In many ways, it is getting harder and harder to find the perfect fit for your business if you are hiring for an engineer. It seems that nowadays there are far more jobs in the engineering employment market than there are qualified candidates.
However, there are many features of social technology that your company can be using right now to draw in the right engineering candidates. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites are all helping people promote their assets and network with other professionals. In particular, LinkedIn is the top dog when it comes to the professional social media site people are using the most.
Use LinkedIn to Recruit Engineers
With close to 200 million users on LinkedIn as of 2013, the site is making it possible to reach those hard to find candidates with just a few clicks of the mouse. The ability to look for jobs and actually land them has made LinkedIn such a valuable resource to the engineering job market.
LinkedIn offers the capabilities to grow your network, both for the individual and company, which results in excellent advantages when looking for new job candidates or industry information. LinkedIn also has polls, surveys, and discussions that engage members and networks to help them build stronger bonds. Industry news is shared, company updates are given, and the latest job openings are passed around networks like fire within just minutes of posting.
Every week, professionals average 1 to 3 hours on the LinkedIn social media site. With this window of time, it is crucial that you are posting a continuous feed of insights, news, polls, data, information, and job listings on your LinkedIn profile so as to ensure you are seen when they are on the site. There are tools that work with LinkedIn and other social media sites that can post your status updates automatically for you, so you aren’t tied to your computer around the clock.
Job seekers peruse LinkedIn looking for any and every resource they can find that will give them that perfect opportunity they are looking for. With this being said, LinkedIn Groups are essential to the job seeker, and engineering professionals that are looking for jobs are signed up with them so you need to be involved in them as well.
The benefits of using social technology for recruiting engineers are really unlimited, but some of them include being able to invite applicants directly to your group, reaching all group members weekly via the Send Announcement tool. You can even invite your suppliers to the group to share information. Your group can be used to get referrals, applications, and comments, enabling your business or career to do many things, including website promotion.
It is critical to understand more about the engineering professional on LinkedIn in order to get them in your job applicant’s pool. When job seekers on LinkedIn see an engineering role they are interested in, they generally do 1-3 things.
- Follow the company on LinkedIn.
- Try to connect with the hiring manager via a request.
- Join the LinkedIn group for that company’s career opportunities
If your company is not using LinkedIn to attract engineering candidates, then it should be. The social media site is heavily populated with qualified engineers, and should be utilized for your job hiring needs.
If you are looking for more resources to attract top engineering talent, contact the staffing experts at Venteon today!