their homework to understand if there is genuine alignment.

Can’t LinkedIn copy these features? Like how they can copy Instagram User Stories and Clubhouse audio chats?

Sure they could.

LinkedIn could replicate these features, but — and here’s the but:

The fundamental way the social network works, like connections and resumes profile through the public live stream, these features would be subject to exploit that render them not as valuable.

LinkedIn Resumes are not useless, but their value and purpose are going to change. LinkedIn is not positioned to deliver on Resume 2.0.

Find a Developer

If you know me, you know that I try 100 different ways to find developers and engineers. What does this Polywork have to do with developers?

The normal combination today for developers applying to a job is Resume + LinkedIn + Github.

Isn’t that a lot of “stuff” to supply in an application?

Polywork can solve all this in one package. I think that will be better for developer communities for their proof of work. 

Duplicative Work

Convincing people to duplicate their social networking activity or indeed ditch their existing hard-won social media networks looks like a big ask. The risk is irrelevance, despite a pretty interface.

Sure LinkedIn is boring. The whole point is that it’s low maintenance.

Polywork’s name and philosophy suggests it might be okay with being added to the existing mix of professional and social networks, i.e. rather than replacing either. But, well, a supplementary professional network sounds like a bit of a sideline.

Polywork launched in April 2021 but isn’t disclosing user numbers yet — and is currently operating a wait list for sign ups.

The post The Next LinkedIn appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

According to Hootsuite, almost 44% of LinkedIn members are active on a monthly basis with as many logged in daily. Any professional in 2022 knows using LinkedIn is an essential part of their job description; not just having a LinkedIn profile but knowing how to use it. 

From engaging with your network, sharing content, commenting on other people’s posts to searching for candidates and clients, LinkedIn’s list of benefits for recruiters is endless.

With that being said, the question often asked is, “Is it best to share content on your company page or your personal LinkedIn page?” Our answer is: Your personal brand on LinkedIn will always be the most effective and here are some reasons why.

People Buy From People

We aren’t saying you need to completely write off your company page, but your audience is far more likely to engage with a personal post as opposed to a formal one from your organization.

If your company page is being managed with scheduled and shared content, you can easily share these posts directly to your personal account along with your own comments in the caption to encourage your followers to interact with the post.

You’re far more likely to receive engagement in the form of likes, comments and shares by posting content directly from your personal LinkedIn page, especially if you ask for feedback in the caption. Why? Because people buy from people. Your connections will prefer to strike up a conversation with a person, instead of shouting into the abyss that is the comment section of a post on a company’s page.

People Connect with People

Your overall company messaging can reach and speak to far more people on LinkedIn by individually connecting with them through your personal profile than by trying to get people to follow your company page. Through your personal profile interactions, your company page has better potential to organically grow.

Asking recruiters to share on social media or trying to get recruiters to share company content isn’t always a straightforward task. However, if they are building LinkedIn connections effectively with their target audiences and sharing relevant and interesting content, they will be able to build up a community of people who are more likely to engage with their content in the future.

Therefore, if you are trying to educate your recruiters on the importance of employee advocacy and sharing content, let them know they are far more likely to build a network of candidates and clients on LinkedIn by sharing their own content than they are by liking the occasional company page post.

Algorithms Prioritize People

Have you noticed when you check LinkedIn in the morning, you see posts from people you often interact with at the top of your feed? That’s because the LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes people over company pages, as well as the people you engage with the most.

LinkedIn describes itself as a place where you can “manage your professional identity” and “build and engage with your professional network.” Nowhere does it say, “LinkedIn is a place for companies to be more popular than individuals.”

Quite the opposite— the entire platform is built around connecting people. Consider what you’ve seen on LinkedIn over the past week. In fact, open LinkedIn and view your recent activity. Who or what have you engaged with the most? Have you liked, commented or shared anyone’s posts?

If so, was most of it shared by an individual or an organization?

