Why do the most senior candidates shun LinkedIn?

Jo Faragher

It was hailed as the ‘killer app’ that was going to spark the death of traditional recruitment, not to mention the rapid decline of jobs boards.

But LinkedIn, while respected as a communications channel and means of networking among most professionals, simply cannot beat the human touch.

According to a study by Norrie Johnston Recruitment, 31% of those surveyed have advertised posts on the channel, but only 4% say LinkedIn advertising is ideal for executive roles.

One of the issues, the research found, was that too few senior candidates are using the business networking site, despite the fact it now has more than 300 million members internationally. Hardly rocket science, really – if you’re in charge of the P&L for a highly profitable division of a successful business it’s unlikely you spend much time polishing off your virtual profile. Most of the best candidates, it could be argued, simply have better things to do.

Naturally, it would not be sensible for resourcers drawing up lists of potential candidates to ignore LinkedIn altogether. After all, good resourcers will know how to search the LinkedIn database in just the right way to match people with the right skills and experience. But just as it so often was with job boards, this is little more than a keyword matching exercise.

As Norrie Johnston Recruitment points out, this means there is still very much room for recruitment agencies in the process. In-house recruiters don’t always have time to perform the deep online searches for candidates that agencies can, and consultants can also spend time proactively building up networks of candidates for future roles. Add to this some investigative market research and face-to-face contact building with clients and former candidates, and the mix becomes a lot more powerful.

Not surprising then, that 55% of respondents to this survey said they deploy a mix of both recruitment agencies and internal teams, and just under half (48%) believe that relying on LinkedIn can be a false economy.

Furthermore, for specialist recruiters in areas where skills are in short supply, the lack of available candidates on LinkedIn can only enhance their role, and their reputation. And from the candidates’ perspective, at the most senior level, making the decision to move jobs is a lot more complex than uploading a profile. They want to feel they are receiving valuable advice, that the recruiter has a truly consultative relationship with the business they’re thinking about joining.

So yes, there may be more than 300 million candidates registered with LinkedIn, but in this case at least, size doesn’t matter.