How to recruit on LinkedIn? 8 tips for attracting and finding talent

Unsurprisingly, given the article's title, you're here to learn how to recruit on LinkedIn.

Today, many recruiters, managers and HR directors use this medium to attract talent and then hire them. In fact, 7 people are recruited every minute on the famous social network.

Here are 8 tips to help you optimize your LinkedIn recruitment strategy.

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Why recruit on LinkedIn?

If more and more organizations are playing the LinkedIn recruitment game, it's because there are multiple benefits.

👉 As part of an e-recruitment strategy, by leveraging this social network:

• develop your employer brand
• relay information from your career site on a large scale;
• deepen your knowledge of professional news and market trends;
• gain greater visibility on the Internet;
• complement recruitment actions carried out via other distribution channels;
• share and configure selection criteria, such as "telecommuting accepted";
• recruit at lower cost, without using job boards or other recruitment agencies;
• access qualitative data, such as a talent's key skills and recommendations by other professionals;
• you reach different and otherwise untraceable candidates.

💡 According to LinkedIn, 6% of workers are actively looking for a job, the rest being "passive candidates". In France, the network's community totals 34 million users. Do the math!

That's the context: now let's turn to our 8 tips for (better!) recruiting on LinkedIn.

1. Develop a recruitment policy for LinkedIn

Recruiting on LinkedIn isn't just about individual actions. A coherent strategy will maximize your results.

So start by clarifying your objectives. Are they :

• attract passive candidates?
• strengthen your employer brand?
• accelerate your recruitment?

Then determine your targets: junior profiles, experts or managers.

Finally, establish an editorial calendar, planning your publications, campaigns and events so as to maintain a regular presence.

👉 This organization gives visibility to your actions and makes it easier to analyze your performance. You'll be able to adjust your efforts on an ongoing basis.

2. Develop your presence on LinkedIn

An inactive profile sends the wrong signal. Most talented people are looking for a dynamic company, not a static one.

So liven up your account to strengthen your employer brand and give candidates confidence.

👉 The two essential practices :

• Create a Company page. This showcase allows you to publish your job offers, news and associate the profiles of your employees. The more subscribers you gather, the greater the visibility of your messages.
  
  
• Add a Career page (for a fee). More complete and customizable, it can be used to promote your company's culture and reinforce its reputation.

✅ Tips for raising your profile among potential candidates:

• encourage your teams and partners to follow your page and share your content;
• include the LinkedIn link in your email signatures, newsletters and on your website;
• publish regular posts to keep abreast of the latest news on the network.

3. Post targeted, relevant offers

Every recruitment strategy starts with defining your ideal candidates. That's why you need to create their personas, and then draw up suitable job descriptions. This is the basis of a successful offer.

👉 To publish for free on LinkedIn:

• Click on the "Jobs" tab at the top of your profile.
• Fill in the form (description, skills required, pre-selection questions).
• Relay the offer via a publication on your Company page and to your network. You can even identify contacts to amplify the sharing. LinkedIn groups linked to your sector are also valuable relays.

👉 To publish a job offer on LinkedIn via paid options :

• Promote your ad and significantly extend its reach.
• Opt for LinkedIn Recruiter (rates on request) if you recruit regularly or target rare profiles. This gives you access to the entire network, over 40 advanced search filters, automated application tracking and 150 InMail credits.
• For smaller organizations, Recruiter Lite ($170/month) offers over 20 filters and the ability to see who's visiting your page.

✅ Tips for optimizing your ads:

• integrate relevant keywords to better target the intended audience ;
• adapt the description template proposed by LinkedIn to save time;
• insert pre-selection questions, but keep an open mind to atypical profiles;
• activate automatic rejection emails to streamline the process;
• add a recruitment video, a popular format that enhances your appeal;
• flag up profiles that interest you, so that LinkedIn can use them for future suggestions.

4. Consult a variety of specific profiles

Recruiting on LinkedIn isn't just about posting ads: you also need to activate your headhunter's hat.

To do this, explore the platform's database and target profiles that match your expectations, from future graduates to your competitors' employees.

