By now there are so many recruiters on LinkedIn that it is pretty clear it works as a recruitment tool. But what about as a retention tool?
The first clue I had about this was that a when a staff member was preparing to leave a company they tend to start pumping out the recommendations (and more selfishly, requests for recommendations). The best way to get great recommendations is to first write them for others, and I think the key points are best covered here. The same rules as resumes apply, don’t waffle and put in hard facts where possible. If an HR Manager starts seeing their employees engage in this mass-recommendation tactic then the warning lights should be on, just as they would be on if you saw them tidying up their CV at work.
On a similar note you might notice that the employees are becoming more connected to a competitive organisation, this could be as blatant as linking to a competitor’s recruitment manager or an industry recruiter. Again the real world parallel is seeing them having coffee downstairs with one of these people.
The LinkedIn company pages are also a great retention tool. For example looking at the realestate.com.au company profile gives the realestate.com.au HR manager a guide as to where their people are coming from and going to. The popular profiles might also suggest who is networking hard (or being recruited aggressively) within your company. It would help to keep this page up to date, it might be something that potential hires would find useful. I might have a crack at updating it now, I see LinkedIn have added the ability to upload company logos and company blog RSS feeds, cool!
