Using LinkedIn for Pharma Recruitment
LinkedIn has come a long way, and it seems to be growing still. It seems to be gaining ground as a good way of finding quality candidates.
If you are going to use LinkedIn you will need an account. Mine is http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepwood
Linked in - Useful for Pharma Recruitment
With its many groups, using it for Pharma recruitment would seem obvious but there are a few pitfalls. There are 2 ways to advertise jobs on LinkedIn.
- Within the free job “classifieds” in each group
- As a “paid” LinkedIn job advert – I’ve not tried this yet… watch this space.
Pro’s
- There are some great groups, particularly in marketing and sales (I guess they are more likely to be using linkedIn!) and most allow you to post free job adverts. Technically each job advert is then available to each group, and if you are targeting the right people, responses can be quite good.
Cons
- Very USA based at the moment – so responses come mostly from the States
- its a manual process to post jobs, so you may have to put up with doing it every day
- There are Lots of groups, so it could take up ALL your time. (I’m a member of 20 groups)
- It could be a victim of its own success and I know of one group that has turned off the Free advertising element.
How to Advertise on LinkedIn
Here are the key steps you need to take to advertise your Pharma roles on LinkedIn.
- Set up and Account
Setting up an account is free and only takes a few minutes. You will need a photo of yourself and various details to set the account up. You get a chance to add profile information and make “connections” to colleagues, and I’d suggest you do this, but for the moment lets concentrate on the jobs…
- Search For and Join Groups
LinkedIn as all about connecting to people, so they allow users to set up “Groups”. Anyone can set up a group, and the aim is to gather with like minded people who share interests. As LinkedIn is a “professional” social networking site (as opposed to myspace or facebook), groups tend to be set up around business areas, so you will need to search for groups that are relevant. I’d suggest initially that you keep it simple and only join one or 2 groups. oh and by the way, you have to ask to join and be approved – having said that I’ve not been rejected so far – so you should be ok
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I searched for Clinical Research and it returned hundreds. Searching for Clinical Research UK returned 9, of which over half were recruitment companies, so that narrowed it down to 2 or 3. Having said that, there is no reason why you don’t join a competitor’s group (if they let you) and advertise your jobs. Once you’ve determined which groups ar eof interest, you can apply to join. You normally get an email confirmation within a day. You cant see the group’s content before you are accepted.
- Create your “Summary” Copy and Links
Once you have been accepted into a group, you will be able to view the group discussions and jobs. Adding a job is very simple, but it is a manual process and before that you need to have the Job title and copy (and a link) available. For the job title, I suggest that you include the country that it relates to as LinkedIn is very USA based and it helps to make it clear to candidates what you are looking for geographically.
You will also need a few words for the summary copy, but keep it simple as you want the candidates to click through to your site. In your summary you therefore need a link. I suggest that you link through to the actual advert and dont expect users to search again once they arrive on your site. If your link is pretty short and straightforward you can use that (eg: www.mysite.com/myjob.aspx?id=12343), otherwise it will be worth considering a URL shortener. These are a great way to simplyfy the link by making it shorter. Check out http://bit.ly - you can cut and paste your link in there and get a shorter version of it immediately. (if you do this a lot, it’s worth having a bit.ly account as you can track the click throughs too).
- Place your adverts
Click on the “Jobs” Tab and “Post a Job” link on the right hand side. Simply drop your copy in and press “Post Job”. Once posted LinkedIn will notify group members of the role it will be live for a few days. How long it remains “active” depends on the turn over of jobs on that group. Some group’s have a surprisingly low turnover of jobs.
Post a job on LinkedIn
- Follow up
Once your advert is placed, you should expect to see some activity pretty much straight away. Its a good idea to log in to your linkedIn account daily as you will see any comments or emails that prospective candidates post to you about this job. You can also see by looking at the Job Listing, how many other jobs have been placed above yours. Assuming you have some form of analytics installed on your website, you should be able to see the user’s clicking through to your site. If you run multiple adverts in different groups it may also be worth considering campaign codes on your links – I’ll cover this in a different post.
