Recruiting with LinkedIn? 12 Non-sleazy Tips to Reach More Candidates

As the person who wears the hiring hat at your company, you already know how powerful recruiting with LinkedIn can be. 

Whether you’re using the basic business features or tapping into LinkedIn Jobs' customizable hiring tools, there are endless ways to attract and recruit talent with LinkedIn.

But how can you get even more out of everyone’s favorite work-play-recruit platform? What are the best ways to optimize your LinkedIn job postings and outreach to bring in even more qualified candidates?

Using key insights from our recent Making The Most of LinkedIn Jobs Report, we’re diving into the latest and greatest tips for attracting and engaging more candidates on LinkedIn. Let’s get started!

12 tips for better LinkedIn recruiting

1. Highlight your employee benefits
2. Keep job titles between 0-40 characters
3. Be clear about job requirements and responsibilities
4. Leave your job postings up for 10 to 29 days
5. Review job postings for hiring bias
6. Avoid gendered language
7. De-bug your application process
8. Filter by skill for hard-to-fill roles
9. Make use of employees’ connections
10. Personalize your candidate outreach
11. Make your positions remote-friendly
12. Keep it classy

The latest on LinkedIn recruiting

With over 850 million members dotted across 200 countries, LinkedIn is the must-have recruiting tool for growing employers. Combining the hands-on interaction of social media with the ease of a top-notch recruitment tool, it’s become the go-to choice for businesses of every shape and size.

In fact, LinkedIn is the most-used channel for recruitment efforts, with nearly 77% of recruiters using the platform for their talent searches. LinkedIn not only allows you to post job listings, fine-tune your networking skills, and revamp your recruitment marketing, it also gives you a direct line to top talent.

If you want to attract qualified candidates, now is the time to start using the Internet’s largest professional network the right way.

12 tried-and-true tips to recruit qualified candidates on LinkedIn

With over 11.2 million open positions, every business could stand to revamp its recruitment strategy and LinkedIn is one of the best places to start — but only if you use it right.

Get the most out of your LinkedIn recruiting by using these always-effective, never-sleazy tips categorized by: publishing your job descriptions, inclusive recruiting, and candidate outreach.

Tips for posting your job descriptions on LinkedIn

1. Flaunt those benefits

In a competitive talent market where everyone’s on at least a little bit of job search, you can’t bury the lede. If you want candidates to keep scrolling, you have to highlight the benefits that matter. 

Whether your candidates are active job seekers or passive perusers, spotlighting the perks that make your position desirable in their eyes, keeps your company top of mind. 

In our recent review of the most in-demand employee benefits, we found that these three were leading the pack:

• Transparent compensation
• Flex/remote work
• Opportunities for growth

If you’re not exactly sure what each of these entails, take a look at the 4 Reasons Employers Should Never Hide Salary in Job Descriptions or dive deeper into the latest perks and benefits today’s employees crave in our guide to Employee Benefits that Win More Candidates.

2. Keep it snappy with your job titles

If you want to reach and engage more candidates, keep your job title lengths clear and concise. 

“Marketing Assistant” sums it up nicely, but “Associate to the Executive Manager of Marketeering and Conservation Efforts” is a bit of a mouthful. 

According to data from the Making the Most of LinkedIn Jobs report, which reviewed data from Breezy users during the period from November 2021 to June 2022, the sweet spot to get matched to more LinkedIn members is 0-40 characters in your job titles. 

Hitting this target leads to more impressions, views, and applicants, keeping them interested and engaged instead of just plain… confused. 🤷🏽

For a little extra help, use LinkedIn’s standardized title options to improve candidate matching results and ensure your jobs are served up to relevant applicants.

3. Be clear about job requirements and responsibilities

When writing an ultra-clickable LinkedIn job description, you can’t leave applicants hanging. Make sure to give them the inside scoop on what the position requires right off the bat. 

For starters, be sure to always include a defined region and function in your description. Jobs posted with this key info usually get matched to more LinkedIn members, leading to an increase in qualified views and impressions.

Here again, you want to make sure to keep your job description short and sweet by focusing clearly on what’s expected of the role, including:

• Job requirements
• Responsibilities
• Location

By being transparent from the beginning, you can help mitigate future performance management issues and interview candidates who are 100% confident they can do the job.

4. Don’t leave job posts up too long (or take them down too soon)

Believe it or not, the amount of time you leave your LinkedIn job post up plays a role in the number of qualified applicants who see and engage with it. 

According to our report, jobs posted for 10-29 days get 1.4x more “apply now” clicks per job each month compared to those posted for less than 10 or more than 30 days. 

That’s right. You can get nearly one and a half times more applicants by simply sticking to that 10-29 day window.

Long story short? Don’t leave your job post up for longer than a month, but don’t take it down after just one week either.

Tips for inclusive recruiting on LinkedIn

5. Watch out for latent biases

Though often unintentional, hiring biases have a way of creeping into job descriptions, putting employers at risk of losing out on qualified talent. 

To keep your job descriptions inclusive, review your requirements carefully to ensure you are not discouraging applicants based on race, gender, or economic background.

One way to do this is to have another pair of eyes (or two, or three) review your job description before posting. Team members with different life experiences may catch something you might have missed.

