Utilizing LinkedIn To Find Potential Clients

Every year LinkedIn is proving to be a top contender when looking to recruit potential candidates.   In my former company, Consultants 2 Go, not only were we using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool, we found it to be strategically helpful when searching for prospective new clients.  In my current company, Sandi Webster LLC, I use LinkedIn to connect to new and existing colleagues for everything from speaking engagements to partnering on projects. It can be beneficial to business owners when they want to form an advisory board.

As LinkedIn continues to evolve as the most popular premier social networking site for professionals, so does its potential to play a major role in your employee recruiting strategy as millions of candidates profile themselves each year.

 

Here are a few tips on how you too can utilize LinkedIn to find employees:

• Create a Company Page. One of your first tasks should be setting up a free company page.  Having a company page enables businesses to provide details on their company and products and to list jobs with an add-on Careers Page.  Not only is this is a great way to establish your business’ presence on LinkedIn, but also to attract talent.

 

• Begin with the Basics. Depending on the expanse of your LinkedIn network and your profile’s account level, you can search for employees in several different ways, including searching by the employer (current/past), using InMail, purchasing advertising, and networking.

 

• Link to LinkedIn Groups. To further your outreach, search for relevant LinkedIn groups within your product or service industry to join.  By regularly interacting with like-minded professionals in group discussions and Q&As, you can establish a LinkedIn presence for yourself and your company.  That may be enough for inquisitive recruits to check out your company page.

 

• Find and Connect with Hard-to-Find Professionals. An example of connecting was when a long-time client presented an assignment that required a consultant to have extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of an increasingly popular CRM that was still relatively unknown to many.  LinkedIn was effective in helping our Recruiter to narrow down viable candidates for the client.  As a result, LinkedIn won us over as the go-to recruiting tool for hard-to-find talent.

 

• Talk to the Middle Man. Use the hits you get in your extended network to identify the people in your immediate network that know the most promising prospects and reach out to them.  Ask them about the names on your list and whether they know anyone else who might be a good fit.  At the very least, if reaching out to the middle man lands you an introduction, you can tell prospects that a mutual association recommended them.

 

Technology will always continue to impact the way small businesses adapt, grow and succeed. Don’t look at LinkedIn as a radical new way to go about recruiting; instead, look at it as a way to do what you’re already doing better.

 

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This blog was updated on 8/21/21 by Sandi Webster.