Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies

Introduction3

Source using social recruiting4

Supercharge your talent brand5

Build a stunning talent pipeline6

Engage your talent with compelling content7

Measure for success8

Conclusion10

Table of contents

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 2

A strategic approach to staffing The staffing industry is evolving. Social networking is transforming recruiting methods, and altering the behaviour of candidates and recruiters alike.

Candidates have more career choices, and clients have more channels to research potential partners. Both groups are making decisions based on their networks’ recommendations and the information they find online. And increasingly, top talent doesn’t even enter the marketplace. Passive candidates are recruited from one role to another without actively searching for their next position.

Staffing agencies now need to act more like marketers to connect directly with the best candidates before their competitors do. This means actively listening, participating and engaging with targeted groups and communities, developing strong talent brands and building talent pipelines.

How can you secure top talent quickly and effectively for your clients in this new recruiting landscape?

Here are five easy steps to enhance your staffing strategy and become a stronger partner for your clients.

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 3

75% "PASSIVE"

OF THAT 75%

60% OPEN TO

APPROACH

15% COMPLETELY

SATISFIED

1. Source using social recruiting

Most professionals no longer need to actively job-seek and are connected via social media. They have extensive professional networks, change roles more often and have more channels available to find new jobs. It’s also likely they’re being targeted by your competitors, and can choose from multiple opportunities.

The good news is your talent pool has expanded, and your ability to reach and engage that pool has improved. You just need to be proactive, using the social tools at your fingertips to communicate the right content, to the right audience, at the right time.

Each person you connect with is also likely to be connected to many others, so social recruiting is an essential tool for tapping into quality talent pools and locating hard-to-find talent.

Online professional social networks have now overtaken traditional job boards as the primary source of quality hires for staffing agency across the world.

75% of global candidates regard themselves as "passive" – they’re not actively searching for work. But a full 60% are open to being approached – only 15% are completely satisfied in their roles and don't want to move. But to engage with those open to opportunities, you’ll have to reach out to them first.

Professionals attitude to new opportunities

TIP:To tap into the full power of world’s largest professional social network and actively source for candidates, request a free demo of LinkedIn Recruiter.

Source: Talent Trends 2014 LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 4

2. Supercharge your talent brandIf you want to actively engage with skilled professionals, you need to think and act like a marketer and build a strong talent brand via content marketing. If you don’t, you risk getting a cold response when you reach out.

If, however, you have built your reputation as a relevant and appropriate partner, your candidate will be more likely to engage.

A strong talent brand can also help attract new clients to your agency, as well as new talent recruitment specialists to work for you.

People who already follow you on LinkedIn are 95% more likely to respond to an InMail, and nearly 50% of people are more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn.

TIP:Discover more about crafting a great talent brand for your agency with our Talent Brand Playbook.

Make sure your Company Page stands out. This acts as an information hub for candidates and clients to learn more about your agency’s unique capabilities.

Attract followers for your agency. Your follower base is a prime group of potential clients and candidates to build relationships with.

Analyse key metrics. The analytics tab of your Company Page offers rich data on how your brand is performing.

Use Targeted Ads. Engage and influence key LinkedIn members at virtually every touch point on the site.

Use Employee Profile Ads. Take advantage of the ad space on your employees profile to promote your service.

5 steps to creating a great talent brand on LinkedIn

1

2

3

4

5

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 5

3. Build a stunning talent pipelineSpeed is more critical than ever in recruitment today. Clients have tight deadlines and budgets.

Having a warm talent pipeline of quality professionals is key. Nearly 80% of LinkedIn members are interested in career opportunities from companies they follow, so engage with them and grow your followers. Engaged followers are three times more likely to apply for one of your jobs than a non-follower.

You also need to supply candidates from a variety of professions and geographical regions. The advantage of online social networks is that they’re borderless. People stay connected to former colleagues when they move companies and even countries.

Instead of maintaining records manually, you can use tools such as Talent Pipeline in LinkedIn Recruiter to aggregate, track, contact and nurture talent leads.

