LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. How to reach the right candidates?

When Miroslav Sendlai decided 3 years ago what direction to take in his professional life, he had 3 choices. Logistics, marketing and recruitment. It was no coincidence that his footsteps went into HR. He started sharing his experience in recruitment agencies and internal HR on LinkedIn and after a few months he was approached by a company for help with recruitment. When more and more companies started to come along, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity and start his own business.

Today Miroslav's specialty is job advertisements, which are one of the basic elements of successful recruitment. He helps companies with the creation of advertising strategies and teaches them how to write successful advertisements and what tools to use to do so. One of these tools is LinkedIn, where more and more companies are looking for suitable candidates. What advertising opportunities does it offer? What are the advantages of advertising on LinkedIn compared to standard advertising on job portals? And how to make the most of the recruitment potential of this social network? That's what Miroslav and I talked about in this interview.

In your business, you specialize in job ads and teach companies how to write them to attract the right employees. Why did you choose this specific area of HR?

Job advertisements are an essential part of any HR department. At the staffing agency where I started, they were the only source of candidates at the time, and if I wanted to improve my paycheck a bit, I had to figure out how to make the most of them. I started to notice which parts - whether it was the job adverts themselves or the posting itself - could be changed to produce better results.

Then when I moved to internal HR, I got the chance to test all my "theories" and see what really works and what doesn't. You could say I chose this area out of necessity, but today I know it was the right choice.

However, it is important to note that having a well-written job advert is only half the battle these days. Equally important is having a well set up advertising strategy that can attract many more candidates even with a mediocre advert.

Having a well-written job advert is only half the battle these days. The important thing is to have a well set up advertising strategy.

In addition to teaching companies how to write successful job ads and working with them on recruiting strategies, you also work on how to find the right employees on LinkedIn. What role does LinkedIn play in modern recruiting?

When actively recruiting, LinkedIn is as much a must-have for recruiters as reaching out to candidates via job portals. Many career counselors advise candidates to dutifully fill out a LinkedIn profile, add a representative photo, and wait for a recruiter or headhunter to find them. This is a method that works, but there are other ways to do it.

LinkedIn has a Jobs section that essentially serves as a job portal. You can post jobs, promote them and reach out to candidates in this way too. However, this is more challenging than on job portals, as candidates are not yet fully accustomed to this format. In addition, advertising on LinkedIn has a few specifics that are good to know if the advert is to be successful. However, one advert can be posted for free, so it's definitely worth a try.

What is your experience of using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool in companies when you are dealing with them on this issue? Do they use this option or do they only start after consulting with you? 

More and more companies are starting to realise that LinkedIn is a good source of candidates. Not for all positions, but you can find a really wide range of people there. That's why they're trying to see how they can use it. Success then depends on the job itself and how you approach recruitment on LinkedIn. If you just copy an advert from a job portal and wait for someone to get back to you, you might not get a response. 

As LinkedIn is not primarily a job portal, you need to have a well set up job advertising and a strategy that can reach the right candidates. It's not rocket science and you can learn it yourself. But it's then a matter of consideration whether you want to waste your time and risk being outranked by your competitors, or take advice on how to do it.

LinkedIn is a social network, and that brings other opportunities to increase the reach of your ads and therefore get better results. This is something that almost no one on LinkedIn does, or only to a minimal extent. That's why when I consult on LinkedIn advertising, I try to show clients that there are more ways to work with job postings.

What are the advantages of posting job ads on LinkedIn compared to standard job portals?

I would definitely mention these three, which I think are crucial. 

1. You can share the job advert in your network of connections via posts, increasing your reach and, with the right method, reaching many more candidates than if you had just posted the advert in the Jobs section.

2. LinkedIn is not yet as competitive as job portals, so recruiters who already know how to use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool can gain a big competitive advantage.

3. If you have strong employer branding on LinkedIn, the candidate has the opportunity to learn more about you, which can influence their decision to respond to the offer. And if you include a contact person in the ad, the candidate can communicate directly with the recruiter and get the information they need. All without leaving LinkedIn. 

What advertising options does LinkedIn currently offer? 