We can almost guarantee it was originally posted by a person. Individuals will always have more connections and people looking at their profile than that of company pages.

Getting Recruiters to Share Content is Simple

If your organization has been prioritizing sharing content on your company page because it’s the easiest way to distribute, don’t worry, we understand. Historically, trying to get recruiters to share content on LinkedIn has never the easiest of tasks.

As soon as you ask a recruiter to share their own content on LinkedIn to develop their personal brand and engage with their audience, they’re likely to interpret this as needing to write three blog posts a week and share a video every morning.

Be sure to tread lightly when encouraging recruiters to share more content on LinkedIn and reassure them that they don’t need to produce all their own content. Simply sharing external news or their company blog posts is enough, as long as they’re adding their own comments or perspective whenever possible.

The best part is, they don’t have to manually login and share something daily. (There are several companies that simplify social media, so posting daily is no longer a chore. My company, Paiger, for example, sends users a daily email with tips, news and other relevant content to help them share posts directly from their inbox.)

At the end of the day, simplifying social media posting is a win-win solution for everyone, allowing recruiters to share content on LinkedIn with a keystroke to create organic growth for your overall company page.

The post Personal Posts are a Win-Win on LinkedIn appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

You can easily sift through this database of LinkedIn profiles by combining a host of candidate characteristics. Take important factors like their field of work, role, location, etc, to narrow down exactly the type of candidate you’re looking for. You no longer have to sift through a list of ineligible people that don’t exactly meet your criteria, which is arguably the worst part of headhunting.

LinkedIn’s built-in search functions don’t let you get as refined as Xray Search, which is one of its biggest pitfalls. This is one of those tools where you can get your creative juices flowing by building some unique queries. For example, you could add “gmail” to your query and the tool will spit out all profiles that match your specifications AND have a Gmail address too.

This handy tool takes the properties you enter and matches them against the extensive supply of profiles on LinkedIn. As a result, Xray Search excels in offering a minimal yet clean interface that gets out of your way. The large blocky interface of LinkedIn’s own search is scrapped in place of a more streamlined approach. 

To try Recruitment Geek’s LinkedIn Xray Search for free, be sure to head on to their website. If you like what you see, consider supporting the dev by subscribing to their Patreon. Have fun refining your search across those 630 million LinkedIn users. To sum it up, we’re sure you’ll find exactly who you’re looking for.

The post LinkedIn Xray Search Will Find Your Next Hire appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

MojoHire completed beta testing its intelligent talent discovery system and moved it to general availability for the healthcare and technology verticals. The platform sits atop the HR tech stack, offering talent acquisition teams a unified view of people across systems. The idea is to help them easily discover internal and external talent, build teams and generate increased value from earlier technology investments.

DriverReach, a recruiting and compliance management system, closed a $7.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Fulcrum Equity Partners, with participation from CreativeCo Capital. The company said it will use the funds for research and product development with an eye toward expanding its features to enable more compliance and reporting functionality and more integration with job boards and other lead generation partners and to add approximately 60 individuals over the next three years, with an emphasis on sales and marketing.

While 80% of employed American adults consider professional development and training an important consideration when accepting a new job, only 39% say their current employer is helping them improve their current skills or gain new skills to do their job better, according to results the American Staffing Association Workforce Monitor. Many said they aren’t receiving the skills training needed to maintain or grow their careers.

Demand for DEI leaders is growing as more consumers, employees and even investors demand change in corporate America. In fact, says Business Insider, Diversity and inclusion manager ranked second on LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise 2022 report, which was released Tuesday.

The post HCM Talent Technology Roundup January 20, 2022 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

To increase your visibility and reach, you need what we call LinkedIn profile optimization. You also have to override the downsides of this powerful search engine professional platform to drive high-volume, targeted traffic to your profile.

In other words, you require the right SEO metrics to catch the eye of prospective clients and customers on LinkedIn. Here, we intend to take you through essential pointers to improve your LinkedIn profile SEO and be found easily.

