LinkedIn has gotten a lot of positive press. It is oft cited as the death of agency recruiters. "Why go to an agency when we now have access to all these great people?" I can't help but have a chuckle because the reality is sourcing people via LinkedIn is a major headache
LinkedIn is quite seductive. You plug in a few search terms and come up with all
these great profiles. It seems very powerful, but that’s
deceptive. We’ve used it every day for the last few years, so we
know its foibles. It’s no magic bullet in terms of recruitment
The problem being the people behind these
profiles are rarely looking for a new role and thus aren't open to a move, and even if they are
looking they often have very different expectations around
locations, rates, who they want to work for, the nature of
projects they will tackle, etc . Chances are that won’t fit your
role. And many candidates don't live up to their profile.
Finding a good profile on LinkedIn means
nothing until the person behind it is engaged and interested.
Even contacting the profile owner is non-trivial. Lots of
people connect their LinkedIn account to a rarely checked
Hotmail address. We often have people coming back to us from our
initial Inmail (LinkedIn’s means of reaching out) months after a
role has closed because the inmail (which has a cost attached
to it) has sat there gathering dust for months.
People you manage to initially contact via
LinkedIn, can also exhibit what we call “Papuan Fever”,
unrealistic expectations as they have been “headhunted". Candidates often regard being approached via Linkedin
as headhunting and thus (for some odd reason) the candidate can put unrealistic
expectations in place. Being approached via LinkedIn is not a
licence for a 7 figure salary or company lear jet.
Between the dead Inmails, candidates not
being interested in your role and those suffering Papuan fever,
souring via LinkedIn is very time consuming. Good luck building
all your candidate sourcing around it. It’s part of our sourcing
arsenal, but thankfully not the only channel
A lot of companies are thinking of dumping agency recruiters and trying to go DIY using LinkedIn. My feeling is that won't last long
LinkedIn has also diluted the market. 5 years
ago everyone looking for a new job poured their time into the
job boards, now they might spend that hour a week tweaking their
LinkedIn profile. You no longer find everyone in the same
place, so that adds complexity to the search.
It’s not like 100% of candidates can be found
on LinkedIn either. Much like some people are strongly
anti-Facebook, many are anti-LinkedIn. Or they set up an account and don't keep it current. We've also heard of people on LinkedIn getting fed up with being approached when they aren't looking, and detuning or removing their profile.
Linkedin is powerful but is not a consistently good way to source people.
