Our Blogs

Are you socially engaging? In the #MostSociallyEngaged list?

On the 5th October 2016 LinkedIn will announce the Most Socially Engaged Staffing Agencies 2016 during its Talent Connect conference in Las Vegas. The rankings are based on thousands of metrics that cover social reach, social engagement, employee engagement, employment brand, social recruiting and content market power. Ouf!

A couple of weeks ago we spent time in the LinkedIn London office, along with several other recruitment and staffing agencies, to hear more about the upcoming announcement and attend a number of really useful and insightful workshops. 

Big deal?

Well, yes actually. Here’s why:

1) Social recruiting is a way to future-proof your recruitment career

Recruiters are of course very much aware of the need for career development and maintaining your ‘employability’ from their daily work in sourcing, advising and placing candidates. Customer Success Manager Katie Moon, who had once been a contract recruiter herself, pointed out that social recruiting is not only an exciting opportunity to embrace but a way to keep up with the times in recruitment.Social recruiting is not only an exciting opportunity to embrace but a way to keep up with the times in recruitment

She made an analogy to the iPhone. If you’ve got any smartphone, we’ll assume you know how to use it and use it regularly. You make calls, send texts, use it for email and browsing and will have your favourite apps. But every now and again someone will say, ‘did you know you can do this?’ and you’ll learn something new. You already knew how to use it but you may not be currently using it the most efficiently or effectively to achieve the maximum benefit. 

It’s like this with social recruiting. Even if you’ve got your Boolean searches tattooed on your brain and your InMails personalised to perfection, there’s always something new to learn and try, particularly considering the lightening speed at which technology updates. How up-to-date do you keep yourself? Do you embrace tech advances in recruitment?

2) You’re the most viewed: what do people see?

Jean O’Brien, Customer Success Manager, spoke about how the number one LinkedIn activity among its members was *drumroll* viewing other people’s profiles. Yep, no surprise there.

Jean also shared that recruiters' profiles tend to be viewed ten times more, on average, than non-recruiters’ profiles. How many people do you think on LinkedIn are recruiters? Well, LinkedIn is full of recruiters right? Of course they’ll get these kind of views.If the phrases ‘showcased passion’ and ‘rich media’ mean nothing to you then keep reading.

No. Only 0.8% she says.

So if people are looking at your profile, what does it say about you? Sure you (probably) have a decent picture, you’ve listed your skills and got some recommendations. If the phrases ‘showcased passion’ and ‘rich media’ mean nothing to you then keep reading.

As a recruiter you’ll know a lot about profiles, you’ll advise others and probably have an All-Star Profile Strength. There’s still more you can do:

• ‘Showcase your passion’: Use your summary to talk about you. Not your company. You. And showcase your passion as Jean calls it. As this is the first thing people see, say why you do what you do. Think Simon Sinek’s famous Golden Circle talk. If you list the tasks you do, the industry you cover, that’s fine but how does that differentiate you from any other recruiter in your field? Why should I connect with you or listen to you if I’m a potential candidate or client? Tell me.
   
• Add rich media to your profile: Take a look at Richie Holliday’s profile, COO of Asia Pacific at Morgan McKinley. In his summary section he’s added in links to press releases, awards, web pages. You could add:
  • A link to your jobs page
  • Links to your sector or discipline page
  • Upload whitepapers, salary guides or trend reports you and your team have put together
  • Link to a particularly good blog you’ve written
  • Made a video blog? Add the YouTube link
     
• Your professional headline: If you’re reaching out to someone outside of your professional network (that is outside of first, second and third connections) then all they see is the top card. You don’t have to stick to your job title. Update this to tell a little bit more about your role. Differentiate yourself again.
   
• Add a branded background: You’re brand ‘You’. You’re also a window to your company’s brand. The advantage with the latter is that you also get to leverage that brand. If you work for Morgan McKinley, ask your local marketing team on how to get hold of a banner like Richie’s or Hakan Enver’s, UK Operational Director, here.

 

3) Think like a member and remember the cyclical journey

Passive to active. Active to Passive. Candidate to Client. Client to Candidate.

The statistics differ slightly according to different sources, but generally speaking somewhere between 60% - 65% of people on LinkedIn are ‘passive’. Not actively job seeking but open to it.

Most of us know it's cyclical, as in passive people can quickly become active candidates if presented with the right opportunity. Katie Moon further pointed out that this works in reverse. Your current candidates, and your clients, will also become passive for periods of time. We tend to forget that bit. You’ll also have candidates that later become clients and vice-versa.

What does this teach us?

Think like a member

Consider the newsfeed. Not everyone’s is going to look like yours. Your connections’ newsfeeds will be a collection of posts about their industry, sector and related to their job. Not recruitment. Many won’t even log in every day, or every week. Even marketers fall foul of this forgetting that people don’t generally go to read a company page’s worth of posts.

When to post and how to post

You know how to reach the active (your job posts), but to reach the passive Lucy Wren, a LinkedIn Marketing Consultant, recommends that for every job you post, post three pieces of (relevant!) content. It’s more likely to attract the passive than endless job posts (unfollow!) and maintain some visibility and engagement with those that were once active and are now passive again.Lucy Wren, a LinkedIn Marketing Consultant, recommends that for every job you post, post three pieces of (relevant!) content.

And the best time to post? During commuting times. If you post only while you’re sat at your desk sourcing then you’re missing out big time!

Using a tool like Buffer is fantastic for this. It’s like a cannon that shoots out your content according to a schedule you have set. It also has a Chrome extension (like a button) so you can add content, or job posts, to your posting schedule when you’re on the page there and then.  It’ll give you a run-down of engagement on your posts too, either on a simple dashboard or via email so you’ll know how many people are really clicking through.

Cultivate your contacts

Focus is often placed on building up your number of contacts. Yes, this is encouraged by LinkedIn itself on its profile strength indicator but if you’re boasting about 2,000 contacts - think about the last time you engaged with even a quarter of them?

Here’s some facts from Lucy and her colleague Colin McKinnon:

• 48% of B2B decision-makers don’t respond to sales professionals because their message is not personalised
• People who follow your company are twice more likely to respond to your InMail

 

How about mentioning a common connection? Or did you notice they shared a piece of content you were involved in or that came from your company? Personalise and cultivate and you’ll get more of a warm reaction that when you dive in with a cold approach.

The whole is greater than the sum of its part: Are you socially engaging? How do do you think you fare on building your professional brand, finding quality candidates, engaging with personalised conversations and managing your talent pool?

When it comes to LinkedIn, or any other social media platform, be an engager and not just a broadcaster. The #MostSociallyEngaged List is a fantastic recognition of companies whose employees do this well but the real fruit is in the business and relationships you gain from this, and not your number on a list.