Most companies struggle with attracting top talent to their company. There are many challenges such as reaching the right people and getting them interested. The competition is tough and there is a clear need to come up with new innovative ways to lure new employees in.
Build your connection network on LinkedIn
We believe LinkedIn is a great platform for this as it connects the company to individual profiles of employees and to their networks. The best professionals are so called passive candidates meaning that they are not actively looking for new work but may be interested if an opportunity is brought before them. 80% of LinkedIn users are actually classified as passive candidates. Nowadays the main reason for joining LinkedIn is not job searching but instead the desire to network with other professionals, which means more and more passive job seekers join the platform. The most common activity on LinkedIn is still viewing others’ profiles so it is extremely important that your employees give a professional and competent image of themselves as this reflects directly on the employer.
You can easily check how many of your own employees are on LinkedIn either by going to your company page and seeing “X employees on LinkedIn” on the right as seen here. If you do not have a company page or are not sure if your employees are correctly linked to it, you can do an advanced people search by clicking “Advanced” next to the search bar when searching for people. Here you should type in your company name, select current, and click search. You can also add a country if you want to know how many employees your company has on LinkedIn in a specific location.
Find the best passive candidates
When thinking about where to find the best talent you will notice that most of them can actually be found in the existing networks of your own employees. This is why you should encourage your own employees to transmit a positive image of your company to their own networks which in turn builds your employer brand. The message will also reach the professionals in your employees’ networks on a personal level as it will be coming from someone they know and not just a generic source. This may get passive candidates interested as they see that their connection is clearly enjoying working for you.
Employer branding through your employees
For any of this to happen the first step would be making sure all your employees are well represented and have professional Linkedin profiles. Even though employees usually need assistance in creating these, employers rarely provide any sort of guidance to their employees. Once your employees have professional profiles they will be more open to sending messages to their networks via status updates, groups and even in person since they will feel confident that they are also giving a positive image of themselves. Also, passive candidates will be looking at your employees’ profiles to see who their potential future colleagues would be and how well they would fit in.
While companies are waiting to act, their employees are already on LinkedIn. Some of them have incomplete and unprofessional profiles that reflect poorly on both the employee and the employer. This is truly your online first impression that should be made a key priority for anyone looking to get the best applicants and employees both now and in the future.
Our Smarp Academy provides training for employees on LinkedIn use that helps them create a professional presence as well as utilize their networks. Learn more in the Academy section!
