LinkedIn: a List of Challenges

I love LinkedIn! It has been bringing us more matching candidates and business connections than everything else combined out there. For my own recruiting business LinkedIn accounts for 100% placed candidates in the last twelve months and a large chunk of sourcing information that I submit to others when sourcing.

Yet taking the full advantage of LinkedIn is not straightforward! There are numerous obstacles and misleading marketing messages, blogs, and tutorials. Some LinkedIn members feel frustrated with its usage and some others pay big bucks for the top accounts, while not getting the true value.

Here is a brief list of some road blocks preventing our success, that could be overcome by learning what’s true and what’s a myth, how to overcome limitations, and how get the interaction going with your business prospects.

LinkedIn changes in subtle and often unannounced ways, making its users confused; it helps to keep on top of changes
Many use LinkedIn’s people search dialog in a straightforward fashion; however, LinkedIn can be searched in multiple creative ways and provide useful Business Intelligence data
LinkedIn sets limits, both on free/ low-paid accounts and on LinkedIn Recruiter, in messaging and data visibility; there are ways to overcome the limits
LinkedIn Recruiter seems to create a job board in place of LinkedIn; but it’s a myth and it limits your power, unless you use it properly
LinkedIn has deficiencies that are worth knowing about, so that you can navigate all of its functionality
LinkedIn makes us mouse and keyboard a lot; there are ways to increase productivity with shortcuts
LinkedIn is usually not enough as a sole source of data; it should be used for cross-referencing, to prequalify business connections, and only call the right people
LinkedIn is Google-able but, due to changing algorithms, this can be confusing and often showing false positives and no desired results; it would help to get up-to-date on X-Raying LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s InMails seem to not get replies for many; there are proven ways to phrase your messages to get a high response rate
LinkedIn doesn’t have contact info handy, but it can be used for finding and verifying ways to reach prospects

Would you have anything else to add to this list? What were the latest changes you have noticed? Please leave a comment. I am glad to connect as well.

Comment by Jennifer on August 1, 2012 at 9:15am: Those are great observations - can you advise as to how you overcome those challenges? Specifically:

LinkedIn can be searched in multiple creative ways and provide useful Business Intelligence data

LinkedIn sets limits, both on free/ low-paid accounts and on LinkedIn Recruiter, in messaging and data visibility; there are ways to overcome the limits

LinkedIn’s InMails seem to not get replies for many; there are proven ways to phrase your messages to get a high response rate

Comment by Randall Scasny on August 2, 2012 at 8:15am: Thanks for the information. I do feel linkedin gives great data, etc.

Concerning your statement:

"For my own recruiting business LinkedIn accounts for 100% placed candidates in the last twelve months and a large chunk of sourcing information that I submit to others when sourcing."

I'm curious:

Of these placements, what is the typical:

1. career level

2. years of experience

3. industry sectors, name of few....

Comment by Chuck Klein on August 2, 2012 at 10:27am: Linkedin has been pushing their RPS System for $5000 a year - although I heard they are launching a version which can be purchased on a monthly basis.

Curious to hear from anyone using that system.

Comment by Irina Shamaeva on August 2, 2012 at 10:47am: Randall,

1. career level experienced or managerial

2. years of experience 3+, usually 5+

3. industry sectors, name of few... software engineering, management consulting, finances; also pretty much "anything" for sourcing: life sciences, marketing/e-commerce/accounting, you name it

Jennifer

Great questions; I will be explaining in my lecture. :) I don't make a secret of most but the answers can be lengthy. I will give you an example of research and may post more later. If you enter some keywords or a title instead of a full-blown people search, you can get a list of target companies.

You can re-use this idea in different ways.

Comment by Hardeep Sodhi on February 17, 2013 at 1:13am: Very interesting observation Irina that 100 % of your recruits last 12 months came via Linkedin - thanks for sharing .

To add to what Randall asked and your reply Irina, could you also provide some insight on :

a) Did you check later as to how many of these candidates also had their profile on any Job Board ?

b) If you did, any observations on what extra LinkedIn did / did not provide ?

c) If you found any Candidates on Job Board what difference you think in the process/ success rate would have been there had you simply taken their CV off the board and then called them , rather than via LinkedIn ?

Would love to hear further from you/ any else here on this.

I am a TPR out of India . Do not have a paid LinkedIn account but sometimes do get into these comparatives. Have found that most CVs can be sourced via the Job Boards as well, provide much more information much faster - such as Contact Info, Present Salary etc. and candidates can be approached much faster.

However, this is just my experience and one is always open to learning !

In fact I am running a Survey on Effectiveness of Job Ads on "Social Media " like LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter etc.. Find it at :

http://mytopjob.in/polls/index.php?sid=86816&lang=en

and have spread it on various LinkedIn Groups of which the total embers would be around 200,000