6 Ways to Promote Jobs on LinkedIn

Most companies are not leveraging the LinkedIn platform to it's full potential to market their jobs.

Job Posts are still the core way to advertise jobs. However, I recommend six job marketing approaches, getting progressively more creative as we work down the list (I have saved the best 'til last!).

Seventy percent of the fully-employed global workforce consider themselves passive candidates, or not actively looking for their next jobs. But as many as 85 percent are still open to talking with a recruiter, if approached in the right way. To get the attention and desire of passive candidates with your job advertising, you may well need to employ some of the more creative approaches below.

1. Job Posts

LinkedIn Jobs are uniquely positioned to connect passive candidates with recruiters. Instead of sitting on a traditional job board — waiting to be found by active job seekers — jobs are automatically targeted to the most relevant candidates using LinkedIn’s matching algorithms and profile data, regardless of whether or not they’re actively looking for new opportunities.

Click on this link for further tips on Creating LinkedIn Job Posts for Passive Candidates.

2. Sponsored Jobs

Need more eyeballs on your Priority 1 roles (greatest importance; hardest to fill)? Sponsoring a job will give it added visibility with the right audience through top placement across LinkedIn's desktop and mobile experiences. Sponsored Jobs receive 30-50% more applications than organic jobs, helping you to fill your important roles faster. For this reason, I prefer to call them "Application Accelerators".

You bid for top placement in LinkedIn's personalised job placements. This premium placement gets your high-priority jobs noticed by the right candidates.

Adapt your spend in real-time. Decide when and how often your jobs need extra visibility. You have complete flexibility to dial up or down your spend to increase or decrease job views in real-time.

A pay per click auction model determines how often your sponsored jobs are shown, so you pay only for success. 

3. Group Posts

Where there is a relevant (and active) LinkedIn Group, you should promote your jobs to Group members. Searching for an Android Developer? Why not promote the job to the Android Developers Group?

There are two ways to promote jobs to Group Members:

• Share a job

• Start a jobs discussion

Note that you will first need to join a Group. Furthermore, some Groups are locked down by their administrators to prevent jobs sharing.

4. Company Posts

Companies can further promote key jobs via short updates to their interested and engaged Followers.

Word of warning: while effective, this should be done very selectively. Your company's first objective with Content Marketing on LinkedIn is to develop strong relationships by solving members problems and providing content that is valuable to their professional lives and career development. However, if you are providing lots of valuable content, it is okay to promote the occasional key job.

When promoting jobs via Company Updates, be creative (for further ideas see How to Promote Jobs through Company Updates).

a. Just linking to a job post will not render great results:

b Use strong imagery and imagination to make the job stand out:

c. Reach further by Sponsoring the Company Update:

Sponsoring a LinkedIn Company Update allows you to get the message in front of relevant people who are not currently following your company.

Your company can further broadcast key jobs by sharing the LinkedIn Job Posts through other Social Networks. Again, get creative with your job shares - a straight share may have little impact.

5. Employee Push

On average, employee networks on LinkedIn are 10 times larger than a Company's Follower numbers. Furthermore, as we all tend to network heavily within our own fields, it is likely that your employee's networks could contain a rich collection of relevant talent.

Encourage your employees to share important jobs by making it simple - provide all the details and clear instructions. 

6. Sponsored Posts

I have saved the best to last.

Use the power of stories and deliver them straight into the news-feed of your targeted Talent Pools.

This is the way it works:

This works best if someone with 'authority' creates the long-form post, such as the relevant head of department or even your CEO. They can lay out the vision for the role in their own language. The long-form post should include a link to the job post for further details. For highest impact, embed a video in the long-form post - this could be as simple as the business leader talking about the role. The video can also be embedded in the Sponsored Update that goes out. 

Of course we should not forget the importance of your Talent Brand to attract more attention to your job posts. On LinkedIn, companies with a strong Talent Brand get 2.5 times more applicants than companies with weak a Talent Brand.

With a strong Talent Brand and armed with these creative approaches to promoting your jobs on LinkedIn, you will see a lot of buzz and get a lot of candidate attention for your key roles.

 I'm a "Talent Brand Consultant" with LinkedIn, based in Sydney, Australia. I post articles about LinkedIn Strategies, Content Marketing and Social Media. Follow me by clicking on the 'Follow' button at the top of this post if you would like to receive my articles right in your news feed as they are published.