We know it can be frustrating to come across what looks like the “perfect” candidate in your search, only to discover after multiple back-and-forth communications that they aren’t interested in the role or making a move. If this were a perfect world, you could zero in on qualified candidates and know what they’re open to, before a single email, InMail or call.
With these challenges in mind, we’ve released three product updates to help you focus on the right candidates and improve your response rates by 2-4x. They are: Open Candidates, Apply Starters, and Contractor Targeting.
While Open Candidates and Apply Starters allow you to uncover members who’ve signalled that they’re thinking about making a move by sharing their profile and job activity with recruiters, Contractor Targeting surfaces members who are likely to be interested in contract roles based on their preferences or profile history. Together, these features all help unlock what we call “open talent”: candidates who aren’t just “passive” or “active,” but instead are open to new opportunities.
Below is more on how to use these features, which are now available in LinkedIn Recruiter and Jobs. To ensure you’re always up-to-date on the latest, we also invite you to take a look at our brand new Product Updates page.
Open Candidates: See which LinkedIn members are quietly open to a new opportunity
With Open Candidates, any LinkedIn member can indicate to recruiters that he or she is interested in hearing about new roles. This information is kept private from members’ current employers – so job seekers can signal that they’re open for business without worrying about their bosses finding out.
For recruiters, this means you can focus your outreach on people who you know will be open to your opportunity. And, Open Candidates is proving to be popular: over 3.4 million members are already using it. You can find these Open Candidates right in Recruiter, using the spotlight above your search results.
When viewing members’ profiles, you’ll be able to see at a glance if they’re open to new opportunities. You can click their profiles to learn their career interests and preferences up front (without waiting for a phone screen) and more easily prioritize the most promising profiles.
Apply Starters: Reach out to applicants who started but did not finish their job application
Apply Starters is a similarly simple – yet extremely impactful – update. We can all relate to getting distracted while multitasking, and the same is true for today’s job applicants. In fact, with today’s long application processes, we’ve found that as many as 74% of candidates don’t finish an application when they’re directed to company career sites. Yet these members are just as qualified as other applicants, and are often still interested in the role. This makes them 4x as likely to respond to a recruiter as the average member.
With Apply Starters, members can share their profile before they even begin the application. Even if they don’t complete the full application, their profiles will still be shared with recruiters. Over 70% of LinkedIn members have already opted in to share their profile – almost doubling the available talent pool for recruiters.
Recruiters can easily access Apply Starters through the spotlight filters, right in LinkedIn Recruiter. Candidates who start but don’t finish an application will also show up for any jobs you post within Jobs Manager – and we’ll also send a weekly digest of candidates who began applications, to help you stay up to date.
Contractor Targeting: Focus your search on candidates who are interested in contract work
Since contract roles represent a growing portion of today’s workforce, being able to search specifically for contractors has been one of our most-frequently-requested features. To make it easy to find candidates who would be open to contracting, LinkedIn members can now self-identify as a contractor by checking a box on their profile. (Bonus: these members are 3 times as likely to respond!) We also use our data and analytics capabilities to infer if a candidate is likely to be interested in contract work. You can find these candidates by selecting the new Contract Filter when performing a search in Recruiter.
With Contractor Targeting, you can:
- Reach the contractor workforce: There are already over 4 million members on LinkedIn who are likely interested in contract roles.
- Focus your outreach: Only spend time on candidates who are a good fit for contract roles.
- Hear back faster: Candidates who self-identify as contractors are 3x more likely to respond, and 40% respond within one day.
With these new features, we hope to unlock valuable new talent pools and provide candidate insights up front so you can make better hires with less time and energy. Our Product Updates page will continue to serve as the hub for all our latest updates. As we continue to transform the hiring process for our customers, we look forward to sharing more developments.
*Image from Death to the Stock Photo
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Topics: LinkedIn product tips
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