3 ways LinkedIn sucks for job seekers AND recruiters

In general, I am a fan of LinkedIn, but in three big ways, it SUCKS for recruiters and job seekers alike. Here are the big three reasons:

1) Companies can no longer see who follows their own LinkedIn company page. This is so dumb! Job candidates follow companies to tell them that they want to work for their organization and internal recruiters used their company page’s follow list to find interested job candidates. 

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Quick question LinkedIn: Why have people follow our company page, if we can't see who is following us?!

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2) Recruiters who pay for LinkedIn Recruiter Lite see less candidate skills information than those who have a free account. Recruiter Lite premium account holders can only see a skills list for each candidate, not who endorsed them for each skill. They also can’t see whether endorsers worked for the same company as the candidate or whether they were highly skilled in the same area.

You only see a skills listing when you view candidates' profiles using LinkedIn Recruiter Lite ...

... but you can see the number of endorsements for each skill and who endorsed a candidate for each skill using a free account.

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Recruiter Lite search
wouldn't bring up an
exact match candidate ...

    3) Paying recruiters often can’t find qualified candidates even when they put the exact job titles or keywords from someone’s profile into the Recruiter Lite system. For example, I tried to find my company’s own vice president who has this title on her profile: Vice President (Account Executive | Sales | Marketing | Resume Writer | Career Coach). Even though I searched locally using those titles and keywords, candidates with fewer qualifications showed up in search results, but she didn’t. 

    The only way I could get her to show up in Recruiter Lite search was to include one of her former company names. I could also find her by logging out of Recruiter Lite and looking for her by job title or skill in free search. 

... until I added a known past company into the Companies filter box, or until I ...

... logged out of Recruiter Lite premium and searched for her for free.

What can job seekers do when LinkedIn sucks?

• Since companies no longer see that you are following them, let them know that you are interested in other ways. Join LinkedIn groups associated with the company; invite key company employees to connect; and like, comment and share when company personnel post articles or job postings on its company page or your LinkedIn home page.
• Because recruiters with Recruiter Lite can’t see your skills endorsements or learn who endorsed you for your skills, use your LinkedIn profile summary section to play up this information. For example, write “100+ skills endorsements for project management, 75+ endorsements for training, etc.” or “500+ total skills endorsements for communications excellence, including endorsements from CEOs and VPs of Fortune 500 companies.”  
• Since recruiters using Recruiter Lite can’t always find you based on your job titles and keywords, make sure to repeat your titles and keywords in your profile’s summary section and play up relevant job titles and core duties in each of your work experience sections.

What can recruiters do when LinkedIn sucks?

• Since you can no longer see who follows your company page, post frequent articles and job postings on your company page, home page and on the LinkedIn blog (aka LinkedIn Pulse), which you can access by clicking “Write an article” on your home page. Encourage readers to like, comment and share your posts so that you can discover them. Also establish topical LinkedIn groups so you can view the members list and connect the groups to your company page.
• Because you can’t see full information about candidates’ skills on Recruiter Lite, log out of your premium account or use a different browser to see how many endorsements candidates have for each skill, who endorsed them, and whether the people who endorsed them worked with them at the same companies or are highly skilled in the same abilities as the candidate.
• Since Recruiter Lite’s search abilities may not show qualified candidates even if you use optimum job titles and keywords, try adding past company names into the company filter section. For whatever reason, that tends to produce better results.

What can LinkedIn do when it sucks? Improve!

• Let companies see who is following their organization, but keep their competitors or candidates’ current companies from accessing that same information. That way, you ensure followers’ privacy while connecting companies and interested candidates to each other.
• Provide paying Recruiter Lite recruiters with candidates’ full skills endorsement information.
• Improve your flawed Recruiter Lite search capabilities (and while you are at it, improve your free search functionality ... it's TERRIBLE now, but used to be so much better). Paying recruiters should get better search results than those who use free search, but both search functions should at least produce accurate results.

What do you think? How can LinkedIn improve so that recruiters and job seekers can better benefit from the site? Share your thoughts! Thanks, Kathy

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