6 FREE Ways To Recruit Salespeople on LinkedIn

If you are not using LinkedIn to recruit top sales talent, you are missing a key component to your recruitment strategy. 94.5% of recruiters say they have successfully filled positions using LinkedIn (see Infographic below).  The best part of using LinkedIn is that there are several free ways to get terrific results.  Below are the ones that I’ve found most effective.

 1.  Your LinkedIn Company Page

If you don’t have a LinkedIn Company Page or possibly worse, an incomplete or not up-to-date one, this is your first place to start.  If only your corporate parent has a LinkedIn Company Page, consider creating one for just your operation.  A LinkedIn Company Page is usually one of the first places a top talent prospect will go to get information about you.  Fill out all the tabs including the “Products/Services” which is where you can showcase all that your company has to offer a perspective employee.  You can also upload photos, videos (employee videos and recommendations are a big plus), and your company’s website address(es).  To create one go to www.LinkedIn.com/company/add/show.

 2.  Ask Employees To Link To Your Company Page

To optimize your LinkedIn Company Page for recruiting, ask EVERY employee to link his or her LinkedIn profile page to your Company Page.  When a potential candidate sees a lot of employees linked, it represents your company as having engaged employees – a good sign.  Also, it allows the person to check and see if he or she has any connections among your employees.  For directions on how employees can link their personal profile pages to your LinkedIn Company Page go to http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1588.

 3.  Post A Job Opening Status Update

You can post a Status Update featuring information about your job opening on the Overview tab of your Company Page.  This will be viewable to anyone who views your Company Page and will also be sent out to any of your “followers.”

 4.  Employee Status Updates

Ask your employees to also post a “Status Update” on their individual LinkedIn profile pages about the job opening.  Ask them to be sure to include a link to your LinkedIn Company Page.  This is like getting a “referral” as potential job prospects know that only engaged employees would recommend their place of work to someone they know.  The multiplier effect of having this done by your employees means that your job opening is potentially being seen now by several hundred (or more) business professionals.

 5. The Advanced Search Function

The Advanced Search function on LinkedIn is a fast way for you to proactively find potential job candidates.  On your LinkedIn home page go to the right hand corner of the page to the Search Bar and click on Advanced which will take you to the Advanced Search page.  On that page you can enter keywords (such as “sales account manager”), location, industry, etc.  When you click “search” it will bring back results that fit your criteria.  It will show you whether anyone in your network is connected to the people in the search results.  If so, you can “Request An Introduction.”  If not, you can click on “Connect” and leave the person a message.

 6. Post To Your Groups

What groups do you belong to on LinkedIn?  If you are not in ANY industry specific groups you should do a search in the top right search box (change to “groups” from “people” with the drop down arrow) and find some to join.  Once you have joined Groups you can then post job information by clicking on the Jobs tab on a Group’s home page.  You will see that there is an option to “Post a job and share it with this group” but that is available only if you have purchased a LinkedIn job ad.  However, you can post your job opening where it says “Post a Job Discussion in this group”

 Bonus Idea:  FREE Internship & Entry Level Job Postings

LinkedIn has over 20 million student members!  If you are looking for college students to intern or for recent college graduates, you should take advantage of a current LinkedIn offering.  You can promote your job openings on LinkedIn’s new student jobs portal for free through June 2013.  Go to http://lnkd.in/freestudentjobs to get started.

Infographic from http://www.infographiclabs.com