Currently, this is the aforementioned Jobs section and the other option is to share a job offer directly in the post. Through posts you can share a job ad from the job portal, share it directly from the Jobs section or write the job information directly in the post.

However, I would stress here that if you want the candidate to then go to the job portal and look at the job posting, you need to include more than just that you are looking for someone. A common mistake I see is that companies don't take advantage of the post space itself. A single post can be up to 3000 characters, so don't just share a link to the job post, but in the body of the post:

- list some basic information (location, salary, form of employment, job description in 2-3 points),

- summarise who you are looking for in a few points so that the candidate has a reason to respond to your advert,

- tag colleagues in the post to have their say, not only on the position but also on the collaboration within the team/department (plus it will increase reach),

- add what no longer fits in the ad,

- choose the right hashtags.

Which of the above options do you think has the greatest potential to attract the most relevant candidates? 

A combination of both options is ideal. The best option is to post a job ad in the Jobs section and then share it in posts to increase your reach. This way, not only will the job posting be seen by candidates who search directly in the Jobs section, but also by people you have connected on LinkedIn. And with the right method, you can increase that reach even more. 

Companies often choose only one of the options, not knowing that they can complement each other so effectively. Considering that sharing in this way is practically free, it's an advertising space for your advertising that costs you nothing.

Sharing job ads in posts provides advertising space for your ad that costs you nothing.

Is there such a thing as an ideal recruitment strategy on LinkedIn? What steps should companies take to make the most of LinkedIn's potential? 

First and foremost, I would recommend finding out if your target audience is on LinkedIn. Because if it's not, no strategy will help you. Active company profiles and ambassadors can boost advertising by regularly sharing information about company life. This creates the space to ensure that, if the advert is posted correctly, candidates have sufficient awareness of the company and can make a better decision about whether to respond to the offer.

Finally, the same applies as when advertising on job portals. You need to have an eye-catching advert that can grab the candidate's attention. The advantage of LinkedIn is that it doesn't have a predefined order of the different sections (salary, job title, benefits...), so you can adjust the text as you wish. Different emoji or text highlighting can help you do this, but I would be careful here not to turn your advert into a colourful but cluttered stew.

What is the difference between the process of filling the position of sales representative and production operator? Is LinkedIn a good recruiting tool for all types of positions?

When writing a job advert, the first thing you should do is define who your target audience is. Then everything else depends on that. A job ad for a sales representative will have different content and communication style than a production operator, because different benefits are preferred for both positions, for example. The same is true with seniority, whether age or job. 

In my experience, LinkedIn is particularly suitable for administrative positions, IT positions, economic and financial positions or middle or senior management. But you can also find warehouse workers, call centre operators or electricians. However, I would opt for active recruitment for these, because their representation is really small.

Can you share some basic tips on how to create an attractive LinkedIn ad that will appeal to the right candidates? 

The composition of a job advert is somewhat the same if you post it on LinkedIn or a job portal. I always teach that there are five basic parts of a job ad that determine its success.

1. The headline, which is the most important part of the advert, because if you don't attract the candidate already here, there is no reason for them to view your advert, even if you are also offering a dream job.

2. Salary conditions are often one of the deciding factors in whether a candidate responds to an offer or not. If you are not transparent about them and try to pull the candidate's leg, it can discourage them from responding.

3. The job description is the heart of the advertisement. Here you have the space to not only describe what the candidate should do, but also show why they should work for you. 

4. Benefits can significantly influence candidates' reactions, because not every benefit you offer as a company is a real benefit for candidates. That's why you need to know your target group and design your benefits accordingly. Different benefits will appeal to Generation Z and different benefits will appeal to millennials. 

5. Employee requirements are often the reason why companies disqualify candidates themselves. Often they look for supermen instead of candidates who could do the job just as well. 

Finally, how do you see the future of LinkedIn as a recruitment tool? 

As the number of active users on LinkedIn grows, it will be increasingly used for recruitment and will surely become a must-have for recruiters and headhunters in the near future. Therefore, anyone who starts using it fully now will have a competitive advantage later on and will be able to adapt more quickly to the changes that LinkedIn introduces quite frequently.