How to Recruit on LinkedIn: 9 Strategies to Find Top Talent

With over 1 billion users across 200 countries, LinkedIn helps you reach a dynamic, more suitable talent pool for your company. With 65 million people searching for jobs on LinkedIn weekly, recruiters can use the platform to fill vacant positions. 

Also, candidates sourced via LinkedIn are 40% less likely to leave a company in the first six months. Thus, it is considered a one-stop shop for recruiting.

As a companion to modern recruiters, LinkedIn helps recruiters woo their ideal candidates while providing access to the right data to inform strategy. 

Let’s focus on how to recruit on LinkedIn to help you fully maximize the platform's benefits. 

9 proven strategies on how to recruit on LinkedIn and find top talent 

Once you’ve identified the right metrics as a LinkedIn recruiter, the next step is to implement suitable strategies. You can try some of these:

1. Post jobs on the LinkedIn company page

Your LinkedIn company page is what builds the first impression your candidates have about your company. It should depict your company’s mission and culture so job seekers can be motivated to apply. 

Over 3 million organizations use their company page as an avenue to reach talent.

Here’s a step-by-step process for posting a job on LinkedIn: 

• Click on the Jobs icon, which looks like a briefcase. 
• Tap on the Post a Free Job button. 
• Afterwards, you will find a Job Details page. On this page, you will have to fill out the company, job title, location, and employment type.
• You would also be prompted to draft a job description, and you can choose its AI generator.
• Afterward, add skills based on the job description you drafted. Most of the time, LinkedIn helps you to develop skills.

• Click Continue.
• Include screening questions to reduce the number of unqualified candidates. 
• Select how you would like to be notified about applicants. 
• Click Post.

To have the job posting appear on your company page, you can select your organization's page in a drop-down menu. This will make it appear on the Jobs tab on your page. 

You can streamline this procedure using Kula ATS, an all-in-one AI-powered recruitment tool. With our dashboard, you can quickly post and monitor engagement on all the job listings on LinkedIn. 

2. Reach passive talent with Boolean search

Boolean search is one of the fastest ways to search for your ideal candidates within your niche on LinkedIn. This technique works in the keyword field on LinkedIn and also for tools such as Sales Navigator and Recruiter. 

Use these techniques to implement the Boolean logic in your searches as a recruiter: 

• NOT searches are negative boolean searches that help you to exclude a search term from your results. For example, “recruiter NOT manager” 
• AND searches are positive boolean searches that provide results with all the items in a list. For example, “programmer AND designer AND engineer” 
• OR searches make your search results broader by including multiple items in a list. For example, “creative OR social media OR writer” 
• Parenthetical searches are a more complex technique that helps you combine terms to exclude. For instance, if you type CTO NOT (founder or VP), it will only produce results of people who are strictly CTOs. Make sure your parenthetical searches have no quotations to get the perfect results. 
• Quoted searches are useful for finding results with the exact phrase. It also works with multiple words.

Note: Operators such as AND, OR, and NOT must be used in capital letters. 

3. Contact candidates via InMail moderately

After finding the ideal candidate on LinkedIn, you want to do everything you can to get a response. This is where InMail comes in. Reaching out via InMail lets you grab your candidate’s attention despite their busy inbox. 

Here are some interesting statistics from LinkedIn’s Enterprise Account Manager: 

Source 

However, unless you've subscribed to LinkedIn's paid tools, you must use InMails moderately to avoid getting flagged. Still, you want to craft compelling private messages that will make your candidates eager to reply. 

Here are some LinkedIn recruiting best practices to imbibe to guarantee a response: 

• Prioritize candidates who already follow your company, who are “Open to Work,” or who are connected to someone in your company.
• Use a catchy subject line to hook your candidate, and avoid generic approaches to ensure you stand out.
• Take time to read the candidate’s profile so you can personalize your messaging. 
• Keep InMails concise while highlighting what candidates stand to gain. 

You can use Kula ATS to export LinkedIn profiles in a single click and all InMail exchanges to existing candidate records. 

4. Scout candidates on LinkedIn groups 

LinkedIn groups are often overlooked but remain resourceful avenues for recruiters to find the next company fit. On LinkedIn groups, professionals connect, share their perspectives, and update each other on industry trends. 

LinkedIn groups can help you spot active individuals sharing their insights as long as you choose a group related to your niche and company's needs. 

If you want to make the most of LinkedIn groups, here are some tips to implement: 

• Spend time finding ideal groups within your niche to avoid falling for spam. 
• Visit the profiles of group members and connect with outstanding individuals. Remember the LinkedIn invitation limit.
• Contribute to the group discussions based on your expertise and look out for candidates who engage actively.
• Post jobs directly on the groups you join to attract a fresh audience.

