This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 74

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Open Kitchen: The Comprehensive Guide to LinkedIn Live Events

Last week was the first time I had set up and managed a LinkedIn Online Event.

It was a Brainfood Live On Air, which many of you will already know goes out as a LinkedIn Live every Friday at 2pm but always by going live on my personal page, without having any event specially set up for the occasion. However, I had been getting reports from members of my network that they no longer seeing notifications which alert them to the imminent go-live, and have therefore missed the shows. Some have even wondered why I don't do them anymore! Hence I decided to conduct an experiment and see what we could learn by doing livestreaming the way LinkedIn wants you to do livestreaming, by doing them through an event.

Some learnings to share

1. LinkedIn Live is STILL not Available to Everybody.

There are some basic limitations in place, which are mainly associated with your network size (must have 500+ connections, on a Company Page, must have 150+ followers) and your level (and quality) of LinkedIn activity.

I think these are reasonable criteria, especially as there is no verified ID on LinkedIn, and this might be an awful place if spammers or troll accounts were able to livestreaming at will. That said, it makes sense for everyone to put at least some effort into getting over the basic barriers to entry - complete your profile, get connecting and engage a little with your fellows or for page owners to start something going on their Company Page, in order to accrue followers. There a 'might as well' motivation here - gain all the permissions you can, even if you think you don't need them, as you never know if you will want to in future.

2. LinkedIn Creator Mode: Switch it On

No one quite knows what this does, but it seems that you need to switch it on in order to be able to set up LinkedIn Online Events. There is some speculation as to whether this makes a difference to post reach, audience size, new features etc - but I can't see any and people with greater expertise than I have also not been able to confidently say what this does. So, switch it on to enable secondary permissions to create events and Livestream.

3. Biggest Decision: Personal Page or Company Page?

For those of you who manage company pages (presumably any early stage founder or anyone in recruitment marketing), you actually have a choice as to which profile you want your LinkedIn Event to be controlled by. Turns out, this is not a trivial decision, as only via Company Page organised Events are you able to set registration for the events, a form where you can in fact collect email (yay!). This is not available on events setup via Personal Pages; in those events, people can only 'attend' not register to attend.

There is a trade off to be made here - being able to collect email is obviously a big deal for marketers - perhaps the ulterior motive for all webinars - yet personal pages usually have a significantly larger following.

47,175 vs 6,537 is a pretty big difference!

That said, it is pretty clear that these days just being a follower doesn't mean you see what's going on. Remember the reports from my network actually complaining that they no longer see livestreams or updates, even though we are connected and they follow. So obviously, only a small percentage of that 47,000 would ever seen the Livestream via an event through Personal Page, so hence I chose the Company Page option

4. Select Between LinkedIn Event Options - Live, Online or Audio

Set up is the same whichever profile you choose, and you end up with your first drop down - do you want to do a Live In person event, Online event or Audio only event? Live is a straight up Meetup / Eventbrite competitor, it simply allows you to manage your live event via LinkedIn, Audio only event is LinkedIn's somewhat half-baked Clubhouse competitor and Online Event is the one everyone is likely to be doing this for. Choose that

5. Invite Attendees

Everyone can invite 1000 attendees from their 1st degree connections to attend the event. This is perhaps the main reason why you might want to pipe a livestream through LinkedIn, as you can do direct invites this way. Importantly, it is the 1st degree connections of the Event Organiser who can be invited - and this may not always align with the target audience for the event. Again this is understandable but also a problem in circumstances where the Event Organiser has a weak network, which is not unusual for people early in their careers who conceivably might be told to perform this role. The built-in workaround that anyone attending the event, can subsequently invite 1000 more attendees from their 1st degree network, though I suspect few would do so without clear incentive (pay people per invite?) to plough through what is rather tedious invite modal.

Incidentally, my effort at inviting 1000 people proved an interesting experience - page ranking of the prospective list did not seem to have any discernible order and the filters available were few in number and not those which I would've chosen - no skills, no job title and of course no way of adding multiple filters. I just filtered on industry, chose 'Staffing' and invited the first 1000 people who I thought might be interested.

6. Few Invitees Actually Attend

My conversion rate on these invites was 0.6%(!). Not sure what number is a good number but I'm pretty sure that this was a low conversion rate. My thesis is that people are generally desensitised to notifications from LinkedIn and have long since paying attention to them. That said, it was somewhat demoralising to see only 60 odd people accept the invitation (which could not be personalised incidentally) from the 1000 who received it. This means that the event has to promoted as any other event would - via social distro, paid ads or updating your audience in the spaces where they pay attention to you.

7. Third Party Streaming Software

You cannot directly stream on LinkedIn, you have to use a software streaming service. Most people seem to use StreamYard (cool product!), but I use Crowdcast + Restream as not only is it the service which has served the Brainfood Live Audience well for the past 160 + episodes, but also because it enables a method of multi-casting (livestreaming to multiple channels) which is tried and tested method for me and the audience.

