I say this all the time. LinkedIn is a vital tool for building professional relationships. It’s even more important when you’re looking for a job. For recruiters, it remains the number one source for finding talent. I have close to 4000 first connections globally on LinkedIn. 
These are people who are directly connected to me because I’ve either accepted their invitation to connect or they’ve accepted an invitation I sent them. I don’t know all of these people, I wish I did, but each one has something about their experience that I find interesting. So why connect? A study by sociologist, Mark Granovetter discusses how it’s your “acquaintances who introduce you to new ideas and opportunities”, not your close friends in your inner circle (Merrill, 2014). Think about it. Your close friends most likely do similar things and know the same people as you. Connecting with others outside of my circle is a way of building my opportunity to learn from some fascinating people. And, we may be able to help each other out some day down the road.
A great tool to help build those connections is LinkedIn Recruiter, one of the paid levels of membership on LinkedIn. My employer pays for several “seats” for our recruitment team. This membership has some valuable tools to help make our job easier and more efficient. With this subscription, I have my own dashboard that displays tabs for my projects, jobs, reports and more. I can InMail anyone within LinkedIn’s network of 450+ million professionals and also build valuable pipelines of talent with particular skill sets. This greatly reduces my time to fill, eliminating the need to start a search from scratch. A great feature which I find incredibly helpful is the Profile Recommendation feature. LinkedIn uses algorithms based on your prior usage and provides you with recommendations such as People You May Want to Hire, Similar Profiles, Profile Matches for your posted jobs, People Also Viewed and Suggested Professionals. The more you use the product, the more LinkedIn “learns” about you and provides you with more tailored recommendations (Venkatraman, 2014).
The newest feature which I am excited to dig into is the Recruiter Mobile App. This takes your LinkedIn experience to a whole new level and allows you to be where your candidates are. Whether you’re working remotely or traveling, this app gives you the freedom to use all of LinkedIn’s capabilities on the go. View and search candidate’s profiles, make connections, manage job postings and even email right from your mobile device. Another great tool to add to the recruiter tool box to help find that damn squirrel!
Merrill, T. (2014, May). Retrieved July 3, 2016, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140506113910-43645946-why-you-should-connect-with-people-you-don-t-know-on-linkedin
Venkatraman, S. (2014, December 4). 5 Unique Features of LinkedIn Recruiter That Will Make Your Job Easier. Retrieved July 3, 2016, from https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2014/12/5-unique-features-of-linkedin-recruiter-that-will-make-your-job-easier?u=0#!
purplish squirrel 
Until recently I never really thought of LinkedIn as a social site. When I originally created the account, it was just a way for me to keep track of my resume. Then I found that I was getting recommendations for jobs I may want to look into and updates on connections my friends were making. Typically, when people think of social media applications they probably do not think about professional sites. I have learned that social sites can be used for a multitude of things, from professional tasks to forums about random hobbies. I appreciate you posting details about some of the cool features associated with this particular site. It definitely gives me a better understanding of the the various tasks the app can be used for.
LikeLike
I have to say you are the probably the first person I have into that uses LinkedIn regularly for your job and knows the ins and out of it! Until reading your post, I had no clue what LinkedIn Recruiter even was or that they had a separate web-based and now mobile application like that. It is interesting to read that LinkedIn uses algorithms to to eventually give your more tailored recommendations.
A lot of veteran work professionals recommend businesses and companies starting out on LinkedIn when entering the social world because of these reasons:
• It’s the worlds largest professional network with over 330 million members.
• It’s the place to go to learn about your customers, business partners, or even potential hires.
• It is a unbeatable efficient platform.
• The large impact if has on a corporate brand and the brand of the people working there (Arruda, 2015).
Since it sounds like you use LinkedIn for your profession daily, you probably already have a good grasp on how businesses and companies can benefit from it. With the introduction of the of the recruiter mobile app this gives recruiters like yourself even more reasons to make your job that much more convenient and even more efficient.
References
Arruda, William. 18 Reasons Why You Need Every Employee Using LinkedIn Every Day. Frobes.com. 2015. Retrieved July 19th,2016 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2015/04/19/18-reasons-why-you-need-every-employee-using-linkedin-every-day/#5df75ef7317c.
LikeLike