Why does your LinkedIn profile get suppressed?

 If you have used LinkedIn long enough, you would probably know how the platform is packed with C-suite entities, spammy salespeople, employees looking for a switch and college students updating their university career skills.

To stand out from the crowd, you need to optimize your profile with cover letters containing the right keywords, testimonials and a list of experiences. In this way, your profile will look much more professional and legitimate.

If you are one among them, then you are also likely to lose out. Your profile will not get the attention it deserves.

Time to tap into the powers of LinkedIn profile SEO 

It is important to use LinkedIn’s platform’s potential to drive high-volume, targeted traffic to whatever you publish on your profile. This will increase your reach and bring in new clients and valuable professional relationships.

With the right LinkedIn profile SEO metrics in place, you will engage with modern buyers looking for well-constructed, informative and SEO-enabled LinkedIn profiles only.

LinkedIn SEO tips you cannot miss

To attain this, you have to ensure that your current profile is well-optimized to handle the business challenges faced by your target audience. You have to be ready to get noticed by prospective buyers or clients during their research phase. This will help you get the connection or conversation you are looking for.

The following tips will make your LinkedIn profile match with SEO best practices:

1. LinkedIn SEO – Build a keyword-rich profile

One of the most important tools of digital marketing is keyword research and use. It is critical to insert keyword-rich titles and subheadings in your profile to get the right hits.

The most-searched keywords can be naturally spread across the entire length of your content so that your profile becomes easy to find.

• Include the keywords used by people searching for your type of products and services in your job title.
• The subheadings and descriptions should contain the primary and secondary keywords.
• The keywords should not be ‘stuffed’ or appear repeatedly. Their insertion should be natural and relevant.
• Try including the keywords across the “Experience” section.

It is recommended that you apply the basic SEO keyword ideas and principles to help prospective buyers and clients find your LinkedIn profile.

2. Keep publishing posts to boost your LinkedIn profile presence

Digital content marketing is an effective means of adding SEO principles to your LinkedIn profile.

You can get favorable results by creating and publishing posts that are relevant to your niche. To go about the act:

• Launch the LinkedIn site and look for the ‘start a post’ link.
• Alternatively, publish a research paper, article, blog, or other writeups with backlinks to your website landing pages. Such posts help draw traffic to your portal and help visitors know what you do or sell.
• Adding comments on trending posts or replying to the comments on your published posts will also help your profile get the visibility you desire.

Try repurposing content that once generated attention but has now gone low on the charts. The valuable insights shared in the post can gain prominence once again if you repost them through your profile with backlinks to your website.

Experts in LinkedIn profile SEO include a relevant, short, and exciting summary of the article or blog you are linking to. Do not keep the ‘link preview’ option on that post.

Mostly, LinkedIn users (just like all other social network users) are not keen to click on links and may ignore your post. This will make your efforts fruitless.

Pro tip: Do not post the same content on your blog and LinkedIn. Duplicate content will bring down your search engine rankings. Publish original success stories, use cases, case studies, listicles, how-to guides, quick tips, videos, etc. – Google quite appreciates them!

3. Keyword-optimize your branding strategy

Your LinkedIn profile has certain sections that require attention when it comes to keyword placements.

• The headline is the most important part of the profile and can make or break your efforts to be found. It is possible to use up to 220 characters when you are scripting the headline.
• The ‘About’ section provides up to 2000 characters to work with. You have a good chance of increasing your discoverability by adding frequently used keywords to what your brand is all about, the benefits of using your brand, USPs of your brand, etc.
• Many times, your job or position title may not contain the scope for keyword insertion. In such cases, try editing the experience title with the keywords that match your role or job scope with any company.
• The experience description section allows up to 2000 characters in the copy to include keywords and enhance your searchability.

