Why Linkedin should do more for Active Jobseekers

Ok, first things first. I must confess, I’m a big fan of Linkedin. It allows my colleagues and I to search a network of over 2.2m UK profiles, which we do on a daily basis, and inevitably turns up a top class candidate or three.

Much has been written on other blogs about how users can use Linkedin to promote themselves. The membership is largely made up of skilled professionals and executives, many of whom have found themselves out of a job and with the phone not ringing for the first time in their lives. They’ve read and applied all the online advice to enhance their profile and expand their network, so why are they are not being approached by recruiters?

Like many other recruiters I want to be able to identify these individuals. They have similar skills to their peers, but they are likely to be far more receptive to my approach. Don’t get me wrong! This is not LazyWebRecruitment, and we are willing to do the work needed to headhunt truly passive candidates, I just think Linkedin could make a simple update to ensure recruiters don’t miss out on searching this active jobseeker network.

Hire Me!

Now I’m open to suggestions as to how best to achieve this? I quite like the idea of adding a flag on their profile page, after the individual’s name, saying “Hire Me”. Then let all recruiters have the option to search for these active job seekers.

Now some of you might say you can already tick a box on your profile saying you are “open” to job offers. This is not the same and the numbers support it. Of the 2.2m profiles I can see in the UK, almost 1m is “open” to career opportunities. This is basically the proportion of people who are willing to consider other jobs.













In the US, Monster has setup a tour to “keep America working”. How have linkedin changed their site to help their members looking for a job?

I attended the Onrec Conference in June and asked Kevin Eyres the European MD of Linkedin this very question. His answer, was that you can search the active job seekers and that they have done a recent update in the past two weeks to add this enhancement. Well, I’m not sure if he was referring to the US site and if this feature is now live (if anyone knows please update me), but it is definitely not here in the UK site.

So with so much talent going to waste, surely linkedin will jump in and help, they don’t have to go to the trouble that Monster has, I recognise that they are not a recruitment service, but they stand in a unique position. So come on Kevin where is this update?