Getting Supply and Demand Talent Pool Insights from LinkedIn

Issue #7 - published on March 21, 2023

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Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. I share expert, practical advice on recruiting and talent acquisition biweekly. If you're new to our community and would like to revolutionize your recruiting, click the "subscribe" button above.

A recent main article of this newsletter was "Leveraging Talent Pool Insights for Intake Meeting Success" and I spoke about how to get talent pool insights from LinkedIn data, but I have been playing with something else on LinkedIn that I thought I would share as well.

This came up due to my last company using CareerBuilder's supply and demand reports. They would tell you how many resumes have a specific skill set/job title and the number of jobs with that skill set/job title posted on Careebuilder. I have since seen similar offerings by other services. These are all services that you have to pay for, but I was thinking of a way to get something useful to share with hiring managers for free (for those of us on a more shoestring budget).

LinkedIn will tell you the number of profiles that match a search and you can also look at how many job results come up on a search on LinkedIn. This is the basic theory, but it needs some tweaking. As examples to show you what to do, I am going to dive into supply and demand insights I can gain for accountants, FP&A, and java professionals in the Greater Tampa area.

For each, you need the number of profiles and the number of jobs found. For Java, this was fairly easy. I just searched for profiles with "java developer" in Greater Tampa. This says about 1,000 profile results and that seems reasonable. For FP&A, I added both the abbreviation and spelled-out version ("FP&A" OR "financial planning & analysis") and that gave a reasonable result of about 1,700 profile results. Accounting was harder because just searching "accountant" in Greater Tampa got 14,000 profile results. This seemed really high, so I added the additional title keyword of "accountant" and the results dropped to 5,700.

Next, I needed to search for the number of jobs, which is a little more tricky. I still used the same basic search terms and location as before, but I further refined it by selecting job titles that match what I wanted to show the demand for. I also selected that I wanted to see the jobs posted in the past month.

I am using this example for a standard developer in Java, so I selected the titles that said java in a developer-type title. I left out CTOs, managers, general software engineers, etc. I did this because the level is important, but I also did not want software engineer profiles who may have studied Java (in school for example) but don't work in Java. If I didn't restrict this, the results would have been 417 instead of 369. It didn't matter too much for java but it does matter for other skills as you will see.

For FP&A, I selected FP&A titles and left out CFOs, accountants, etc. This got me 103 job results, but without refining the search (just "FP&A" OR "financial planning & analysis" OR "financial planning and analysis" in Greater Tampa) the search results were 430. The first result was "Staff Accountant - Tax" which skews the FP&A results I was looking for, which is why I refined the search.

For accountants, I selected non-managerial or related titles for what I am going to be searching for to fill a standard accounting role. There were 816 job search results. Without this refining, there were more than double the results at 1,996 results. I removed tax accountants and cost accountants from the mix because if you are searching for a general accountant, these two types are too specialized, and often they are career tax or cost accounting professionals. It is up to you to decide what you want to include or exclude, but if I am trying to show the supply and demand for general accountants this is what I would do. It gives you an idea of what the supply and demand are for a role.

I find the most valuable way to use this information is to convert it into a ratio of the number of approximate profiles divided by the number of jobs. If you do this, you get the following numbers for accounting, FP&A, and java in the Greater Tampa area:

The lower the number, the harder it will be to recruit this talent because of the high demand (more jobs per person). The higher the number, the easier it will be as there is lower demand (more people per job). This is a measure of how many profiles (i.e. people) there are per job listing. So there are 2.69 java profiles per java job listed on LinkedIn for the Greater Tampa area. Technical recruiters know how hard it is to find Java talent, so this is a pretty low number. Accountants are not that easy to recruit either, but we see here they are more available at 6.99 people per job. Lastly, FP&A is at 16.50 people per job, so this indicates a far larger supply of talent than the demand per the number of jobs posted in the past month.

Converting into a ratio like this allows you to compare the difficulty of recruiting due to supply and demand across positions. If you know how hard it is to find Java developers and you know how much easier it is to get responses from FP&A professionals, then the ratios of 2.69 and 16.50 start to mean something to you. Based on this number, you could get a quick insight into how difficult it might be to recruit for a role you are unfamiliar with but you are able to determine the ratio by getting data on LinkedIn.

These numbers tend to hold true over time. Out of curiosity, I used Distill Web Monitor - a Chrome extension - to monitor the results pages of my searches and I got weekly results for the past 4 weeks. I have the below graphs to show that by and large the ratios hold over time. I was thinking it might be interesting to keep getting the data to see how the ratios change over a monthly or quarterly basis. This way you can see if the supply-demand ratio for certain skills is rising or falling.

What do you think about these supply and demand insights gleaned from LinkedIn's data? Do you think it is valuable to be able to tell hiring managers or executives something like that there are only 7 LinkedIn profiles of accountants for each accounting job posted in the Greater Tampa area? Share your thoughts and feedback by leaving a comment. To see more of my posts and articles, follow me on?LinkedIn?and on?Twitter.

What they didn't say, but could have

Let's try a couple of fictional characters. Be sure to click the sound button to hear a computer rendering of their voice for the text.

Fun with ChatGPT

Last time was a rap, let's try a folk song about recruiting this time.

Verse 1:

A recruiter's job is to find the best

For their company, to pass the test

They search for candidates far and wide

To fill open positions, side by side

Chorus:

With resumes in hand and a smile on their face

They're the ones who help you find your place

In the world of work, they're the key

To helping you land your dream job, you'll see

Verse 2:

They screen resumes, they conduct calls

To make sure you're the right fit, they'll have you standing tall

They'll schedule interviews and make the plan

To bring you in, and shake your hand

Chorus:

With resumes in hand and a smile on their face

They're the ones who help you find your place

In the world of work, they're the key

To helping you land your dream job, you'll see

Verse 3:

They're the bridge between employer and employee

Helping to find the right fit, it's their duty

They'll negotiate pay and make the deal

And help you to start your new job, for real

Chorus:

With resumes in hand and a smile on their face

They're the ones who help you find your place

In the world of work, they're the key

To helping you land your dream job, you'll see

Outro:

So when you're looking for a job, don't be shy

A recruiter's there to help you fly

They'll find the perfect fit, you'll see

And help you start your new career.

Talent Acquisition Quotes

“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was — and still is — the most important thing we do.”

~ Marc Bennioff

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