Small Businesses Now Have an Easier Way to Find the Right Candidates with New LinkedIn Jobs Features

Hiring the right people is tough for small business owners and managers. You don't have dedicated recruiters like big companies. And, you’re constantly juggling dozens of tasks so you don’t have time to do the recruiting yourself. But, you know that each new hire is absolutely critical to your long-term success.

So, to make finding great talent easier for you, we’re introducing a new feature called Recommended Matches and rolling out improvements to job targeting, including new customization capabilities. This is all part of our newly enhanced LinkedIn Job Posts.

Now, when you post a job on LinkedIn, these new features will work to deliver a pool of relevant candidates who you can’t find anywhere else. Our goal is to keep you from spending time wading through hundreds of applications—many from job seekers who don’t have the skills or experience you’re looking for—and help you find that right talent faster.

Here’s how these features work:

When you post a job on LinkedIn, Recommended Matches searches our network to find the right people for your role

LinkedIn members share and regularly update their experience, skills, and interests so they’re poised to seize opportunities when they arise. And all this information allows the new Recommended Matches feature to automatically suggest candidates who may be a good fit for your role.

Once you’ve posted a job on LinkedIn, Recommended Matches will scour our network to find candidates who have the experience and skills you’re looking for. And, most of these candidates are exclusively on LinkedIn: 57% of our users in the US did not visit the top three job boards last month.*

We put these potential candidates right in front of you, giving you access to their full profiles. In one click, you can indicate if you’re interested in a candidate and start a conversation with them about the job opportunity.

Based on how you rate candidates, our algorithm learns your preferences and delivers increasingly relevant candidates. It works much like your Netflix account—if you’ve watched a lot of British detective shows, Netflix is going to recommend you check out Sherlock or Foyle’s War or Broadchurch. If you’re consistently interested in candidates who are, say, accountants with leadership skills or project managers who are adept at social media, we’ll send you more of those.

Customizable job targeting puts your job post in front of the right candidates

In addition to Recommended Matches, we’ve overhauled our jobs matching algorithm and given you the ability to add your own targeting, providing you with greater control over who sees your job post. This means you’ll spend less time combing through applications from job seekers who aren’t a match for your position.

You tell us the skills, industry, education, function, location, and years of relevant experience you’re looking for, and we’ll promote your position via email and across LinkedIn to members who meet those criteria.

Prospects who respond to the post and apply for your job are lined up for you in one convenient place on your LinkedIn Jobs dashboard. You can quickly scan their skills, interests, experience, etc. and then decide whether they fit the needs of your role.

As you choose candidates to contact or consider, the LinkedIn Jobs interface makes it easy to move them into your interview pipeline, for follow-up at your convenience. And, our dashboard allows you to share individual candidate profiles with other team members in the hiring process. A bar across the top of the dashboard also shows you how many candidates have been contacted, phone-screened, interviewed, made an offer, and hired.

With U.S. unemployment levels continuing to drop, small businesses need access to qualified professionals who are open to opportunities

Job boards can be a scattershot approach to hiring. With unemployment recently reaching an 18-year low, the pool of out-of-work and dissatisfied candidates is likely to be small. And the job market is proving particularly tight for small businesses. Recommended Matches helps you reach professionals who aren’t actively looking for a new job but are open to opportunities.

There are 10 million small businesses that belong to LinkedIn, and you’ve told us you don’t have the luxury of making a bad hire. Every person is crucial and every hire needs to be done quickly, cost-effectively, and intelligently.

And while larger companies can take advantage of our full suite of hiring products, we know that smaller businesses don’t have dedicated recruiting resources, so we’re excited to be taking this next step to meet your needs.

Between the new job targeting functionality and the Recommended Matches feature, the upgraded LinkedIn Jobs helps you find candidates who have the skills and experiences to keep your business growing and thriving.

Learn more about how you can use LinkedIn Jobs to reach candidates you can't find anywhere else.

*comScore Custom Research, US, Multi-Platform, May 2018 Job boards refer to Career Services and Development Sites. Top job boards refers to Indeed.com, Glassdoor.com, and Monster.com