We have posted our fifth job advert on LinkedIn last week. I wanted to share my personal experience with the platform and its usability.
Last year, we decided to do the recruiting in-house instead of outsourcing to a recruitment company.
Why?
Well, we are a small company and the personal connection is very important for us. We also wanted to try if we can do it on our own, without professional help. I won’t share our interviewing process as Csaba will write about it later. My post is solely about LinkedIn and posting a job and using the tools to review applications.
Posting a Job Advert
It is easy and straight forward. You click on ‘post a free job’ on the jobs tab and there you go. You fill in the core details, such as ‘job title’, the company name, the country and the employment type. On the next page, you provide a job description and choose the required skills (up to ten).
On the second page, you need to provide an email address. By default, it is your LinkedIn email, and I made a mistake at the beginning that I didn’t change it. As a result, I was the only one receiving the notifications and when I was away, no one else was able to see them. You also need to provide the screening questions. I spent some time at first, but once you figured it out, it’s become straightforward.
‘Auto Rate’ and ‘Auto Reject’
At the bottom of the same page, there is the automation section. The system is capable of auto rating candidates who don’t meet the ‘must have’ qualifications. It can also send a rejection email to candidates who have been rated as ‘not fit’.
By default, both of them are turned on.
I don’t know how this automated part exactly works, but I had candidates who were auto-rated ‘not fit’ although they were perfect for the role and vice versa.
My recommendation is to turn it off.
I wouldn’t say I like this feature.
Is it Free?
Yes, it is.
This is beneficial, in my opinion. If you don’t get the right amount of organic applications, you can promote your job post, and LinkedIn will guarantee more candidates.
The minimum you can pay is £12 a day, and for that amount, it guarantees you x amount of applicants.
You can have one live free job advert. If you want to post a second one, it must be promoted.
Location- Not sure how this Works
Before you start to put your advert together, you need to set the location. No matter which country I choose when I post a job advert, I receive applications from everywhere.
So how does it work?
Honestly, I don’t know. As our core team works from Hungary, the last time I posted a job advert specifically set the location Hungary, later on, Budapest, Hungary.
We haven’t received a single application from Hungary.
When I used Royal Leamington Spa, United Kingdom, I received applications from all over the world.
If you happen to know, please share it with me. I want to know.
The UI
I remember the first time we were going through the candidates, it was a struggle with clicking, scrolling and highlighting the right part.
I wouldn’t say I liked it.
It looked messy, and I had no idea what I’m scrolling on a profile most of the time.
However, once you get used to the UI, it will be easy-to-use. You can find every piece of information on one page and different sections are scrollable, so all information about the candidate is available without any extra clicks.
Ratings
This is the part that I find confusing.
You have ‘not fit’, ‘maybe’ and ‘good fit’ options. The system automatically sets ratings for the candidates, and it gets mixed in with the manually set values. I go through all the applications manually once to set the ratings and the next day I have to do it again. It would be great if it had a folder for new candiates.
Imagine if you have hundreds of applications.
Agencies
In each of our adverts, we have clearly stated that we don’t want to work with agencies.
Despite that, we had many approaches from agencies, through LinkedIn or emails.
For one of the ads, we even had people applied from another online platform somewhere in Asia. I assume they were scraping LinkedIn and posted the jobs on their platform.
The worst I had was someone contacted me through LinkedIn, asked about the role and the requirements. We got engaged in a conversation and a few messages later, he dropped the bomb: “nono, I’m not applying to the job, but I have a candidate because I’m working for an agency. You don’t mind, right?”?
Yes, I did.
Closing Words
Having access to a platform connected to millions of users, letting you post job adverts for free is fantastic. LinkedIn is a great tool for finding candidates in a cost-effective way if you have the patience for navigating its UI and for handling the applications yourself.
If you have any comments, ideas or personal experiences, feel free to share with us. We are curious to hear new ideas, solutions, and perspectives regarding the above. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media!
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