Ideal Candidate and LinkedIn Recruiter

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Recruiters are aware that most job descriptions lack some information necessary to source potential candidates. A job description is written to attract talent, and it is only one piece of data for Recruiters. We gain the extra info and Hiring Manager’s preferences through intake write-ups and meetings.

We have designed our sourcing intake form Brain Gain Recruiting Sourcing Checklist to solicit that extra information. I find an “ideal candidate’s profile” (or two, or three) to be especially helpful.

LinkedIn Recruiter (LIR) offers searching by an ideal candidate. The idea is admirable, but have you noticed how it is implemented?

When you search by an ideal candidate, LIR does exactly the following:

  • Sets an OR of the person’s job titles.

This means that you will be searching for past job titles, which could be more junior or even totally different from what you need.
I have a friend who once was an oboe player, then a database admin, and now is a speech therapist. If you are searching for a speech therapist, do you want to see oboe players?

  • Adds an OR of the person’s companies.

Do you want to hire from the same companies? Most often, not – especially if the “ideal” person has worked at small companies or already works at the company in a similar role.

  • Adds an OR of the person’s skills.

LIR’s skill search now looks (way) beyond self-entered skills; it finds people who have the skill keywords on the profiles. Therefore, skills search can only be separating good prospects from non-matching if you use an AND of skills.

  • Adds an OR of the person’s industries – picked from the employers and jobs past and present.

But “Industry” is a tricky filter. For the majority of professions, choosing one industry does not cover the type of work people do. Then, some members enter their “role” industry (like “Staffing and Recruiting”) while others put the employer’s industry (like “Healthcare”).
For some suggested industry selections, you will not even find that ideal candidate. For example, a good friend worked in music production years ago, before becoming a Sourcer. If you search by her profile, a suggested industry is “Entertainment” – but you will not find her when searching for it!

“Search by ideal candidate” and other features of LIR require understanding how the search “really” works and how to overcome the limiting factors. The LIR Help does not explain that.

Join us for the LinkedIn Recruiter Mastery class next Thursday, August 5th, to get clarity on its search and learn to find promising profiles that may be hidden if you just follow LIR’s prompts. As always, you can follow up with questions for a month.

 

 

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