Don't rely solely on LinkedIn for sourcing, Lee urges recruiters
12 March 2014
As LinkedIn reaches 15m members in the UK, a sourcing expert warns that recruiters should not rely exclusively on LinkedIn to source candidates.
Wed, 12 Mar 2014As LinkedIn reaches 15m members in the UK, a sourcing expert warns that recruiters should not rely exclusively on LinkedIn to source candidates.
Commenting on the milestone, David Cohen, senior director of LinkedIn Talent Solutions for Northern Europe, says: “It reinforces LinkedIn’s position as the best source of talent for organisations in the UK. Talent is an organisation’s number one driver of success and, with growing signs of economic recovery in Britain, competition for great candidates is on the increase.
“Having an established presence on professional networks and social recruiting strategy – particularly on mobile – is increasingly a competitive advantage.”
Martin Lee, director of sourcing and recruitment for Social Media Research, a Norman Broadbent company, acknowledges that LinkedIn is the number one recruitment platform in the UK, telling Recruiter that it has been highly successful at drawing recruiters to its site. “If you do a search on Google, their LinkedIn profile will appear very high up,” he says.
“Pretty much every recruiter is on there, messaging and searching people in the same way. LinkedIn is pretty much the first and only point of call for recruiters.”
However, Lee advises that for recruiters to rely on only one source “is a mistake”. He explains that for recruiters to stand out and gain an advantage over all the other recruiters using LinkedIn in the same way, they should cross reference the results of their LinkedIn activity by using other social media sites and information from other sources.
Peter Gold, a strategic advisor to recruitment technology vendors, tells Recruiter that LinkedIn is “still seen as ‘the place to be’ for corporate recruiters, which is of course the target audience for LinkedIn: Hence they [LinkedIn] are de-skilling the search process by adding more and more automation to simplify this."
The reality of course is that the more recruiters use their platform the more the machine learns and the easier it is for employers to reduce their reliance on real people to do the sourcing when robots are more accurate, intelligent and lower cost. And of course robots have no interest in looking at cats on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn released new data about its UK membership:
12,530 journalists
48,679 solicitors
374,711 engineers
4,083 farmers
7,090 hairdressers
It says that London has more members than any other UK region, but doesn’t give an actual figure. The next three are Birmingham with 284,000, Manchester with 250,000 and Reading with 213,000.
The company says that 76 of the FTSE 100 companies use LinkedIn.
Commenting on the milestone, David Cohen, senior director of LinkedIn Talent Solutions for Northern Europe, says: “It reinforces LinkedIn’s position as the best source of talent for organisations in the UK. Talent is an organisation’s number one driver of success and, with growing signs of economic recovery in Britain, competition for great candidates is on the increase.
“Having an established presence on professional networks and social recruiting strategy – particularly on mobile – is increasingly a competitive advantage.”
Martin Lee, director of sourcing and recruitment for Social Media Research, a Norman Broadbent company, acknowledges that LinkedIn is the number one recruitment platform in the UK, telling Recruiter that it has been highly successful at drawing recruiters to its site. “If you do a search on Google, their LinkedIn profile will appear very high up,” he says.
“Pretty much every recruiter is on there, messaging and searching people in the same way. LinkedIn is pretty much the first and only point of call for recruiters.”
However, Lee advises that for recruiters to rely on only one source “is a mistake”. He explains that for recruiters to stand out and gain an advantage over all the other recruiters using LinkedIn in the same way, they should cross reference the results of their LinkedIn activity by using other social media sites and information from other sources.
Peter Gold, a strategic advisor to recruitment technology vendors, tells Recruiter that LinkedIn is “still seen as ‘the place to be’ for corporate recruiters, which is of course the target audience for LinkedIn: Hence they [LinkedIn] are de-skilling the search process by adding more and more automation to simplify this."
The reality of course is that the more recruiters use their platform the more the machine learns and the easier it is for employers to reduce their reliance on real people to do the sourcing when robots are more accurate, intelligent and lower cost. And of course robots have no interest in looking at cats on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn released new data about its UK membership:
12,530 journalists
48,679 solicitors
374,711 engineers
4,083 farmers
7,090 hairdressers
It says that London has more members than any other UK region, but doesn’t give an actual figure. The next three are Birmingham with 284,000, Manchester with 250,000 and Reading with 213,000.
The company says that 76 of the FTSE 100 companies use LinkedIn.
