LinkedIn has more than 500 million members worldwide, so there’s a good chance you have a profile on the site, as well as most — or likely even all — of your employees. Since the world’s largest professional network has so many members, it has become a popular hiring platform.
As one of the leading direct hire agenices in Chicago for heavy industrial, engineering and highly skilled manufacturing placement, Premium Staffing, Inc. is very familiar with using the site to hire. Find out the positives and negatives of taking this approach to find your next engineer.
Pro: The Sheer Volume of Talented Professionals on the Site
LinkedIn makes it possible to connect with top engineering talent around the globe, which is pretty amazing. Robust search features allow you to specify the type of candidate you need, and quickly and easily receive results containing candidates who match your criteria. Since users are a mix of active and passive job seekers, the site grants you the type of access you won’t get from a job board.
Con: Scouring LinkedIn Can Be Very Time-Consuming
The amount of engineering professionals alone on LinkedIn make the site simultaneously amazing and frustrating. If you’re trying to manage the hiring process alongside your existing job responsibilities, sorting through seemingly endless candidates who might be perfect for the position can be exhausting. It’s easy to experience information overload when faced with so much data.
Pro: Ability to Find Shared Connections
One of LinkedIn’s best features is automatically showing your degree of separation from other professionals on the site. This can be very helpful when sourcing candidates, because you instantly find out that someone knows one of your employees or a former colleague. Having this information is incredibly helpful, because you can talk to your shared connection to learn more about the person.
Con: Difficult to Assess Cultural Fit
LinkedIn is excellent at identifying candidates who are great on paper. You’ll find an abundance of engineers with the skills and experience to do the job, but gauging cultural fit is much more difficult. Realistically speaking, there’s no way to filter out candidates who don’t have the right personality for your team, so you’ll have to interview a whole lot of people to find your fit.
LinkedIn can be a great place to find high-level engineering and manufacturing talent, but you can’t beat the expertise and service offered by Premium Staffing, Inc. As engineers ourselves, we know exactly what it takes to make a successful hire. Contact us today to discuss a partnership!