What Is LinkedIn Recruiter?

Written By Alex Blackburne

Latest in Tech News, Reviews & Education

If you want to hire people through LinkedIn, you have come to the right place. Over 50 million companies worldwide use LinkedIn to find the best candidates efficiently, and many rely on the LinkedIn recruiter. Whether it’s for your Saas company or you are just looking for a web developer for a short-term project, LinkedIn is going to be the right choice for hiring people. In this article, we will cover everything about LinkedIn recruiter, including what is LinkedIn Recruiter and how to use it.

What is a LinkedIn Recruiter?

LinkedIn recruiter is a premium Linkedin tool that gives you access to specific tools to help find suitable candidates on LinkedIn more efficiently. The tool includes InMails, advanced search filters, enhanced insights/reporting, creating projects and pipelines, and much more. LinkedIn recruiter allows recruiters across companies to share projects. However, if you are a small recruitment agency with few recruiters, LinkedIn offers a more affordable, basic version of LinkedIn Recruiter, known as Recruiter Lite.

What’s the difference between LinkedIn Recruiter and Recruiter Lite?

Recruiter Lite varies from the LinkedIn recruiter in many ways. You won’t get access to the pipeline tool that LinkedIn Recruiter provides you, which helps you take prospects through the recruitment process. However, you still get access to 100 projects, whereas you get 200 projects in the Recruiter plan. Recruiter Lite gives you only 30 InMails per month and ten saved search alerts per day, compared to LinkedIn Recruiter, which offers 150 InMails and 20 search alerts. Recruiter Lite does not have the feature of additional reporting like Recruiter and does not integrate with the ATS system. If you looking for a less expensive option with fewer features, then Recruiter Lite can serve the purpose. 

Advantages of LinkedIn Recruiter

  • Speed – Hiring on LinkedIn can be time-consuming. In this case, LinkedIn Recruiter will help you find the ideal candidates easily, reducing the search time – filters to configure your search and provides recommendations to find the right hire.
  • Easy Interactions – LinkedIn recruiter allows you to interact with candidates smoothly on the platform. The LinkedIn InMail message feature allows reaching users even if you don’t have their contact information. You can also use a message template to write to several users simultaneously.
  • Teamwork – LinkedIn Recruiters help to do teamwork by sharing profiles you have selected and getting other team members’ opinions. Hiring managers have access to their team members even if they don’t have a LinkedIn recruiter.

Tips for finding the best employee through LinkedIn

Create and share job posts

You should cover all the essentials of job posts such as title, description, skills required etc., But apart from that, you need to stand out and attract the ideal employee. To do that, ensure that your job description aligns with your brand values so that relevant people apply as soon as you share the job posts.

Send LinkedIn InMails

If you have a free LinkedIn account, you can send a direct message only when you are connected with the potential candidate. But with InMails, you can send a direct message to them even if you are not connected. InMail is ideal for recruitment and lead generation. They work just like emails, and you can customize your message to reflect your purpose of writing to them. You can include a relevant subject line to grab their attention immediately and let them know what your message is about.

Referrals

You can encourage word-of-mouth referrals if you don’t have huge followers or an advertising budget to reach hundreds of people. Organizations with effective employee referral programs can reach over 50% of all hires from referrals. Employees hired through a referral tend to stay longer with the company. The best referral program is a financial reward. You can mention a note in your job post that if the reader knows someone who might be suitable for the given position, they will get a financial reward for referring the employee if they get hired through them.

Use saved search alerts

Knowing when someone leaves a role or changes their status to ‘Open’ can help you stay ahead of your competitors. This is what search alerts on LinkedIn help you track. Just set up, refine your search, and save it. You will receive alerts each time something changes. You can also set up a saved search for those who are ‘open to new roles’, which can eliminate a lot of messages associated with passive candidate recruitment.

How much does LinkedIn Recruiter cost?

LinkedIn Recruiter costs $8,999 for an annual subscription. If you want a monthly subscription, it costs $895 per month. You will get access to premium search filters, complete LinkedIn profiles of all LinkedIn members and 150 InMail messages per month. If LinkedIn recruiter costs too much for you, you can opt for Recruiter Lite which is comparatively more affordable at $1,680 per year or $170 per month.

Is LinkedIn Recruiter worth it?

It depends on the individual and the business needs. LinkedIn Recruiter might be good for you if you have multiple recruiters and the basic ATS system. You could even invest in a robust ATS system and recruitment technology to do the same job at the same price.

Suppose you just need a way to message candidates without having to connect with them or don’t want to be limited by stringent search limits on a free LinkedIn account. In that case, you can go for any LinkedIn premium subscriptions, such as Premium Business which offers 15 InMails or Sales Navigator providing 20 InMails. With both Sales Navigator and Premium Business coming cheaper than Recruiter Lite and Recruiter, they are good options if you only need messaging.

Key Takeaways

When operating a recruitment business, there are already many costs to consider. You need to check whether you can access more data, send adequate InMail messages, have easier access to passive candidates and if the price point is affordable by a company or not. Suppose you are starting a small recruiter business. In that case, you won’t need a Recruiter license and instead invest in Recruiter Lite, Premium Business or Sales Navigator if you only need some InMails for a few hard-to-fill roles. Find out what your business demands and invest in Recruiter plans accordingly. 

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