4. Image names can include SEO keywords

Upload image files to enhance the look or relevance of your LinkedIn profile. For instance, you may want to upload images on your LinkedIn profile banner. Here, you get the scope of including specific keywords along with your name.

As Google indexes images, it is essential to keyword-optimize whatever files you publish to increase the chances of being found by prospects looking for businesses similar to yours.

5. Is your LinkedIn profile private, locked, or public?

The x-ray (Boolean) searching technique is used for making your LinkedIn profile visible to the public. It is possible to control all those sections of your profile that you want prospective buyers to view in Google searches outside of the LinkedIn platform. If you are in the job search mode, it is good to keep toggling these sections after making your profile public.

6. Your network and connections matter

It is essential to increase your network to connect to different hiring managers, recruiters, prospective clients, and customers. Remember, getting visibility for your SEO-rich LinkedIn profile will be challenging if you do not have 1st, 2nd, or 3^rd-degree connections with the right resources.

7. The profile ‘funnel’

Relevant and accurate copywriting is another critical component of your LinkedIn profile and can convert it into a funnel to fetch new leads. Use your headline and cover photo to start funneling visitors to your profile’s media section or summary.

After that, it will be easy to funnel them to your landing page or inbox. For example, once someone has read what’s written in your headline or LinkedIn profile picture, they will find it easy to know who you are or how they can get help by connecting with you.

Try using the media section on your LinkedIn profile page to include links and videos to your blog posts or website. It will help them decide whether they want to know more about your experiences, job roles, skills, experiences, education, etc.

Adding videos to the media section ensures that this approach does not create bottlenecks or take visitors away from your profile. Overall, use the funnel concept in your SEO-enabled LinkedIn profile to make it well-structured, easy-to-grasp and visitor-friendly.

LinkedIn Profile SEO – Shortcut to Link Generation

The above LinkedIn optimization guidelines can help you transform your profile into a lead-generating mechanism. Along with these tips for enriching the visibility of your LinkedIn presence. You may also want to explore and test new ideas for advanced optimization.

Talking to experts who know how to optimize content for social and professional network platforms is the right way to gain high-volume traffic for your website.

The base of your SEO strategy should start with in-depth LinkedIn SEO keyword research. Next, try to include the recommended SEO basics to make your profile more relevant and aesthetic.

This will help you reach out to and build high-quality connections that will increase the capabilities of your network. Do not leave any chance to direct prospective customers and visitors to your customized profile funnel.

Conclusion

All you need to do is make a few simple adjustments to your existing or new LinkedIn profile. It is also important to understand the needs and buying preferences of your business model and target customers to make the right impact. Gear up to get the maximum mileage from your LinkedIn profile and start optimizing it right away.

The post LinkedIn Profile SEO: How to Be Found appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In this video, Dean Da Costa covers LeadGrabber Pro plus LinkedIn. The tool claims to speed up LinkedIn sourcing up to 20 times faster than professional researchers. In addition, LeadGrabber states it delivers a 30 percent higher rate of verified, or clean, information.

What’s more, Leadgrabber Pro + LinkedIn allows you to narrow your contact lists by title, location, industry, connections, company — you name it — to build highly targeted niche leads.

There is a lot more to this tool than what we can list here without robbing you of your Dean Da Costa video experience, so have a look and let us know what you think. And if you missed our last video, check it this humanpredictions update Dean covered last week.

LeadGrabber Pro + LinkedIn

As an overview, LeadGrabber Pro + LinkedIn enables you to:

• Identify & reach your ideal contacts faster
• Custom build targeted contact lists with verified information in minutes
• Eliminate copy/paste with instant CRM/ATS transfer
• Save a load of time and money

Download their 50-contact free trial here, request a demo at the bottom of this page or navigate to the LeadGrabber product page for a list of all tools and updates.

Keep an eye open for upcoming LeadGrabber Pro strategy videos from Dean.

The post LeadGrabber Pro + LinkedIn for Bulk Prospecting appeared first on RecruitingDaily.