When writing your job descriptions for LinkedIn, you’ll also want to pay special attention to your “nice-to-have” requirements and decide whether they’re truly essential or not. From there, recenter your “must-haves” to cut down on any latent biases that might be worming their way in.

6. Steer clear of gendered language

When it comes to writing up your job postings for LinkedIn, you also need to think about the language you’re using and the hidden connotations certain words may carry.

For example, job descriptions that use traditionally masculine-coded language like “assertive” or “strong” or slang like “crush it” or “hustle mindset”, have been shown to deter female candidates from applying. Titles like "superhero," “ninja,” or “rockstar” also fall under this umbrella. 

Without meaning to, gendered language in your job postings can deter certain candidates from applying, even if they’re highly qualified. 

Aim for balanced language grounded in the realities of the role. And when in doubt, stick to second-person pronouns like “you”, so that any candidate can envision themselves in the role.

By the way, did you know that over 20% of companies are taking no steps to attract diverse talent? We surveyed over 1,100 hiring managers. Across the board, they named sourcing and attracting talent from diverse communities as the two core challenges holding them back. 

For totally free access to all our key diversity hiring findings — including what does and doesn’t work in attracting talent from underrepresented backgrounds — download The State of Diversity Hiring Report.

7. De-bug your application process

No applicant — no matter how driven — wants to waste their time slogging through a buggy application process. 🪲

If you’re having trouble hitting your ideal number of applicants when recruiting with LinkedIn, it could be down to a clunky application process. In this case, try enabling the LinkedIn Apply feature. 

This on-site tool allows candidates to submit their applications directly from LinkedIn.com, making those hard-to-fill jobs much easier to apply for.

Tips for reaching out to passive candidates on LinkedIn

8. Filter by skill for hard-to-fill roles

Alright, so far we’ve covered all the top tips for using LinkedIn to build a pipeline of diverse applicants for your open positions. But what about when you need to take a more proactive approach to filling a particularly challenging role?

When you’re on the hunt for passive candidates with that ‘x’ factor, try filtering by skill. 

When using LinkedIn’s search function, you can target users with the skills and experience you’re looking for by using the “Skills & Expertise” feature.

Located on the Advanced People Search page, you can narrow down that mountain of results when you filter by years of experience, industry, and more.

9. Make use of your employees’ connections

LinkedIn is as much a social network as it is a recruiting tool and with the right approach, you can use that social component to your advantage. 

When you’re looking to recruit passive candidates for your open roles on LinkedIn, start by leveraging your employees’ existing networks.

To begin, you could take a peek at your employees’ LinkedIn profiles to view any connections you and they might have in common. From there, you can come up with a quick passive candidate shortlist, asking your employees about these potential candidates to get a better sense of their skills and availability. 

By the way, if this sounds like the start of a top-notch employee referral program, that’s because it probably is. 😉

10. Avoid generic, chain mail-y messages

Remember those email chain messages everyone was obsessed with in middle school? The ones that tried to spook you into forwarding it to 12 of your closest pals so a mystery monster wouldn’t nab you in your sleep?

Yeah… For your candidates, that’s kinda what it feels like when they receive generic InMail messages from LinkedIn recruiters. 

And because over 70% of LinkedIn users are passive candidates not actively looking for a new gig, you need to put your best foot forward when it comes to sliding into their DMs — y’know, professionally.

Instead of leading in with the default connection request, put some time into your messaging so candidates actually want to engage with you.

One great way to personalize your messages is to review a candidate’s profile and make specific references to work they’ve done in the past. If you’re looking for an experienced content writer for example, lead with a thoughtful remark on an eye-catching article they wrote. 

This shows that you’re paying close attention to their work while also making your intentions clear.

11. Make your positions remote-friendly

A 2022 report by Owl Labs found that while employees who work remotely at least once a month are 24% more likely to be happy and productive, only 16% of companies exclusively hire remote workers. 

That’s a large gap that can easily be filled by a clearly defined remote or hybrid workplace policy.

According to our own Making the Most of LinkedIn Jobs report, remote and hybrid positions had better view-apply rate than onsite jobs. To keep up with candidate demand, offer flexible or remote work accommodations where you can, and include that information in your job ads. 

And when you do, be sure to shout it from the rooftops in your job description. This will help you attract even more applicants on LinkedIn, especially for high-demand locations and roles. 🙌🏻

12. Keep it classy

Whether it’s reaching out to passive candidates on LinkedIn, posting your open job descriptions, or asking your existing employees to refer their top LinkedIn connections — your success with LinkedIn recruiting all comes down to tactful execution.

Keep it approachable, friendly, and above all — professional.

When reviewing the data, we found that when scrolling past an extremely casual job description, candidates were 4x more likely to dislike the employer and 2x to 4x less likely to apply. 

Because while there is a strong social component to Linkedin, hiring managers and recruiters should take care not to overdo it. Recruit with integrity and a clear intention to serve both your company and the candidate in the best way possible. 

From there, success is sure to follow.

Get more out of your LinkedIn Recruiting

Whether it’s optimizing your LinkedIn job descriptions, building a future pipeline of diverse talent, or breaking down the data on all the latest candidate preferences, Breezy is here to help.

With Breezy’s modern recruitment platform, you can instantly publish your open roles to top job boards like LinkedIn, identify your best candidates faster, and deliver a first-rate hiring experience candidates love.

Try it yourself totally free for 14 days.