I recently spoke twice at the California Staffing Professionals annual conference. One session was called “LinkedIn for Salespeople” and the other one was called “LinkedIn for Recruiters”. These two different audiences led to some observations:
LinkedIn usage among recruiters is high. Jobvite’s 2012 social recruiting survey shows LinkedIn usage among recruiters is 93%.
Like salespeople, there are different types of recruiters in terms of the Quality vs. Quantity spectrum. Some recruiters fill a small number of higher-paying positions. They will spend more time researching candidates and leveraging referrals than their higher-volume counterparts who move quickly to fill lower-paying positions. For these recruiters, it’s a numbers game. It’s similar to a company having Enterprise and SMB sales reps.
Approximately 70% of the recruiters at the conference used one of the premium LinkedIn editions designed for recruiting. LinkedIn offers three premium editions that individual recruiters can upgrade to (Talent Basic, Talent Finder, and Talent Pro). It also offers a more powerful corporate edition called “Recruiter” which includes administrative tools to manage users. The LinkedIn premium editions for salespeople (Sales Plus, Sales Executive, Sales Pro) are also available via individual upgrades. When a company purchases a block of Sales Navigator subscriptions in an annual contract, additional benefits including TeamLink* and administrative tools are included.
LinkedIn currently has more features for recruiting than it does for selling. For example, while either group can share information via status updates and group discussions, there is a dedicated area of LinkedIn called Job Network just for posting (paid) job advertisements. More full-featured recruiting tools should come as no surprise since LinkedIn’s Hiring Solutions group has been around for 5+ years while the Sales Solutions group just started 1.5 years ago. Recruiting tools also are the biggest contributor to LinkedIn’s revenue. As Sales Solutions continues to expand, look for more sales-specific features to emerge.
Last observation: As a career sales guy, I thought salespeople were the best when it came to partying the end of the conference gala. From what I observed, professional recruiters know how to have fun, too.
Want to learn more about LinkedIn Sales Navigator? Learn all about how you can leverage it for sales prospecting and building your personal brand. Visit our LinkedIn training course.