FOLLOWERS ARE

3x MORE LIKELY TO

APPLY FOR ONE OF YOUR JOBS

ENGAGEDTIP:Imagine having a pool of warm candidates at your fingertips for every hard-to-hire role. Make it happen with these 12 tips.

Source: Student member insights

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 6

4. Engage your talent with compelling content

Target your status updates to specific followers using criteria such as:

With Sponsored Updates, you can target people outside your network – and they don’t have to be a follower of your Company Page to see it. There is strong engagement on weekends, so it’s worth considering an always-on approach.

Relevant and valuable content is key if you want people to notice and engage you. People come to sites such as LinkedIn to learn more about their industry and its issues, and they can be very receptive to the right material.

Great content is also more likely to be shared by your followers among their own networks, amplifying and extending your reach to not only candidates, but potential clients too.

Status updates with a link can drive twice the engagement. Including a YouTube video results in a 75% higher share rate. Posts with an image generally enjoy a 98% higher comment rate. Targeted content can achieve a 400% increase in candidate conversions.

JOB FUNCTION

SENIORITY GEOGRAPHY

CANDIDATE CONVERSION RATE

NON-TARGETED CONTENT

TARGETED CONTENT

TIP:Great content will help establish relationships with candidates and enhance their perception of your brand. Learn how to create, share, and optimise content with 5 Steps to Boosting Your Talent Brand Through Content.

Source: Talent Trends 2014 LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 7

LinkedIn also has detailed reporting tools, so you can measure your performance.

The Talent Brand Index measures how well you’re reaching and engaging professionals with your social recruitment strategy. You can monitor your score and see how it rises against your peers. You can also measure your social recruitment strategy on LinkedIn by tracking your Talent Brand Index score over time, against competitors, across geographies and across functions.

5. Measure for success A modern talent leader lives and dies by the mantra:

You need to be able to measure your results and refine your strategy as needed. Some key indicators of success are:

In-house metrics

• Your number of successful placements increases.• The time taken to fill positions reduces.

Online metrics

• You are growing your number of followers.• Traffic to your content increases.• Response rates to your job ads go up.

"If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it."

TIP:Find out more about measuring your talent brand and see how you shape up against your peers.

332M+ LinkedIn Members

Talent Brand Reach

Talent Brand Engagement

51,2777

366,263

14.0%Talent Brand Index

=Source: Talent Brand Index

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 8

RECRUITMENT SPEND

LINKEDIN TALENT SOLUTIONS

TRADITIONAL

50% SAVING

Case study: Stellar RecruitmentStellar Recruitment needed to reach a global network of candidates. Through LinkedIn, it built a profile and tops the Talent Brand Index in the Australian mining, oil and gas industry. It added 3000 candidates to its talent pool and made 60 senior placements in eight months. It identifies candidates in days, and recruitment costs are down by 50%.

REC

RU

ITM

ENT

M

ETH

OD

“LinkedIn Talent Solutions is far more powerful than just a sourcing tool. It’s also a platform you can use to create a compelling brand and value proposition for your business.”

Scott MacDonald,

Chief Operating Officer, Stellar Recruitment.

READ MORE

Source: Talent Trends 2014 LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 9

Conclusion Today, the world’s best recruiters act like marketers. They’re engaging with candidates and clients through social professional networks to keep their agency top of mind, they’re able to recruit more efficiently and grow their businesses as a result.

Building social recruiting into your staffing strategy will enable you to:

• Tap into an deep talent pool of passive candidates• Supercharge your talent brand• Build a stunning talent pipeline• Engage your talent with compelling content • Measure for success

With the right tools at your fingertips, you can communicate the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, boost your agency’s reputation and surge ahead of the competition.

To find out more about how LinkedIn Talent Solutions can help you develop a killer staffing strategy, download The Recruiting Firm’s LinkedIn Field Guide.

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Five must-follow steps for enhancing your staffing strategies 10

About LinkedIn Talent SolutionsLinkedIn Talent Solutions offers a full range of recruiting solutions to help organisations of all sizes find, engage, and attract the best talent.

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. With over 300 million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network.

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Questions? Contact the author, Andy Hu: ahu@linkedin.com?