There's some learning to do here, but it is all pretty much accessible to laity these days. Incidentally, being able to Livestream to LinkedIn, whether that be through an event or not, is significant enough to it to be a key criteria for the selection of your webinar platform. It will basically save you an enormous amount of marketing effort.

So...how did it all go?

8. Event Integrates With Calendar

Upon accepting the invitation or by clicking the attend button and registering for the event, you then get the opportunity to add the event to calendar. Pretty standard event management feature, but altogether missing if you just go ahead and livestream without telling anybody. It has got to improve attendance rate, and might even be a cool piece of brand building.

9. Everyone Gets A Notification Email Pre Event

Again pretty standard, but again pretty cool - we know we all live in email, so without that notification likely even those who decided to attend. Interestingly, the event notification also discloses the number of other attendees to the event - leading to a sense of FOMO or FOTU (Fear of Turning Up). Some pressure then, not to have a weak attendance rate for the event.

10. Excellent Event Analytics

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the Livestreaming through LinkedIn Events experience was the post event analytics. This is simply not available in my old way of doing it and a big incentive for doing it again this way. You can track attendance rate, watch rate etc.

11. Downloadable Registration Data

Perhaps the main reason anyone does webinars is to get hold of precious email data - after all, don't marketers call this 'leads capture'? Company Page managers who pipe events through LinkedIn do collect comprehensive registrant data - firstname, secondname, job title, company and email. Obviously there is a privacy disclaimer that you have already agreed to on event creation so usage of this data needs to fully respect what the attendee signed up for. However, if your purpose of doing webinar is to collect leads, then there you do have it.

12. Company Page Grows By Doing Events

Like everything in social media, activity generates its own reward - most people have no idea there is anything going on on Company Pages - and to be fair, they are usually correct! So when you do do something, it will land for a few folks who are curious to check out what new things might be happening there, or if they were convinced enough of the last event, that they would be prepared to follow the page. To certain degree, this is undoubtedly cannibalising from other channels you might run, but if you've been on this journey with me for a while you will know that 'channel fragmentation' is a core principle. You have to trust the audience to go where they want to go to consume what they want to consume.

So...all things being said...good chance I'm going to persist at least for another week, on doing Brainfood Live On Air, via Company Page administered LinkedIn Online Event.

Follow the page , if you want to be updated on when these go live and you can register already for the Friday event here .

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What's in the News?

LinkedIn Launch new Creator Tools

The graphic on the post could not be more boring, but the new tools rolled out by LinkedIn could well be very interesting - embedded links in images, as well as visual templates which add design to your messaging. Expect your LinkedIn newsfeed to progressively become less text based as time goes on. Check out the post here

Entelo acquired by Silkroad

One of the first 'people aggregators' to really make a splash, Entelo finally find a new home at SilkRoad, backed by HighBar Partners. Chad and Cheese have some commentary on it (don't they ever ?? ) - have a listen here

Harver Acquire Pymetrics

Consolidation in the assessments space as Harver acquire Pymetrics. There have been few categories in HR tech more bullish than assessment, especially with the global shift toward remote working reducing the opportunity for employers to lean on the traditional interview. Press release from Harver here

If you are a recruitment service provider or technology business and have any news to share,?comment below,?this is your application to get into next week's addition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's On Offer?

WFH are offering "MAKE YOUR FIRST 3 HIRES FOR FREE"

Looks like they usually charge 10-15% recruiting fee + the monthly subscription, but according to Saeed Ezzati , you can go in and hire w/o the recruiting fee if you claim this deal. Give him shout and let him know you saw this on This Week, In Recruiting. Thanks Saeed!

If you are a recruitment service provider or recruitment technology vendor have any exclusive offer for the community, comment below with your offer in order to be included in next week's edition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it.

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What's Going On?

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep168 - Changing the Culture of Your Talent Acquisition Team , Fri 2pm BST

Have you ever been in a situation where we have inherited a team in need of cultural change? If you've ever been hired into a leadership role, there is a surefire chance that you have. We gather together an expert crew of practitioner leaders who can tell what they've learned from doing it. We are with Nims Dhawan , Organisational Design, (UK Ministry of Defence), Rassam Yaghmaei , Talent Acquisition Director (Doctorlib) & Jon Hull , Head of Resourcing (Balfour Beatty) register here

Benefits and Employee Wellbeing in Distributed Work Setups , Tue 30th August, 1.00pm CEST

Two of my favourite people in the business are getting together for this lunch and learn on how to set up an Employee Benefits for a distributed team. A great deal of what we once considered benefits were tied to office location - what happens when there is no office? Sophie Theen , CPO (Boom) and Oliwia Schildt , Community Manager (Localyze) in conversation - register here