5. Encourage employee advocacy 

Companies with socially engaged employees attract more talent by 58% and retain them by 20%. Employees are the best advocates of your company, and their efforts can boost job applications. 

LinkedIn coach Michelle Raymond asserts that: “Employee advocacy is an amazing opportunity for a business to build trust and connection with customers, prospects, and job candidates.” 

Even beyond recruitment, this strategy can boost your marketing and sales efforts. 

Here are some LinkedIn recruitment techniques on how to use employees as advocates: 

• Secure executive buy-in to run the employee advocacy program.
• Draft a strategy to highlight what is acceptable to post online.
• Identify ways to motivate and incentivize employees to keep them actively engaged.
• Educate employees on how to maximize LinkedIn while providing them with the necessary resources to succeed.
• Choose the key metrics that are suitable to measure the success of your employee advocacy program.

6. Attract quality connections on personal account 

Your LinkedIn account as a part of the hiring team is an asset you must fully maximize. Candidates already have a picture of their next employer by interacting with you on LinkedIn, and that experience sticks with them. 

What do you want to be known for? Marie Benigno, Talent Acquisition Recruiter for Netflix Games Studio, portrays herself as a fun-loving individual using her photo to drive the message. This image suits her industry, shows her personality, and helps her attract the right candidates. 

Here are some quick tips on how to attract quality connections on LinkedIn as a recruiter: 

• Share job openings on your account.

Source 

• Invest in updating your profile regularly to show expertise and what it feels like to work at your company.
• Share helpful posts to help recruiters and potential candidates get ahead in their careers.
• Engage with other people’s posts within your niche by liking, commenting, and sharing to create a deep impression about you.
• Send conversational and fun messages to potential candidates to build genuine connections that can lead to a great hire.
• Study your existing followers to determine if their demographics and occupations match your needs. Also, remember to delete inactive accounts to improve your reach on LinkedIn.

7. Use advanced search features 

Advanced search is one of the ways to source candidates on LinkedIn because it helps you narrow your search options so you get the kind of results you truly seek. 

One way to fully maximize the benefits of these advanced search features is to integrate your ATS with LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect (RSC). RSC allows for seamless data synchronization between your ATS and LinkedIn, ensuring candidate information is always updated.

With LinkedIn Recruiter, you can place greater emphasis on suitable candidates based on interest, activity, and relationship data on LinkedIn. It helps you access up to 40 advanced search filters when trying out different keywords.

Kula ATS offers LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect (RSC) integration. This lets you easily track all your search results and keep close tabs on candidate data. As a result, you supercharge your recruitment with data-driven decision-making.  

8. Activate LinkedIn private mode

If you’re looking for a way to check candidate profiles and access them without their knowledge, LinkedIn’s private mode is your best bet. 

Since you’re reviewing numerous profiles simultaneously, LinkedIn's private mode makes you invisible and allows you to reach out only to the candidates who interest you. 

LinkedIn's private mode is a feature you can easily access whether you use a free or premium account as a recruiter. 

Here’s how to activate LinkedIn private mode on your account:

• Click on the drop-down menu underneath your profile icon. You’ll find it at the upper right of your screen.
• Select Settings & Privacy. 
• Afterward, click on Visibility. 
• Select Profile viewing options. 

• Select Private mode among the three options you would be offered.

Once you’re done, all the changes you made will update automatically. This is similar to going into incognito mode, which also erases your viewer history. 

9. Use an all-in-one ATS + CRM like Kula 

Using powerful software such as Kula can help you recruit faster on LinkedIn. This all-in-one ATS and CRM allow you to quickly share job opportunities on LinkedIn, sync LinkedIn InMails, and ease candidate journeys through the pipeline. 

This recruitment tool enables you to leverage the power of AI to advance candidates through the funnel stages using customized rule sets. Kula ATS is a preferred partner of LinkedIn, offering bi-directional integration with LinkedIn Recruiter and Entelo from the platform UI. 

Here are some powerful features of Kula ATS to inform your LinkedIn recruitment strategy:

• Kula ATS assists you in sending automated interview reminders and provides an AI-powered interview note-taker to enhance interaction 
• You can save time and resources by accessing automatic job posting updates and personalizing candidate communications
• Using Kula ATS enables you to easily distribute job ads automatically 
• This tool allows you access configurable screening with features that help you to customize your application process based on each job and department 

Using applicant tracking software like Kula allows you to easily monitor candidate profiles, messages, and application documents. 

Kula ATS: Leverage LinkedIn to source befitting candidates

LinkedIn empowers you to find candidates who are actively in search of a new role and those who are considering leaving their company. Using these nine strategies will help you present your job offer in a way that is findable, accessible, and attractive enough for candidates to apply. 

However, implementing all these steps manually can be time-consuming and disorganized. With Kula ATS, you can quickly streamline all your LinkedIn recruiting efforts.

Book a free demo now!