Seven Ways to Use LinkedIn to Mine for Talent

Posted by Susan Hall Mar 7, 2011 1:29:03 PM

Seven Ways to Use LinkedIn to Mine for Talent
LinkedIn is a veritable gold mine for those looking for potential candidates.

A couple of new features on LinkedIn should be a boon to job seekers. These days, companies post jobs and make recruiters available to prospective candidates' questions, so it just makes sense to go there.

The latest changes are to the Jobs tab within Groups – and one of the bits of advice in the accompanying slideshow is to be a joiner, reaching out to people of similar interests through the various Groups. Members can join up to 50 industry-specific groups or create their own. That provides an even thinner slice of people following a given topic and makes them even more likely candidates – or to know good candidates – for jobs specific to that group. Andrew Hill writes for LinkedIn that positions posted within Groups are posted by members or use keywords specified by the group manager, making them all the more relevant.

He also lists Career Discussions as a great place to list opportunities with your company. Postings from the old Groups “Jobs” tab can be found there now.

Also, check out the video on the refreshed Company Search function. Now you can search not only by location, industry and size, but also by how you are connected. You can find a connection within the company to give you the inside scoop or even to walk your resume into the hiring manager's office, as social media guru Guy Kawasaki recommends in this excellent post. You can look up the backgrounds of people in the job you want and also find out where they go from there. You can even search according to the words employees at the company use to describe it.

If you're just getting started on LinkedIn, this post on the Microsoft JobsBlog from last October will walk you through researching companies on LinkedIn. It explains the different types of information you can find there, though it might be arranged differently on the page now. Though it claims to be "Part I of III," I haven't been able to locate the other two posts, which were to focus on being found by employers.

In this post, Lindsey Pollak says you need to use relevant keywords in your LinkedIn profile for the job you want in order for employers to find you. She recommends you look for keywords in the profiles of people in the job you want and also look for them in job listings for your desired positions. She urges you to create a relationship with someone inside the company – Kawasaki recommends no more than two degrees of separation away, meaning at least a friend of a friend – then ask that person for advice on landing a job within the company.

Another great point from Kawasaki: Build your network before you need it. So we all should be perusing relevant Groups now and then and leaving the occasional comment to at least have a presence there.


In a previous post, I provided 12 reasons to use LinkedIn which this article now reinforces.  Neldon