How should HR teams use LinkedIn?

We previously wrote about how to approach confronting an employee who is lying on LinkedIn. A lot of questions came in about HR teams using LinkedIn. That’s what this post is about.

Do you remember the days of business cards and hard-copy resumes? That wasn’t too long ago. Now is the era of LinkedIn. The move from in person to remote has given LinkedIn even more influence in the corporate world. Given the power and reach of LinkedIn, marketers are also spending significant ad dollars on the platform. But this is not a marketing post so we will go back to HR.

As an HR professional, LinkedIn has become more important. How should you use LinkedIn to help your company? To answer that question, we should look at what LinkedIn can help you do.

1. Attract candidates to your job posting

LinkedIn is primarily there to help you attract candidates. Post your job on LinkedIn. If you are using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), post the job on LinkedIn and direct applicants to your ATS. If you don’t have an ATS, you can manage your applicants within LinkedIn or ask people to email you resumes and applications (not ideal). A proper ATS will save you a lot of time and make it a better candidate experience. A lot of passive candidates only look at jobs posted on LinkedIn. They “scroll” recommendations provided by the platform. If you have a recruiting team or are finding it tough to hire, you can purchase LinkedIn Recruiter which will help you proactively find candidates and see who might be open to exploring other roles.

2. Assess candidates

LinkedIn is a public forum where professionals present themselves and socialize. There were previously questions about looking at candidates’ Facebook profiles. That felt unnatural to many. LinkedIn feels different. Some key questions to ask yourself might be:

• Do they have a LinkedIn profile? A salesperson or marketer should likely have one. Everybody working in a social media company should likely have one. I should probably have one (and I do).
• Does their LinkedIn profile match their resume? There was somebody named George Santos recently in the news for the wrong reasons. LinkedIn can help limit the number of these types of instances.
• How do they carry themselves? Some candidates will carry themselves more professionally than others. Behaviour and/or grammar on LinkedIn can reflect on behaviour and/or grammar at work.
• Do you have mutual connections? An honest reference check through a mutual connection can give you information that is hard to uncover, both in terms of good and bad. This approach should be avoided in situations where it can harm the candidates with their current employer.

3. Enhance employer brand

Candidates often find the job posting on LinkedIn. The first place they will likely go is your website. The second is your company’s LinkedIn profile. What is your employer brand on LinkedIn? What is your company in the news for? Are you celebrating wins or did you just lay off 20% of your staff? Your employer brand will make candidates “feel” a certain way. It would be good to be intentional about how you make them feel.

4. Engage employees

See what your employees are up to. Celebrate Emily’s CPA. Congratulate Jacob on his 5 year anniversary. Call out Sherry on winning an award. Post a photo of that team event everybody loved. Have some fun. 

This is not an exhaustive list of things an HR team can do on LinkedIn. But it’s a start.

LinkedIn is intended to help you hire people but stays away from the process once a role is filled. That’s where a great HRIS like Collage can really help. Onboarding and beyond is all the fun! 😀

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