BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

LinkedIn Unveils New 'Referrals' Product, Revamps Recruiter Tool

This article is more than 8 years old.

A screenshot of the LinkedIn Referrals dashboard. (Courtesy LinkedIn)

A firm's entire staff is key to the recruitment process, but is usually not nearly involved enough.

LinkedIn has built a new product called "Referrals" aimed at solving this problem. On Wednesday, LinkedIn unveiled Referrals, an extension of the site aimed at making it easier for employees to recommend their first-degree LinkedIn connections for open positions at their firms. The product, which will be available on Nov. 1, will cost companies about $10 to $12 annually per employee using the service and should make recommending qualified, interested job candidates much less painstaking, a LinkedIn spokesperson said.

"I’m thrilled to introduce LinkedIn Referrals – our brand new referrals product that makes it dead simple for employees to make quality referrals, and helps you unlock your employees’ networks to hire the best talent faster," LinkedIn's head of talent solutions Eddie Vivas said in a blog post.

About 80% of recruiters think referrals are the best way to recruit quality candidates, according to a LinkedIn study. Employees who have been referred are generally higher performs, stay at the firm longer, take less time to hire and are a better cultural fit. But the referral process is often cumbersome. Making a referral requires employees to know about job openings at their company. What's more, internal referral software is often slow to use, and if employees make a referral, they tend not to receive updates about the candidate they referred, Vivas said. As a result, fewer employees make referrals than companies would like. Less than 20% of recruiters are satisfied with the level of employee involvement in their referral process, LinkedIn's study found.

Each firm using the product will have its own "LinkedIn Referrals" site. The tool automatically tells employees which of their first-degree connections are matches for a job and sends a summary of matches to employees via email every two weeks to spur engagement. Employees can send matches links to the job openings via email or LinkedIn's InMail messaging system and can post about job openings on their social networks.

Thanks to LinkedIn's acquisition of  the recruitment site Careerify in 2014, Referrals integrates with firms' individual applicant tracking software, making it easier for firms to track referrals, measure employee engagement and communicate with employees about the process, for example, thank employees for making a referral. The product also updates employees about the status of their referrals, for example, noting whether the referral applied for the job, completed an interviewed, was extended an offer or was hired.

LinkedIn also previewed a revamped version of its "Recruiter" product, which is aimed at making it faster and simpler for recruiters to find interested, qualified candidates. The update will roll out before the end of the first quarter in 2016 and is a free upgrade for Recruiter users. The new products are part of LinkedIn's talent-solutions business, which mainly caters to corporate recruiters. Talent solutions represents LinkedIn's largest source of revenue. In the three months ending June 30, revenue in that unit was $443 million, up 38% from the same period a year earlier. In July, LinkedIn said full-year revenue will be about $2.94 billion.

Instead of typing in a string of search terms, recruiters can use the updated Recruiter to find candidates by using the names of high performing employees as search queries.

"All you need to do is enter your rockstar employee’s name into the search field, select their profile and LinkedIn Recruiter will automatically provide you with a list of similar members," Vivas said. "It will even show you the terms it used to build your search string, and lets you instantly add or remove terms. That helps you identify members who are a match for your open job even if you don’t know which terms to include in your search string."

The updated tool also allows recruiters to search using one or two terms, such as the job title "product manager." Recruiter will produce a list of product managers' main skills, the top schools product managers attended and which companies have the most product managers. The updated Recruiter also has features to help recruiters hone in on which professionals are most interested in a job. For example, the new "Spotlight" feature shows recruiters which users in their search results have a first-degree LinkedIn connection with an employee at their firm, has applied for a job at their firm in the past or has interacted with the firm's brand on LinkedIn, for example, "liked," commented on or shared one of the company's page updates.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that LinkedIn's acquisition of Bright.com enabled Referrals to integrate with firms' individual applicant tracking software. In fact, LinkedIn's acquisition of Careerify enabled this feature.

 

Follow me on TwitterSend me a secure tip