LinkedIn introduces new product to make it simpler for employees to refer candidates

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, used its annual Talent Connect event in California to introduce two new ways it will help employers find the best new hires from among the network’s 380 million members worldwide.

LinkedIn’s new Referrals product is designed to make it simpler for employees to refer people from within their network for positions at their company. It does this by automatically identifying the first-degree connections of a company’s existing employees that are the best match for current job openings. Employees will receive suitable referral suggestions from their LinkedIn network and be able to quickly and easily let their connections know about job opportunities via email or LinkedIn’s InMail. 

Employees will also be able to proactively broadcast job opportunities to their entire network across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. They will be able to easily see what stage their referral is in the hiring process. 

Speaking at the Talent Connect event, Eddie Vivas, head of product for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, commented: “Our research shows that nearly 80 per cent of recruiters say the best channel to recruit quality candidates is through referrals from the connections and contacts of current employees. These people are often hired faster, are a better cultural fit, perform better and stay longer. But employees have a day job to do. This new product makes the referrals process effortless, so employees can help their business find new hires easily and quickly.”

A new, more intuitive LinkedIn Recruiter

LinkedIn also announced a redesign of its flagship Recruiter product, currently used by more than 38,000 companies worldwide. Recruiter currently enables nearly everyone who recruits - whether experts in Boolean search strings (using AND, OR and NOT between keywords to perform complex searches), HR generalists, or hiring managers - to use powerful search tools to quickly narrow down a relevant shortlist of candidates from among LinkedIn’s global membership.

The updated product will include several new ways to make it easier for recruiters to identify and hire the right talent for their organisation - and do this faster:

• Similar profiles: Employers can now type in the name of their best employees, select their profiles, and receive a list of members with similar experience and skills.

• Suggested Search: LinkedIn will suggest relevant search terms recruiters should use to help them find members who are a match for their jobs. This will be a much simpler process for recruiters, many of whom have previously conducted many hours of research to create complicated Boolean search strings. 

• Spotlighting potential hires you already know: Recruiter will now show recruiters every member who is a match for their job, and then highlight the members within this group who follow their Company Page, have applied for their jobs, and are first-degree connections with their employees. These subsets, called Spotlights, helps recruiters prioritise which candidates to contact and how to contact them. 

Eddie Vivas continued: “We spent the last eighteen months listening to the feedback from our users and recruitment professionals in the field. We want to make our products so intuitive to use that anyone can be a data-driven recruiter on LinkedIn. Relationships have always been at the heart of recruitment. The next generation of Recruiter and the new LinkedIn Referrals product tap into our members’ valuable relationships to help everyone who recruits - from agency recruiters and recruitment professionals to in-house hiring managers - identify and hire the right talent faster.”