Signing up for LinkedIn can give your site a boost, allowing more customers to find your business online. However, the business nature of the social network allows you to get advice from experienced players in your industry, contact old associates and talk about business practices or your website in the many groups that you might find of interest. Thanks to a comprehensive search and tools such as LinkedIn Talent Solutions, you can also take much of the guess work out of looking for a new employee, too.
Increase Visibility and SEO Efforts
One of the perks of LinkedIn is that Google indexes content, so even people without an account on LinkedIn might find your company when looking for job openings. Content on the search engine can lure potential candidates to your profile. If they’re really interested, job seekers might even sign up for LinkedIn or contact you through your website. Use keywords that indicate you’re hiring, and you’ll show up higher in the SERPs when people search for job openings.
Optimizing your profile for search engines also highlights your company and brand in general. Informing candidates about your brand is one way to make sure the people you’re interviewing and ultimately hiring are a good fit for your company. Applicants who don’t understand your brand, goals or, even worse, the responsibilities of the job, can glean more information from your LinkedIn profile.
One thing to remember is that adding photos increases the likelihood that people will notice your company page and contact you. According to LinkIn’s Krista Canfield, users who upload photos are seven times more likely to receive communication from other LinkedIn users. You’re doing yourself a disservice if your profile is out of date. Make sure your contact information is right so job seekers can actually contact you.
The Answers section on LinkedIn allows other questions, and by actively responding to those questions you have both an opportunity to highlight your company and assist users.
Find Your Next Employee with LinkedIn
LinkedIn isn’t just about making connections with other businesses, either. That’s certainly a helpful aspect, but the social network offers a pool of potential candidates whom you can choose from when it’s time to hire. Techies, SEO gurus and white-collar professionals are especially common on the website because those types are more comfortable with the latest Internet trends and networking in general.
You can start by examining the networks you already have. You may already know someone who can fill your open roles, while your friends and associates may be able to recommend someone for the job. Of course, if you’ve just started networking, your existing connections may be of little help, but you might be surprised that you know someone who knows someone perfect for the job. Of course, the ability to post a status update is one of the easier ways to spread the news that you’re looking for fresh meat. Don’t forget about your current employees, who might have connections that you lack. Encourage your staff members to sign up for their own LinkedIn profiles to help extend the search area.
LinkedIn’s tools, including the search feature, also place a variety of people right at your fingertips. The improved keywords enable you to look up people via industry or expertise. The Skills and Expertise tool is especially useful in this endeavor. LinkedIn requires you to pay to contact anyone outside of your network, which is one reason why expanding your network as much as possible saves you money. However, if you’ve got the money to spend, LinkedIn Talent Solutions – formerly Recruiter – not only provides the ability to contact more professionals, but you can organized projects and candidates in lists to keep track of the people you’ve contacted. I was using LinkedIn to find a proper ecommerce marketing expert for Paramold.com ecommerce website. From my experience, all I can tell is that there are many professionals on LinkedIn who are really skilled, but also there is a lot of scam. Be careful.
Finally, don’t go crazy with interviewees before checking them out. Fortunately, LinkedIn has a reference checking tool for this specific reasons, so remember to use it!