The value of LinkedIn Salary for businesses and recruiters

A candidate’s decision to accept a new job is influenced by so many factors. And at a time when the labor market in the Netherlands is tight and a true war on talent is going on, professionals put a huge premium on finding the right opportunity that will advance their career and also offer challenging work. However, often one of the biggest considerations is still the compensation package.

Knowing how important salary is to the conversation between candidates and recruiters, we released LinkedIn Salary and expanding this to the Netherlands as of today.

The tool offers professionals the ability to see the factors that influence their pay for a given role -- such as years of experience, location, or company size.

Aside from empowering candidates with information, I believe this tool will benefit companies and lead to more productive candidate/recruiter conversations. Here are a few ways recruiting teams can make the best use of the new tool:

1. It will help you lead a transparent discussion with the candidates

When it comes to having the salary talk with candidates, recruiters fall into two camps -- they either prefer not to bring up compensation until the candidate sees the job as a meaningful career move, or they address salary right off the bat to make sure that the candidate’s expectations are within their budget. No matter which approach you use, LinkedIn Salary can streamline discussions and offer nuanced insights to help in negotiations.

LinkedIn Salary data will prepare you for what compensation the candidate will expect and give you a proof point that your pay is competitive. The information will also provide you with great background for a nuanced discussion about how the candidate’s skills, experience, and education may influence their pay. And in the cases when candidates are unwilling to discuss their current salary, this is a good opportunity to break through by using third-party data as a reference point.

2. It shifts your focus to developing clear messaging about the value your job/company will bring to the candidate

With full transparency on the salary you can focus on the value add. While salary is a driving factor for many candidates, it certainly is not the only reason they accept a job. It’s worth taking the time to analyze the company’s employee value proposition and understand how employees benefit from working at your company -- then, make sure you communicate that information to candidates in your employer branding materials. For example, consider promoting stories of how your current employees have grown their careers within the company and had the opportunity to explore different roles. Or focus on what type of challenging problems people get to solve at work. Crystallizing these strong benefits of the company culture will serve as a great differentiator from competitors who focus only on attractive compensation packages.Talent acquisition has always been a people profession. But nowadays it’s a numbers profession too. 50% is already using data to build better offers and I expect this will number will continue to increase in the new near future. The data that’s been used by LinkedIn Salary will be updated in near to real time, and benchmarked against a network of 575+ million professionals, publicly available salary information and 3rd party insights so that we can better verify data and combine with other industry insights such as top skills in demand.

Data informing talent decisions isn’t a new concept. But what is new is the volume of data available and the speed with which it can be analyzed. You can access the LinkedIn Salary website now and explore how the tool works.

I would welcome your opinion on this topic. Feel free to respond or comment.