How Men vs Women Talk About Salary , Wed 31st August, 2pm BST / 3pm CEST

Excited to be moderating this conversation on compensation and gender, in particular exploring whether there is gender variance in our approach to talking about salary, if so is this a problem and if so, what we are going to do about it? With Henna Pryor , Author / Speaker / Exec Coach, Kimberley Jones , Senior Director, Talent (UC Irvine) and Virgile Raingeard , CEO of Figures. Register here

Sourcing Without LinkedIn: Part 2 , Wed 31st August, 11.00am EDT / 4pm BST

Super excited to bring this webinar together with our buddies at Fetcher - it's Pt2 of Sourcing Without LinkedIn. Recruiters are so dependent on LinkedIn, and whilst it is an essential service, we also know that you will not fill all of your hiring needs through it, especially if you are hiring for talent that does not like or even respect the platform. I'm speaking with the awesome Erin Mathew, Senior Recruiter (PayPal), Alla Pavlova , Recruiter (Riot Games) and Aaron Friedman , Co-founder (Pana Partners) on the topic. If you're a sourcer looking for new avenues to hire, register on this today.

The Importance of Employer Brand in Volume Recruitment , Thu 1st Sept, 11am BST

Excited to be launching this series with our buddies at Crooton, whose core customer profile are high volume employers, which despite the massive contribution they make to the economy are somehow underrepresented in the media. 4 part series folks - we kick off with talking about Employer Branding for High Volume, with Rowan Marriott, Head of Resourcing at Cygnet HealthCare. Register here

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter,?comment below?with the link and event details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Hiring?

Senior Talent Sourcer, Tech & Product (F/M/D) , Delivery Hero, Berlin, Germany

Senior Tech & Product Recruiter (all genders) , Delivery Hero, Berlin, Germany

Latin America Payroll Director, JLL, Chicago, IL, USA

Payroll Tax Analyst , JLL, Chicago, IL, USA

Talent Acquisition Partner - Germany & Austria , Novo Nordisk, Mainz, Germany

Regional Recruitment Partner , SYSTEMIQ, Sao Paulo, Brazil

In-house TA / Recruiter - Pan European , Pax8, Zwolle, Netherlands

Talent Acquisition Specialist , Kinsta, London, UK

International Talent Acquisition Specialist , Everlight Radiology, London, UK

Talent Partner - Barcelona , KANDIDATE, Remote Global

Partner, Life Sciences - SE Asia , Horton International, Remote Global

If you want to get your job featured, post jobs on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board?here

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Who's Moving?

Martyn Biddulph joins PwC as Senior Tech Recruiter, making a big move from agency to in-house having previously worked for staffing giants Hays and Robert Walters. Great blue chip move this, a door opener for many future opportunities.

Milly-Louisa Cleal ?joins Octopus Ventures as Portfolio Partner, having previously lead recruitment at Bossa Studios, Classpass, Gamesys and Pulselive. Very interesting to operate as a Portfolio Recruiter - somewhere in between agency and in-house I suspect. Need to do a Brainfood Live on this, I think

Jóni Sousa joins Voicemod as Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, having previously worked with Mercedes-Benz, Equal Experts, Farfetch and more. The more we learn about the importance of soundscapes, the more interesting audio is going to be. Looking forward to seeing what you get up to here Jóni!

Neil Ewington joins Fraser Dove International as Client Services Director. Few people in the industry have as much energy and infectious charisma as Neil - this is a great hire for a company focusing on the essential part of the economy - Life Sciences. Congratulations Neil!

Promotions to celebrate - Lauren Dawe who goes up to People and Culture Manager at PlaySide Studios, Natalia Currie who goes up to Head of Talent Acquisiton at Greencore, Nikki Tarr , also up to Head of Talent Acquisition at ClearCourse, Corinna O'Sullivan , who goes up to Tech TA Manager at Spendesk, Chris Johnson who goes up to Recruitment Lead at Deliveroo and Emily Mathews , promoted to Manager, Talent Acquisition at Wayflyer

If you have made a senior exec appointment to your business,?and feel the wider community needs to know about it,?comment below?with the details and see it featured in next weeks issue.?Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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What Are You Doing?

Toby Culshaw has a new book out - and it's likely to become the definitive tome on the burgeoning field of Talent Intelligence. It's also called 'Talent Intelligence ' in case you were in any doubt as to what it is all about. On pre-order at Kogan Page for ￡29.99, with 20% off using this code: TIC20

Matthias Schmei?er is starting out on his own consultancy, Talent Advisory. Increasingly an attractive option for skilled and networked pro's, which Matthias certainly is. Get in touch if you need help with TA!

If you are doing something new,?comment below?with what it is and share a link to where you want people to go. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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End Notes

Last day of baking weather, before the thunderstorms roll in.

Going to be a welcome relief I think, but the rains are going to be a downpour, no doubt leading to erosion of topsoil already dried into powder by the heatwave. This is one of the ways in which our environment changes - drier, more yellow, less green. Hat tip to everyone who is working in new material sciences and renewable energy sector - we need you!

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of?Recruiting Brainfood , and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.