LinkedIn Recruiter hit the market on Monday, and the five-year-old company is feeling confident that recruiters will like what they see.
Among other features, the product allows users to group candidates in folders and tag them with comments. This means that corporate staffing departments can know immediately whether someone on the team has reached out to a potential candidate.
In 2007, the Mountain View, California-based company hired George Seiters as its senior director of corporate solutions in product marketing. Seiters spent the better part of last year working on LinkedIn Recruiter, a product he says will “revolutionize the process of online recruiting for corporate staffing professionals.”
What excites him the most, he says, is that users can download a search engine on their toolbar, a team-oriented approach that allows recruiters to view their team’s efforts and cut down on duplicate efforts. The team can also create template-based emails and send multiple “inmails” to candidates at once. Each recruiter seat gets 50 “inmails” to use to contact potential candidates on LinkedIn.
“An inmail is a trusted email over the Linkedin network. You don’t need to know the recipients’ contact information. They choose whether to respond, and they can either disclose or not disclose their contact information,” he says.
Users of LinkedIn Recruiter also can view up to 1,000 search results, instead of the 500 available in other accounts.
The company, which employs about 230, began its “Linkedin Corporate” side in 2007 (focusing on the business side as opposed to the individual) and has signed up about 500 customers.
Social Networks Growing in Popularity
A recent Classified Intelligence report, done in conjunction with ERE Media, shows that recruiters, especially those from large companies, are enthusiastic about social networks. Survey respondents said they spent about 41% more on social-networking sites in 2007 than in 2006, and 61% of those answering said they planned to spend even more in 2008.
The Classified Intelligence report explains that LinkedIn, which can be considered a social networking or a professional-networking site, was the most frequently mentioned site.
The report points out that recruiters receive inquiries about jobs from other LinkedIn members, and they like that it’s a way to reach people who aren’t in active pursuit of a new job. (Though the report finds that employee referrals are also important.)
OFCCP at Stake
If these numbers are an accurate indication, LinkedIn Recruiter may become even more popular for its auditing function. Seiters notes that Linkedin Recruiter can also organize projects and help with certain auditing features. For example, LinkedIn Recruiter is building in OFCCP-friendly compliance tools, though most auditing tools will be available in future upgrades.
“All activity is audited and archived for a two-year period, giving recruiters a snapshot of their search results,” says Seiters.
To get a visual of the new product, blogger Rithesh Nair shares a screen shot of what it looks like.
“The best feature I liked was the search alerts. You can now save the searches you are doing on Linkedin and have you alert when a new match is found as long as you keep the search alert ON,” writes Nair.