How To Use LinkedIn Recruiter To Enhance Your Hiring Strategy in 2024

Yet gone are the days of generic job postings and hoping for the best. HR and Talent Acquisition teams need powerful tools to source, connect with, and ultimately secure the best talent. That's where LinkedIn Recruiter comes in.

This feature-rich platform offers sophisticated tools that streamline your hiring process and find hidden gems, going beyond simple LinkedIn searches. Navigating its vast possibilities, though, can seem daunting. This guide will equip you with the knowledge and strategies to leverage LinkedIn Recruiter like a pro, enhancing your hiring strategy in 2024.

What is LinkedIn Recruiter?

Any company can post a job on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn recruiter takes it to another level for bigger organisations looking to fill a high volume of roles. 

The amount of options available is staggering, but in a nutshell, it lets you view anyone’s profile on the site, even if they’re not in your network. The platform offers advanced search features that allow you to pinpoint candidates based on almost any criteria of your choosing. You can also send 150 InMails per month. These are just the tip of the iceberg, and we’ll talk more about them in a moment. 

LinkedIn Recruiter vs LinkedIn Recruiter Lite

If you’re a smaller company or recruitment agency, you won’t need all of Recruiter’s fancy features. That’s why LinkedIn also has a Lite version, with limited features but also a hefty price saving.

Recommended for individuals hiring less than 5 people a year, the main differences are:

• View 3rd degree connections on LinkedIn vs the entire network
• 20 search filters vs over 40
• 30 InMails per month for candidate outreach vs 150
• 2,000 unique profile views per day vs unlimited
• Limited candidate recommendations vs AI-powered recommendations

As you can see, the Lite version is a much better choice for those not looking to hire many people. Although LinkedIn prefers you to get in touch with its sales team to discuss prices, you can expect to pay around £1,600 a year for Lite and £5,000 for Recruiter.

LinkedIn Recruiter Tips

Once you’ve optimised your hiring practices, it’s time to dive into the vast world of LinkedIn Recruiter.

Naturally, you’ll start with the search function, and the amount of options here could be a whole article by itself! With over 40 filters, you can sort by skills, experience, industry, location, and even company connections. Boost your searches by using several refining criteria and saving them as custom filters that can be used again and again. Speaking of saving, stay ahead of the curve by saving your recruitment parameters for future use and receiving real-time notifications when new matching candidates emerge.

Boolean searching is an advanced search that can be used to great effect. Using filters such as AND, OR, and NOT, you can customise your filters to find the experience and skills you’re looking for. LinkedIn has a great guide on how to get the most out of it here.

Recruiter also includes clever features that go beyond merely searching. Spotlight, for instance, uses activity, interest, and connection analytics to help you rank users who are most likely to interact with you and your company. This could save you a lot of time and uncover hidden gems. You’ll also want to check out Recommended Matches, powered by AI. These analyse your hiring data to match you with candidates you might not have found—great for improving diversity or finding people with similar skills.

When you’ve found some ideal candidates, it’s time to contact them with InMail. As mentioned, you can send up to 150 of these in bulk, which is great if you’re on a time limit, but consider the personal touch instead. As always, directly speaking to people and mentioning how you found them and why they might be a good fit for the role will get you better responses than a stock template. And if you’re not getting the responses you’d like, check out InMail’s response data to see what has worked in the past to put you on the right path.

If you have a team dedicated to sourcing candidates, Recruiter makes collaboration a breeze. Streamline your workflow by creating ‘projects’ for specific roles, allowing team collaboration and efficient candidate tracking. Organise your hiring needs, share candidate profiles easily with team members, and leverage collective insights for better decision-making. This will keep communication with potential candidates clear and free from mistakes.

As we’ve seen, LinkedIn is a top platform for recruiters, but as with anything in life, relying on just one tool can severely limit you. Another place to easily find top talent is RefNow’s Talent Pool. Forget chasing after candidates who may not be actively looking. Talent Pool opens a gateway to a curated pool of qualified individuals ready to be discovered! 

Access passive candidates actively interested in your company. Your opt-in rate could be as high as 45%, saving you thousands in recruitment fees. More than just reference checks, it's your secret weapon for finding top talent and building a sustainable pipeline for future needs. Talent Pool is part of RefNow, the streamlined way to automate your reference checks. Save days of waiting, automate ex-employee reference requests, and guarantee reference accuracy. Book a demo today and effortlessly build your dream team.