Building a personal brand on LinkedIn should be at the top of every recruiter’s list of priorities.
Despite spending a major chunk of their day on LinkedIn, recruiters never post unless it’s about a job they’re advertising.
So why aren’t recruiters actively posting on the platform they are most familiar with? The most common reasons I see behind this lack of engagement are:
- Recruiters have no downtime. With so many urgent tasks, posting on LinkedIn is never a priority.
- Trying to persuade recruiters to block out time daily to engage on LinkedIn only to receive a handful of likes and comments is enough to make any newbie’s hands sweat.
- Fear of lack of engagement. Fear of what their colleagues might say. Fear of being in the spotlight. Fear of their managers accusing them of wasting time.
But the resistance also comes from not being able to see the value in the activity.
Most recruiters will be interested in LinkedIn engagement only if it means better business, higher placements, or essentially more money in their bank account.
So, let’s take a moment to explore the benefits of building a solid personal brand on LinkedIn.
Top 3 Benefits of Building a Strong Personal Brand on LinkedIn
1. Higher Inflow of In-Bound Leads
Yes, companies DO approach you to recruit for them. I know; I didn’t believe it either. But it does happen!
It won’t happen every day, but if you get 2-3 clients a year through no extra effort (some may need multiple vacancies filled throughout the year), that makes building a personal brand worth it, doesn’t it?
Also, you’ll be surprised at how LinkedIn engagement can boost your credibility.
About two months into posting on LinkedIn, I received a message out of the blue from a company that was looking to hire for its development team.
I’d never heard of them, but they said they’d seen some of my posts, which led them to my profile.
Ultimately, that one inbound message resulted in a £12,000 fee, with a £5,000 retainer upfront–just from posting on LinkedIn and presenting myself as a reputable recruiter!
2. Candidates Are More Likely to Reply
One of the biggest challenges recruiters face is getting candidates to reply to their InMails and LinkedIn messages. Candidates are getting battered by messages daily–especially if they have an in-demand skillset. Not to mention, which recruiter they reply to is sometimes completely random.
But what if they’ve already seen your content a few times? Maybe they’ve even engaged with it in the past week or so. In this case, if you slide into their DMs about an opportunity, there’s a much higher chance they’ll respond to you than a random recruiter they’ve never even heard of.
So just think of the power LinkedIn content holds for hiring talent and keeping them engaged!
3. Winning Over Clients Becomes Much More Easier!
If you’re putting in that extra effort to develop your personal brand on LinkedIn, you’ll have a unique selling point to use when speaking to prospects.
When clients ask you, “Well, what do you have over the other recruiters we work with?” you can show them your LinkedIn following and engagement levels and explain how this will result in you attracting better candidates for them.
Your engagement alone will have candidates more likely to respond to you regarding a job opportunity.
Also, if you have a substantial reach, an awesome by-product of working with you is that clients can benefit from the free marketing!
I used to look at LinkedIn as a boring, professional platform where I sourced candidates and occasionally saw a post about someone getting a job because they were polite to the receptionist. But now, I genuinely look forward to using it every day because I’m excited about who I will network with.
My Favorite Tips for Personal Brand Building on LinkedIn
Building a personal brand on LinkedIn is a whole topic in itself, but I’d like to give you some tips to start brand building today.
1. Don’t be Vanilla
Whatever you post on LinkedIn, remember to be yourself and share your genuine opinion.
The worst thing you can do is sit on the fence. Fence-sitters are not interesting, and nobody will engage with your boring, middle-of-the-road content.
Everyone has opinions, including you, so express them!
2. Relax!
Yes, you can swear, and yes, you can post about your personal life.
I’d actually encourage you to make around 15% of your content about you, so people can get to know the person behind the avatar.
LinkedIn has changed a lot in the last few years, and it’s perfectly fine to treat it like other social media platforms as long as you add some value.
3. Engage Every Day
You might be thinking, what can I post about every day? But you don’t always have to share something new. In fact, I’d say that the best way to get started is to focus on commenting.
Posting on LinkedIn is like going to the gym; it’s hard to start, and then it’s impossible to stop.
Once you’ve got into the routine of spending ten minutes a day to write comments, you’ll find it far easier to break through that resistance to posting content. Comments are also great for building your network and engaging with other users.
4. Batch Your Content
Did you know LinkedIn has added a scheduling tool so that you can schedule your content for the future?
Some people I know sit in a coffee shop for an hour and bash out a week’s worth of content. Then they don’t have to worry about creating content until the following week. By then, you’ll likely be brimming with new ideas, and the content will flow from your fingertips.
5. Connect with 10 People Each Day
Without the right audience, your valuable content will likely go unseen. So make sure you spend five minutes daily connecting with ten people, and always add a note to your connections.
There are so many benefits to building a personal brand as a recruiter, but hopefully, these pointers are enough to spark your interest.
Business aside, personal brand building on LinkedIn is fun! I’ve made plenty of friends and interesting people through LinkedIn over the last two years.
So, get posting and commenting today. You won’t regret it!
Happy recruiting 🙂
