How LinkedIn can help to provide a 360° view of candidates

Recruiters and hiring managers are increasingly turning to social media channels to vet candidates. Space on a CV is limited, and with just six seconds to check each one, how much can they really reveal about a potential candidate?

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Career Ambitions writes:

While CVs are useful for checking whether someone has the right skills or job history, they don’t paint a particularly colourful profile of a candidate. 

That’s where LinkedIn steps in. 

Ninety-four per cent of recruiters admit to using LinkedIn to check out their candidates in more detail. But how often do those LinkedIn profiles actually help with the recruitment process? Often, candidates spend their time tailoring CVs but forget to update their LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn profiles offer candidates the opportunity to complement their CV, not to simply duplicate it - but how many actually take advantage of this? 

How can we use LinkedIn to refine recruitment processes? 

The interviewing process is already lengthy enough, and it costs not just time but money. LinkedIn is a great way to sift through the applications and ensure that you are inviting only the best to interview. It’s a place to check a candidate’s career history, their network, their experience and their communication skills, as well as finding out more about the person. What are their interests? What conversations do they got involved with? What topics do they comment on? 

With so much information on offer, it’s often hard to know where to start… 

What to look for on a candidate’s LinkedIn profile: 

  • Do they have a professional profile image? A cropped selfie isn’t a great first impression…
  • What does their LinkedIn headline say about them? In just 120 characters, how are they selling themselves to you?
  • Have they had recommendations? These are better than references as they’ve been left out of choice rather than someone being put on the spot! Read through their recommendations and from whom and where they came from. Don’t confuse recommendations with endorsements. These are the quick fire ‘is Joe Bloggs good at Microsoft Word?’ pop up that LinkedIn encourages us to endorse. While endorsements may make those candidates easier to find for recruiters, they hold far less weight than a personal recommendation which someone has had to think about …
  • What content are they sharing? This can indicate their wider interests and motivations, which are key in ensuring you hire a candidate who will remain interested and inspired by their role.
  • Do they engage with others? You can also see what, where and to whom they are commenting and engaging. This can reveal a great amount about a candidate’s social skills and wider interests. 

Look out for these potential discrepancies and red flags: 

  • How many connections do they have? A candidate with just a handful of contacts on LinkedIn is likely not a strong one. They should have well-developed networks of 300+.
  • Is everything on their CV true? Check that a candidate’s career history adds up. Are the dates of employment correct, their job titles, companies and responsibilities? If not, which version is correct? There’s no excuse for discrepancies between the two!  

LinkedIn will never totally replace a strong cover letter and CV, but it is invaluable when it comes to gathering a 360° view of your potential candidate. And to ensure that you don’t waste time and money hiring the wrong one!  

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