A lot of our clients ask us, ‘What’s the big deal with LinkedIn and how can I use it for recruitment?’ 

So here you go! LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the World with over 187,000,000 members and the platform is continuing to grow at a rate of 2 new members every second. Over a million of these users are in the UK so it makes sense for both companies and recruiters alike to be on there too.

As a brief guide to being successful as a company or recruiter on LinkedIn, we’ve compiled some helpful pointers:

Step 1: Pro profile

Presentation is vital to all users on Linkedin; if you want to be seen as a professional then that is how you should present yourself. People often neglect their profile which has a huge impact on their personal branding.

Profile pictures should be professional and never be images that could be deemed as inappropriate; a well-lit professional looking image of you in work attire would be most suitable. It would be even better if you were smiling!

Filling out your personal information is a must. Think of your profile as a product and the product that you are trying to sell is yourself, the more information you include the more likely it is that viewers are going to buy into you. Highlight the skills that you process and ensure that you gain plenty of recommendations from your clients or colleagues, this will encourage people to think about using your services and reassure them that you have the right skillset and background.

Also, don’t forget that you can add any honours, awards, projects, courses or certifications you have to your profile if you wish.

Step 2: Network

With it being the largest professional business network in the world, LinkedIn is an excellent networking tool and it’s relatively easy to join conversations with people with similar interests. By following groups like Blue Octopus – the future of recruitment you can start discussions and polls and also voice your views on current topics. This is a great way to meet relevant contacts in your industry and increase your network.

LinkedIn also provides a ‘People you may know’ function which sits on the right hand side of your profile page. This is a great way of connecting to relevant people.

Step 3: Build your contacts and keep them engaged

Adding contacts on LinkedIn is very easy; you can easily import all of your email contacts, which is great if you are someone who has had the same email for a long time. Remember to filter these emails though as you probably don’t want to connect to someone that you emailed about an eBay item six years ago!

Make sure you keep up to date with all of your connections, comment on their updates and interact with them about recent things you have completed that might interest them.

Also ensure that you keep posting updates. Sharing interesting news articles and writing a blog can really help raise your profile as a professional in the industry. This will also assist your company by increasing its’ awareness through its staff being good brand ambassadors.

Step 4: Build your company page

Your company page should be seen as your shop front on LinkedIn and the three main things that you would want to see here are:

• You want to see the products.

Always mention your services on the ‘Services’ page, this should never be left blank. Once you have your services on here you will be able to gain recommendations from clients that enjoy using your service. Don’t be afraid to ask your clients for these.

• You want it to be greeted by the correct information.

Talk about relevant content/news, post blogs and keep users interested in your company. Your company page is also a great place to promote your products, promotions and success stories.

• You want it to be interesting.

Post interesting content that users can engage with, the best proof that this is working is the amount of interaction you receive from this.

Step 5: Finding talent

Attracting top quality industry professionals can be difficult on LinkedIn without a bit of assistance. LinkedIn are very good at limiting what and who ‘Standard’ users see, so if you are primarily using LinkedIn to contact and source top talent, then you will struggle without either investing in some of the LinkedIn Premium Solutions (which can be very pricey) or you could place your vacancies with Blue Octopus.

Blue Octopus is now a super user of LinkedIn, so all the vacancies that we feel are suitable for LinkedIn we advertise on there. As well as this, Blue Octopus can now search all the users on LinkedIn and even target passive candidates, just like head hunters do!

Join in with on topic recruitment discussions in our group here

Follow our LinkedIn company page here