✅ Tips for improving your searches:

• use the free advanced search to perform sourcing queries and find candidate profiles matching your recruitment needs;
• use Boolean operators to refine your results:
• " " to search for an exact expression ;
• NOT to exclude a term ;
• OR to add an alternative ;
• AND to combine several words and target further.

5. Contact selected candidates and identified talent

Has a candidate responded to your ad? If you allow direct application via LinkedIn, all you have to do is reply and set up a first meeting.

Schedule this first exchange, ideally via a video interview, to speed up the process.

And if you're more into proactive prospecting, there are several options open to you:

• some members post their contact details (email, phone) in the profile section or share their CV as downloadable content;
• if the person is part of your network, send a private message directly;
• if the person is not part of your network, send a personalized invitation explaining your approach;
• with a paying account, contact them via InMail.

6. Advertise

Classical ads are attractive, but LinkedIn ads go further.

In addition to promoting your job offers via a daily budget, we recommend you try out Work With Us campaigns.

These ads appear automatically on the profiles of your employees or targeted opinion leaders. The selection is made according to their functions and skills, to highlight your vacancies in a relevant way.

💡 According to LinkedIn, Work With Us campaigns generate a click-through rate 50 times higher than conventional ads. When you're looking to recruit quickly and well, it's hard to ignore this lever. 🚀

7. Exploit the power of networking and recommendations

LinkedIn works above all through the network effect. That's why you need to activate it to your advantage.

How?

By encouraging your colleagues to share your job offers and HR content, so as to extend the reach of your messages.

Encourage them to recommend qualified profiles directly. Reviews left on your managers or teams reinforce your credibility and nurture candidates' trust.

💡 And it's not just an impression: LinkedIn itself mentions that a retention rate of 45% after four years is observed for hires via recommendation, compared with 25% for hires via job boards. In other words, a good network is more likely to turn your hires into lasting relationships.

8. Use the right software

ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and recruitment software are invaluable tools for structuring your entire hiring process.

They don't just centralize applications: they also enable you to publish your vacancies directly on LinkedIn and other channels such as Indeed or Google Jobs. The result: you save time, and your candidates benefit from a seamless experience.

Best of all, many of these programs integrate with LinkedIn Recruiter. This gives you complete tracking of candidates, from posting to processing. All the data is brought together in a single interface, and your HR teams work more efficiently.

🛠️ Software examples:

• Beehire is an intuitive recruitment software that helps companies work more efficiently, via 60+ features. Thanks to its Google Chrome extension, you can easily collect and centralize candidate profiles directly from LinkedIn into your Beehire account. You can also multiply your offers across different channels, including professional social networks.
  
  
• Beetween supports you in your sourcing on LinkedIn. It couldn't be simpler: thanks to its Chrome extension, source the best profiles from the social network and import them into your CV library with a single click. The Beetween plus? Its CV matching feature, which guarantees you a qualified CV library!
  
  
• Nicoka ATS is a powerful yet easy-to-use application management and tracking tool. It also includes a Chrome extension that works with or without a LinkedIn Recruiter account, and lets you import the profiles you consult on professional social networks into your CV library. The result is a complete, up-to-date database.
  
  
• Softgarden lets you multi-post your job offers in just a few clicks (LinkedIn, Indeed, Google Job, etc.). Also simplify the task of candidates by offering them to apply directly via LinkedIn, and automatically find all their information in the tool thanks to CV parsing.

💡Be aware that there are also platforms specialized in prospecting on LinkedIn, such as the ProspectIn extension. Use it to make automatic connection requests, send personalized messages in bulk, follow up, or even export LinkedIn contacts in CSV format.

See all software Recruiting

How to recruit on LinkedIn in brief

Recruiting on LinkedIn is no longer an option: it's a must if you want to attract and convince the best profiles. Between strategy, visibility, targeted ads and specialized tools, there are many complementary levers to activate in order to perform well on the platform.

But recruitment doesn't stop at approaching candidates. Talent retention, employee experience... and of course the growing use of AI in HR processes. Tomorrow's successful companies will be those capable of attracting, integrating and above all retaining their employees over the long term.