LinkedIn is undoubtedly an excellent tool to search for potential hires. Recruitment consultants and in-house talent teams amongst others use it extensively.
Stats vary but anything from 5% to 8% of profiles on LinkedIn are recruiters or similar. The rest are generally passive and active candidates from every imaginable sector and location.
A Few Facts:
There are c200m registered users on LinkedIn … according to LinkedIn, but remember they do have a vested interest!
- 40-50% are based in the US
- Profiles expand across 200 countries (again, according to LinkedIn)
- Over 40% of users in Europe work for companies with 10,000+ employees
- 8-10m of those registered users are based in the UK
- The UK working population is c30m
There are many arguments put forward about the type of workers registered on LinkedIn (professional vs blue collar etc). However, whichever argument is most accurate there are millions of workers in any given industry who are not registered on LinkedIn, gasp!
There is also a massive open question about what constitutes an active user. It is certainly not the same as a registered user. I have seen reports quoting anything from 20% to 80% quoted as ‘active’ users of the total registered population.
Then there is the question of accuracy and duplication. The most quoted recent report on accuracy of information (CV’s) on LinkedIn trialed 119 people in a between-subjects experiment, meaning they tested the same participants in 3 different scenarios. Hardly conclusive evidence. Indeed, an ex employer of mine who shall remain nameless (but needless to say I had left by then), encouraged it’s staff to lie on their profiles to greatly exaggerate their experience, gasp again!
LinkedIn has become such a quoted and used source of candidate profiles that it is often the first port of call for anyone recruiting staff. The use of LinkedIn by in-house recruitment teams has massively increased during the economic downturn. Agencies must differentiate themselves from their competition to prosper. To only be searching in the same talent pool as in-house recruiters does not do that.
30% of the UK’s workforce are registered users of LinkedIn, 20%-80% are active and the accuracy of some CV’s are questionable. I urge you to use your critical thinking skills when reading reports and hearing quotes. As an agency it makes sense to differentiate your ability to find the best candidates in the market by utilising alternative skills and resources to provide the best possible person for the client or role in question.
Don’t fall in to the trap of swapping one database (your own) for another (LinkedIn) and don’t let in-house teams kid themselves or you that searching LinkedIn necessarily provides the best person for their company.
LinkedIn is here to stay (for now) but it’s not the panacea. Arguably, for recruitment agencies, it is becoming less useful, more saturated and less discerning than other sources.
