LinkedIn launches new features for recruiters

In May, just ahead of National Recruiter Day, LinkedIn released several new features on its recruiter portal intended to make recruitment easier and more organized.

The social networking platform for professionals is attempting to make it easier for recruiters to find the best candidates based on skill and manage their workflows more easily. But while LinkedIn remains, for many, a valuable resource for finding the right candidates, some recruiters told HR Brew it still has limitations, despite the new improvements.

But first, what’s new? In a blog post announcing the updates, LinkedIn said it’s seen “an 11x increase in global demand for recruiters relative to the May 2020 low point.” And with 11.4 million open jobs in the US as of the end of April, recruiters are under pressure to fill positions as quickly as possible.

The latest LinkedIn Recruiter features include updates to Recommended Matches, bringing “the most qualified and interested candidates based on your hiring activity” and allows recruiters to search candidates based on skills, as employers focus less on aspects like education requirements. Another feature enables users to source internal candidates more easily, which could be helpful with retention as one recent Pew Research Center survey showed that a third of employees who quit their jobs cited a lack of career advancement opportunities as their main reason for leaving.

Brian Gabay, the owner of a recruitment service in New York City, told HR Brew that the standout feature for him is the new ability to organize his inbox by project. He said that external recruiters are busy juggling projects for multiple clients and verticals. “When you’re creating these projects, and being able to filter through inboxes tied to those projects—that for me specifically in my team has been really helpful,” he said.

Zoom out. Despite the new features, Gabay said he doubts LinkedIn will ever match up to what recruiters can handle with an automated tracking system (ATS), which offers “automated and speedy features to hit a lot of [candidates] at once. Because at the end of the day…it’s who gets to that person first,” and speed and volume are sometimes what help a recruiter beat the competition.

And aside from ATS, LinkedIn isn’t the only social media platform that recruiters are turning to for good talent these days. A November 2021 survey from Jobvite found that younger recruiters are leaning more heavily on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to find candidates.

Abbi Hill, recruiting coordinator at Neighbor, a storage-sharing company with approximately 80 full-time employees, said that while her company still uses LinkedIn to recruit for higher-level positions, recruiting Gen Z works differently. “For more of our entry-level or positions geared toward Gen Z entering the workforce, [for] a lot of those, we get applicants through Indeed,” Hill told HR Brew.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that many job seekers are looking for employment through new platforms like Slack. It’s only a matter of time before your next job offer appears in the viewer comments while you livestream cooking lessons on Twitch.—KP

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