LinkedIn Talent Pool Overfished
A growing number of employers are investing in LinkedIn recruiting licenses and, for less important roles, it can be an effective tool. However, for senior executive, mission-critical, and hard-to-fill technology roles, employers are often discovering that LinkedIn Recruiter falls short. While the LinkedIn talent pool spans the globe, many recruiters complain that the LinkedIn talent pool has been overfished.
Linkedin InMail Burnout
Recently, a number of our clients have observed that an increasing number of highly sought-after LinkedIn candidates — the ones you actually want to hire — are experiencing recruiter fatigue. Passive candidates are getting barraged with LinkedIn InMails from talent acquisition teams. The more they hear from recruiters on LinkedIn, the less inclined they are to respond.
No Competitive Advantage
Another disadvantage of focusing passive recruitment efforts on LinkedIn is that you are competing with every other employer that is vying for your candidate members’ attention. LinkedIn candidates are the proverbial low-hanging fruit ripe for talent acquisition’s plucking.
Original Research is Better
By climbing higher up in the tree — by conducting original investigative research to identify and recruit top talent that is not so obvious — employers gain a powerful competitive advantage. It is how you find the right candidate. Investigative research consistently uncovers candidates employers never dreamed existed. Even better, these candidates are not actively marketing their wares on LinkedIn. In other words, by climbing higher in the tree, you pretty much get candidates all to yourself. The problem isn’t that there is a lack of candidate information. It is that candidate recruiting teams are drowning in a tidal wave of candidate profiles and resumes. Original recruiting research cuts through too much candidate information to focus on the candidates that matter. Recruiting research done right separates the signal (the ideal candidate) from the noise (everything else). Because ultimately, in recruitiing less is more.
You Can’t Yet Download a Hire
In other words, there is still a lot of recruiting that needs to be done to turn LinkedIn prospects into viable candidates. We regularly provide additional bandwidth to corporate executive search and recruiting teams. In a passive candidate sourcing strategy, LinkedIn is but one step in the process. To recruit the best talent, it takes a lot of work to uncover, map, profile, engage, screen, and qualify the contenders. In other words, LinkedIn is a starting place, not the finish line. We invite your observations and comments.
For more insights on LinkedIn, check out
- Skip Using LinkedIn to Recruit Senior Executives
- LinkedIn Member Profiles are a Beautiful Digital Mirage
- What to Do When LinkedIn Recruiter Falls Short
- Secret LinkedIn Filters for Corporate Recruiting Teams
- UPDATED! What Your LinkedIn Member Number Means (and How to Find It)
It turns out that our most popular blog post is the quirky UPDATED! What Your LinkedIn Member Number Means (and How to Find It) about finding your LinkedIn Member Number and what it all means. Perhaps you can help us solve the Mystery of the LinkedIn Member Number uncovered by one of the commenters.
