LinkedIn at the Social Media in Recruitment Conference

Whilst I was at the Social Media in Recruitment Conference last month I made some notes from the speaker presentations.  Here are the main points I pulled out from the presentation from Ariel Eckstein who is Managing Director, European Hiring Solutions, LinkedIn.

There are:

• 625 million active internet users worldwide
• 71% have visited a social network
• 65 million LinkedIn users
• 3 million join each

month
 
His thoughts on using social media in a broad sense:

• Build and nurture a talent pool
• Invest in employee brand
• Improve recruiting referral programme
• ID/source passive candidates
• Reduce staffing firm spend
• Research client/contact prior to sales meetings

He told us how SAB Miller have reduced the percentage of recruitment they do via an agency from 80% to 20% by using social media and how Logitec have reduced hiring time from 70 to 40 days.
 
He then talked about the LinkedIn products.  Now, obviously this was a bit of a sales pitch as none of these are free to use.  However, I did find it useful to get a quick snapshot overview.  I won't repeat it all here (unless LinkedIn want to pay me for advertising!) but basically I came away feeling that LinkedIn are like a very sophisticated job board – with a massive candidate database!
 
One final point from LinkedIn – their view on who "owns" the connections; recruiter or agency … the recruiter.