Since its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has become one of the most powerful tools in talent sourcing. Knowing how to efficiently identify viable candidates on LinkedIn is a must-have skill for any recruiter and needs to be continually practiced and developed. This is easier said than done when recruiting teams are buried in requisitions and juggling dozens of roles and hiring managers. Surely, Research Partners can help lighten the load on recruiting teams, but we can also share some valuable insights on the art of sourcing on LinkedIn. Some of my personal tips and tricks are as follows:
1. Boolean search strings are a big deal
This one is a given. Using LinkedIn’s basic filters in your search will give you many, many results. You will likely be sifting through pages of candidates who don’t quite have the skills you are looking for. Making use of Boolean operators in your search allows you to use the tree ring method. Build a pool of the most qualified candidates first by including all the nice-to-haves in your search string, and gradually drop (or strategically exclude) keywords as needed.
2. Spellling is hart
The amount of people who misspell their job titles on LinkedIn is overwhelming. There are many reasons for this. Carelessness or lack of attention to detail is not always the case. Some people simply don’t want to be found. A great opportunity can, however, often change this mindset. A lot of great candidates can be missed by not considering some of the most common misspellings. I have seen many engineeers, enginners, and enginers with a master’s degree in computer science who likely know exactly how to spell “engineer”.
Side note: my personal favorite are pubic relations professionals.
3. Use your time wisely
Recruiters are often strapped for time. They tend to use similar keywords for their searches, and many only look at the first few pages of results. So, your competition is likely looking at the same candidates. In order to gain an advantage, dig deep into the search results to uncover overlooked talent. Don’t be afraid to hop straight to page 25 and work your way up from there.
These are clearly just a few of the strategies we use at Research Partners to gain an advantage in sourcing top talent as part of our talent mapping and pipelining services (give us a call, we may spill all the beans!). As mentioned above, sourcing on LinkedIn is an art that needs to be perpetually refined and adjusted based on industry trends and the site’s ever-changing interface.
