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Talent Acquisition

How to STOP Using Only 10% of Your LinkedIn Recruiter License

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what recruitment leaders should stop doing in 2017; how they can STOP messing up their critical job adverts and START getting real, decent applicants, as well as how marketers need to STOP delivering tactics instead of strategy.

A theme which links all of this together is my new acronym: FORMO – Fear of Recruiters Missing Out.

We have become a generation of tech / app / extension / data proliferation and the process is screwed up. This has never been more so than with LinkedIn Recruiter (RPS Licence). I’ve written before about how recruiters do not expect ROI (return on investment) from LinkedIn. I often see this when I work with recruiters to help them confidently purchase / renew the licence.

Yes, they have the LinkedIn Recruiter training to get the ball rolling. Yes, they run the reports on usage… but they often don’t analyse data what I feel is critical to seeing ROI. They also don’t check in with recruiters and how they plan to implement their LinkedIn Recruiter Licence.

When I work with recruiters, I’m not into ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’ training. I’m into ROI. It’s sustainable and as cheap as chips!

70 20 10 – Only retaining 10%?

Imagine if you studied your client and talent (and staff) retention figures and realised that you were at 10%? You’d faint, scream, hide… But as humans, there is the theory that we retain 10% of the training we receive and the rest is a split between watching others and on the job challenges. I’ve been in training in some form or another for 20 years and I totally agree with this theory.

Aiming to get (at least) 100% ROI from LinkedIn Recruiter

Why is it that we often only “do the math” at the end of the day? We often use finance figures from previous activity. We look back at last month and what do we do differently this month? We possibly don’t have enough predictive analysis to help us predict success (or failure).
I often get told by recruiters that they need help understanding how to measure ROI from a LinkedIn Recruiter Licence and waiting on placement data is too long a wait (AND this assumes either success or failure, rather than a journey which needs constant management and focus).

Here are some data points I feel are critical to helping you understand the ROI of LinkedIn Recruiter:

LinkedIn Company Page Metrics:

  • LinkedIn Company post Impressions
  • Linkedin Company page followers

LinkedIn.com Staff Profile Metrics

  • Followers not connections
  • Number of Connections
  • Weekly profile views
  • LinkedIn Recruiter (RPS Licence) Metrics

LinkedIn Recruiter usage and success

  • InMail Acceptance Rates – I would clarify that this needs measuring against sends/ declines too
  • Activity – LogIns/Searches/Profiles Viewed/In-mails sent – plus projects and alerts setup

Website Metrics

  • Hits to Website from LinkedIn and which pages were the most popular
  • Flow to website and applications – I would add referral rates in Google Analytics

CRM Metrics

  • Placements – Value by month – have a think about LTV too (life time value)
  • Opportunities – In CRM with LinkedIn as source
  • Leads – In CRM with LinkedIn as source
  • Candidates / Contacts – source = LinkedIn

You don’t need me to tell you that buying a system, especially LinkedIn Recruiter, is not the goal – using it “well” and happily paying the invoice is the goal. Saying “of course we’ll renew” to LinkedIn is a great statement to make, as opposed to FORMO.

“Your FD telling you that you’ve spent a fortune on tech just to stay the same, is not what you want to hear at year end.”

Telling your clients that you have every bit of tech going and still you’re having issues finding talent is not a sales pitch, an excuse or even a USP. Start the measure the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Recruiter licence. Take action on how effectively and successfully it is being used. Stop waiting for placements to happen / not happen before you measure ROI. Habits will have been formed and the system perhaps devalued by then.

By Lisa Jones

Lisa Jones is a Director at Barclay Jones, a Consultancy working with recruiters advising them on the most effective use of technology, web and social media to improve their business processes, recruitment and bottom line. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LisaMariJones.